 So, the Verge Mobile Show is kind of like an iPhone launch. You wait for it, you wait for it, you're so excited, and then it finally comes! And it's pretty much what you expected, but you know, maybe that's not so bad, because it's also everything that you hoped for. Stay tuned for the Verge Mobile Show. Hi I'm Dieter Bohm. I'm Dan Seifert. I'm Chris Ziegler. And this is episode 17 for the week of September 17th, 2012 of the Verge Mobile Show. It's our golden Verge Mobile Show. Golden? Yeah, what makes it golden? Isn't that like your golden birthday is like when the birthday falls on the day of your age? I thought golden would be like the 50th show or something. I think gold is like the 30th. 50th is diamond platinum. I'm looking it up now. Hold on. Wait, everybody hang on. Yeah, no, 50 is golden. 50 is golden. There's a pony boy joke here, but I'm not gonna reach for it. This is our crystal, no, our 15th show is our crystal show, and our 20th show will be our China show. Nice. Yeah, 25th will be our silver show. Anyway. So if you notice, Vlad Savov is not with us today, unfortunately. Yeah, he is at Photo Kina taking amazing pictures of cameras that also take amazing pictures. Very meta at Photo Kina. Very jealous, to be honest with you. They've actually done a really excellent... If you haven't seen the coverage, there's a stream explaining all the stuff that's happened at Photo Kina. And I'm not a camera nerd, but they've done a really good job of making all this camera news accessible and understandable. So I can actually read through the stream, read our stories, and not feel like I'm an idiot, which is what most camera coverage makes me feel like. When I go to DP review, it just makes me feel dumb. Can I just say that I am in the process of eBaying both my kidneys and selling a large amount of cocaine for a Leica M. I will do a wide variety of legal things for a Leica M. I had the opportunity to use an M9 for a couple of weeks a couple of years ago, and I was just... It's a really hard thing to explain in specs because it doesn't compare very favorably to anything. But there's something about the experience of using a Leica that is just extremely appealing, and it is hard to describe. You just got to use it, and then you understand why people pay upwards of $10,000 or $15,000 for Leica bodies and lenses. Indeed. That has nothing to do with phones, though. So here's the thing. There was a big iPhone event last week, and it's dominated the mobile news, and we're going to talk about the iPhone for, I think it's fair to say, a very long time. We have a lot of thoughts and feelings and things to say about the iPhone. There's a lot of details to dig into and just a lot of stuff to say. And so if you're here looking for us to talk about the fact that there is an orange version of the Lumia 820 but not of the 920 and how angry that makes me, that rant is going to have to wait until next week. Is that a direct shot at me, Dieter? Because that felt like you were aiming that at me. No. They're making an orange version of the 820 but not of the 920, and it drives me crazy. I guess we should also mention that Nokia showed—we got to get into the iPhone stuff—anyway, that Nokia showed literally a quarter of a second blip of a cyan Lumia 920. It was one frame. It was one frame. Yeah. So I have a theory about this. I have a theory about this. I'm sorry to derail the conversation already, but actually it's not my theory. This was going around on Twitter. Apparently a previous version of the video that had been uploaded by Nokia showed more of that cyan phone. And so I think what happened was they realized their mistake and attempted to trim it out and missed that one frame. How do you miss a frame in the middle of a shot? That's ridiculous. I don't know. I don't know. Who knows what sort of weird editing tools they're using, but I think that's what happened. I love that we're like, we're not going to talk about anything but the iPhone, and we immediately start talking about the Lumia. I would personally be totally fine with a 90-minute show about Nokia phone colors. I could do that every week at nausea. The real question is what color phone would Paul Walker use if he had a Lumia phone? That is a supernova of all my favorite things that you're literally about to pass out just thinking about this topic. Let's talk iPhone, please. First things last, did you guys pre-order? I did. I did not. What? Really? This blew my mind when Chris told me that he did not. This is what happens. I was telling Dan this, I think last week. What I do, and this happens every single year and has since the second iPhone, the iPhone 3G, what happens to me is I swear up and down that I'm not going to get an iPhone. I don't pre-order. Then the morning of the event comes and I wake up at 4 a.m. and I'm like, ah, shucks. I'm going to go get in line. Then I go get in line and I buy one. Happened with the 4S, happened with the 4. It's going to happen again with the 5S. We'll see what happens on Friday, but there's a very real chance that I will be standing in line at four in the morning. With the 4S, I rolled in 4S and the iPad 3, sorry, the new iPad. I rolled into an AT&T store for the 4S and a Verizon store for the iPad at 11 o'clock in the morning, just like waltzed in, zero line, bought the phone and the iPad and waltzed out no problem. I think that that's going to happen this time around. I don't think that there'll be no lines at the carrier stores. We know they pre-sold twice as many is the story. They broke all of their sales records. Well, yeah. This time around, you've got all the people with the iPhone 4 coming off contract or have been off contract waiting for the 5 where you didn't have quite as many for the 4S. I have a feeling there's going to be some selling out and some lines. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no, I pre-ordered a 32 gig black on AT&T. I think the black one is great. Copying my style. Hey man, I think that the fact that they painted or they brushed over, they darkened the metal rail around it. I think it looks awesome. Yeah. I'm actually super excited for this hardware, which I didn't think I would be, but I really am. I think it looks great. We'll see how I feel about the larger screen. I've been using a One X or a Galaxy S3 and a Galaxy Nexus and all these other big screen phones for so long that I think it's going to actually feel a little bit cramped. I think having a super thin phone and a reliable LTE phone, I'm actually pretty excited about that. I'm pretty excited about being able to tether off of this thing because tethering off of Android works for the most part, but USB tethering especially seems to be hit or miss, especially after Android 4.0. They changed their driver model a little bit. It's often the case that I'll plug in an Android phone and it won't show up as a USB modem on my Mac and it's a big hassle. The iPhone 5, I'm excited to go back to totally reliable USB tethering. Yeah. I feel pretty strongly... Going back to your color selection, Dieter and Dan, I feel pretty strongly that with this generation, white and black have flip-flopped and black is the chic color and white is the standard normal color. Do you guys agree? I totally agree. Last generation, I was all about the white model. I think the white model looks great. It's the one I owned, et cetera. I usually go for the white phone, but this time around, I hate to use the murdered out phrase, but that black really just grabbed me in that matte finish and I went black. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's stick with talking about hardware specs here. Of course, we know about the larger display. We know about LTE and LTE bands. This is actually interesting. With the 4S, they had basically a single model with single radio setup for CDMA and GSM and it was basically the same thing worldwide. With this one, there's how many different? Because the Verizon and the AT&T are different and the Sprint one also, I don't know how that ties in. I believe there are three models in total. There's three skews, but I'm of the feeling and I know a lot of other people in the industry are as well that there's really only two models and the extra skew is just with certain things disabled and certain things enabled on the same hardware as the other model. You've got your AT&T LTE model, which is the A1428, I believe. That supports your standard HSPA plus on all of AT&T's bands, standard GSM, of course, and then it supports AT&T's LTE bands. That model will be sold in Canada. It works on the Canadian LTE carriers. After that, you've got the A1429 CDMA version, which is going to be offered by Verizon and Sprint, and that has compatible LTE bands for both Verizon and Sprint as well as your necessary CDMA cover band support and it also has HSPA plus support on the same bands as the AT&T model. You can use it globally just like you could with the 4S. And then the third model is the A1429 GSM model, which has all the same things as the Verizon and Sprint model, but it doesn't have the CDMA support, which I feel is just turned off because the LTE band support is pretty much the same and the other things are pretty much the same. So you've got three to choose from, the GSM A1429 is the unlocked model, I guess you could say that that's probably going to be offered in various parts of Europe, et cetera. And of course, the other global markets that support LTE. This is the first time in a really long time that I was tempted to switch to Verizon just for the global roaming, but I realized I don't actually globally roam all that often. So I decided to take a risk on staying with AT&T. So here's the thing, you'll still be able to globally roam with the AT&T model, you just won't be able to do it on LTE. So if you had gone with the Verizon model, you could roam LTE on the, when EE launches its LTE network, you'll be able to roam on there and you can roam on the, I think it's T-Mobile's running the LTE network in Germany, but you won't be able to do that with the AT&T model, but you will be able to roam on HSPA plus with the AT&T model. So. I'm sure that it killed Apple to have to roll multiple physical hardware devices for this launch because they, you know, they went from two iPhone fours down to one for the four S and I think that was a very purposeful move for them. And the LTE, you know, the completely disjoint horrible mess of a global LTE band structure has destroyed any hope in the near term of launching a global device with a single set of skews. So until RF engineers do some amazing things that they obviously haven't done yet. Yeah, it's, it's, it's kind of crazy. Like just, I think this, we, we saw it with the iPad, the new iPad, how there was separate models for AT&T and Verizon LTE, but I think it just, the iPhone five really just speaks to the mess of the eight LTE bands that are global and are worldwide and how in not interoperable they are. Right. Running down some of the other specs, the camera, like what's different that's still an eight megapixel camera. I guess they've got a Sapphire thing so it's less likely to get scratched, but they didn't really talk up other than the panorama mode. They didn't really talk up the camera a whole lot and that panorama panorama mode thing, like I hope it's way better than what the third party apps are that are out there because if it's basically the same thing that you could have done before, like don't get me wrong. The camera on the iPhone four S is best of class. I think it only, it only wasn't until the one X and the galaxy S three that any other phone even came close. So it's not like they needed to sprint ahead there, but it's not like, you know, if you're not going to want to upgrade to the five just for the camera. Right. Yeah. I think that, I think that all of these guys, Apple included are running up against some physical limits about or over what they can do with cameras with the optic, you know, the size of the optics that they're, that they're using. And that's something that you're seeing devices like the 808 overcome by just including massive optics, which isn't really, isn't Apple's bag. And I don't think that you're going to see them do that in the future. Right. Yeah. I mean, at this point until the same thing with LTE, until engineers create this, you know, crazy breakthrough that, you know, defies the laws of physics as we know them right now there is kind of like this, this diminishing returns we get with these, with the phone cameras. Now as far as the differences between the 4S and the five camera that Sapphire crystal makes it a little bit smaller. So that, that leads to the thinner design, which I think we're going to speak to in a minute. But it's also the cameras a bit faster and I think that's leaning on the new processor. So the shot to shot time is faster. The focusing, all that fun stuff should be faster. And I hope that the panoramic thing is, is I expect it to be pretty simple and pretty easy. But yeah, like you said, Dieter, I hope it's better than the third party apps. Yeah. Okay. So you brought up the thinness. I mean, we, I mean it's thinner, right? It's 7.6 millimeters. Apple kept saying it's the thinnest smartphone on the planet, which is not true, right? Isn't there like an arrows phone in Japan? That's the thin. Yeah. There's some like sharp models that are like under seven millimeters. Yeah. Yep. And there's that Oppo. And then depending on how you measure it, of course the droid razor is 7.1, but it has the hump at the top. Right. So it doesn't count. I'm just saying that flat out. I don't know. I'm excited for it to be thinner. It's weird. I never thought of the iPhone four and the four S's being like a chunk. I guess the other thing, go ahead. I am not excited for it to be thinner. I'm going to let you finish, but let me just say that what they should have done is kept it the same. They should have pulled the razor max trick. They should have kept it the exact thing. Do you want an iPhone max? No, I don't want an iPhone max. I want there to be one model and I want them to say it's the same thickness as the four S we didn't have to make it any thicker. But oh, by the way, you now have two fricking days of battery life. That's more impressive than saying it's 7.6 millimeters or whatever. Yeah. I'm really curious to see what the battery life is going to be because they, when they were talking about battery life specs, they basically, I think they only pointed out standby time, but everything else was basically the same. I have problems with battery life on the LTE phones I've been using so far. It's a real struggle to get a full day. With this new form factor and the new dock connector, which we've got to get to, if I can't get a full day out of this thing, it's going to really suck to be constantly looking for a charger for the iPhone. Right. So I would love to see Apple release something called with two X's in it, the iPhone max, like that would be life changing. Would be life changing. But I mean, seriously, like, you know, that's a trade off that I'm definitely willing to make and I'm really fearful that all OEMs, Apple included, are still playing this pissing contest where they're trying to make the phones thinner and thinner and thinner with blatant disregard for the fact that a phone that can make it from say seven in the morning until five or six p.m. is not full day battery life and it is not acceptable. I would say that at least once a week, possibly twice on any phone that I use, really, right? I'm on the Galaxy Nexus, but any phone, I'm in a situation where I'm out and my phone dies and there's nothing I can do about it. Right. Yeah, I totally agree with you, Chris. I think I think when the iPhone four design came out a couple of years ago, it was kind of like mind blowing thin at the time. And you know, I don't I've never in the two years since then or almost two and a half years since then, I've never felt like that design was thick or cumbersome or unwieldy or anything like that. So if they could have kept that same millimeter and added however much battery capacity that would afford. Yeah, that would have been pretty great. Now the other side of this. OK, so if they had added that battery capacity, it would have added a ton of weight. I mean, this thing weighs what? What is it? So it's lighter. Yeah. So it's significantly lighter. I think the iPhone four was like one hundred and forty one grams. So if they had just kept it the same weight, I would have been thrilled. I never I mean, the iPhone four doesn't feel like a heavy phone. It's not like two hundred grams. So I would have much rather had the extended battery life and then I won't be using a silly like external battery case that I end up doing from time to time with my four s because the battery doesn't get me through the day. Yeah. I do want to give Apple credit for bringing back the aluminum back. I think that looks awesome. And I'm not sad to see the glass back go. I was never happy when they switched to plastic and then, you know, moving to glass was a nice fix. But I feel like, you know, their original vision with the original iPhone was aluminum. Now they've finally gotten back to that. I'm pretty excited about that. I hope it feels like that's one of my problems with the the HTC One S like it's got that that sweet micro arc oxidized aluminum thing, but I don't like the way it feels because it feels like a chalkboard. So I just hope this feels like just straight up good. Well, there is one problem with the aluminum on the original iPhone and maybe they've kind of gotten around it with this one. We don't know yet. But with the original iPhone, you still see it occasionally today. You know, every once in a while you see someone that's using an original iPhone for God knows what reason. But they're they're scratched to hell and they're dented. They're physically dented, which is a phenomenon that's unique in the phone world because 99% of phones are plastic and which doesn't dent. Right. Yeah. I mean, you still see that on like the iPod touch the most up to up to the new ones that were just announced. But the other iPod touches from last year, et cetera, they get scratched extremely quickly and you frequently see them dented too. So yeah, be interesting to see if Apple saw that. Nano SIM, whatever. It's a little tiny SIM. I've already ordered it. I'm sure it's going to be the worst. Yeah, no, I was going to ask you about that. You ordered you took the plunge. Are you fearful for what your experience is going to be like with that adapter on Friday? I am. Now, I think it was CNET Asia put up a story where they took a micro SIM and like shaved it down to what they think the size of the nano SIM is. And it still worked. And they were able to get it to continue to work on a C1 X. And so I'm assuming it'll be OK. I hope it will. I still want to be able to switch phones. It's one of the main reasons I stuck with AT&T. But if it's not, I mean, you know, there's worse things in the world than being stuck on an iPhone five. Yeah, I've always had problems with I mean, you know, the problem with these adapters is that there's no way to lock a SIM into the adapter. So like, you know, I use I use an adapter on a micro SIM in the galaxy Nexus, for instance. And it's it's a it's a slide in tray type. And when you're when you're pulling it back out, what happens sometimes is that the micro SIM will kind of start to fall below the adapter a little bit and then it'll catch on either a pin or the indentation where the actual contacts are and then it gets stuck. And then you're sitting there trying to pull down and it takes 10 minutes. And I'm assuming those kinds of problems are only going to get worse with the nano SIMs because it's a physically smaller thing. You basically need carny hands to deal with these things. So we'll see. I'm I'm I'm hopeful that this is going to be manageable. But I suspect you're going to hear a lot of horror stories over the next few weeks of people trimming their micro SIMs or their standard SIMs down to nano SIM size and, you know, breaking the SIM or doing something to the contacts where it shorts them or, you know, because you're you're you're if I'm not mistaken, you're physically cutting into the contact pad in order to get it down to nano nano SIM size. Oh, I'm not cutting down a SIM. That's that's great. No, you are right. I'm going to activate the phone and then hopefully I'll be able to put it in an adapter and size up from there. I would write I have zero desire to tell anybody that it's a good idea to try and file down a SIM to nano SIM size. I think that is a recipe for pain. Yeah, especially since you with the iPhone five, it's going to have to try. You're going to have to get it to to match in that tray perfectly. And and like Chris was saying, the contacts footprint on a micro SIM is like the whole size of the nano SIM itself. So you're definitely cutting it close, I guess you could say, with the contacts. Okay, we got to talk about what's left for hardware, the lightning dock connector, all new connector. It works. You know, it's reversible. It's all digital. And so that's why the adapter to the old dock adapter is so expensive, because they actually have to have a digital to audio converter in there. The feature that you lose is some of these iPod out features, which to be clear, is just like mirroring display, like a BMW car or something, but it'll still work with audio docks with this big giant adapter. And look, why does Apple think it's too good for USB? I don't know. And it drives me absolutely nuts. Like, I mean, people complain about the micro USB connector, but really, it's not a bad connector. It's hard to damage. It's ubiquitous. It's pretty straightforward to use, like, you have to really be trying too hard in order to put it in upside down. I'll tell you exactly what Apple's problem is with micro USB. It's the fact that made for iPod is an extraordinary, and made for iPhone is an extraordinarily lucrative seal of approval for Apple that it charges accessory makers extraordinary amounts of money to use. And if they switch to micro USB, that only incentivizes companies to skirt the made for iPad or excuse me, made for iPhone seal and go rogue. And as it stands, these companies are going to have to license the lightning port, the connector, which is, I mean, that all adds up to dollar signs for Apple. That's exactly what's going on. It's still frustrating. I mean, they're going to have new features that are capable that unless you do something crazy to extend the micro USB standard, like audio out and video out and I mean, whatever else, I suppose. But you know, whatever. I don't know. I'm pretty bitter about this. I just, you know, it's like there's Apple exceptionalism for making money. And if you can make the case that this connector is better for consumers, I haven't seen it. This does not seem like it's better for consumers than just going to micro USB. Right. I mean, I think you could have made that argument with the 30 pin connector nine years ago because micro USB wasn't around. Mini USB might not have even really been around all that much. So there wasn't a lot of great connectivity options and that kind of gave a standard connector that did a whole heck of a lot for the iPod at the time. But today it's a different story and they're making a connector that to the lay person looks like a micro USB connector. I think the average person will look at the port on an iPhone five and be like, oh, it's the same plug as my Galaxy S3 or whatever it is just because it looks almost the same. It's almost the same size physically. So you know, it's a little, I mean, Chris has probably nailed it right on the head for the reason why, but it's just like you said, Dieter, not exactly consumer friendly. Now I wonder how many stories you're going to hear of iPhone five owners coming into genius bars with micro USB cables jammed into the lightning port. It's got to be just a little bit bigger than the micro USB plug so it just won't cram in there. It'll just fall out. You would hope. You would hope. They're at least that smart. I don't know. And are they selling the micro USB to nine pin dock connector adapter in the US or is it still only the UK? I believe it's only the UK. I haven't heard that it's in the US. The only reason they're selling it in the UK or in the EU is to meet with regulations that require the compatibility. And that doesn't exist here in the US. So Apple's not offering it. And I mean, those relations are good. They should have, you know, out anyway. But the other thing is I ordered a cable. Go ahead. I was just going to say, to be clear, they aren't they aren't laws. They are a number of OEMs agreed to these principles several years ago and Apple is just adhering to them. But I don't think that there are any actual EU laws that would prevent prevent them from selling the iPhone in EU countries if they weren't adhering to them. I think that they're just they're doing it voluntarily. I don't know why, because they're really half-assing it. So the other thing that really bothers me with lightning and we were kind of talking about this in our chat room yesterday is the fact that it doesn't support USB 3.0 out of the box. It supports USB 2.0 even though all of Apple's, you know, 2012 laptops have USB 3.0 ports. Plenty of Windows laptops have USB 3.0 ports and USB 3.0 is fully backwards compatible with USB 2.0. So if Apple's forcing us to use a cable to do a lot of heavy syncing and interface with iTunes, why can't it be USB 3.0? That's a good point. It drives me nuts. There's no good answer to that question. Not one that I'm happy with. So Sean Hollister put up a really good report about the new connector and what it means for accessory makers and just accessories in general. My personal complaint is like, I ordered an extra cable and it's not ready to ship right away. So I'm going to be down to just one cable to charge my phone and I'm not comfortable with that. I carry literally like four micro USB cables in my bag all the time because I know I'm going to lose them. Deeter, Deeter, this is very easy. Just buy two iPhone 5s, take the cable out of one and put the phone away. But no, this article made a really good point. The big accessory makers, they're excited about this. As long as Apple lets them make new accessories, they get to crank out new accessories and sell more stuff. That's really exciting. But it's a problem for this trend of smaller companies and guys launching products on Kickstarter where they had gone through this whole plan with the original dock connector and now they just don't have the resources to go back from scratch quickly and easily. But the Belkins of the world, they're super pumped about this. They're going to be able to sell you all new stuff. It is interesting though, if you go in and read Sean's report, it's interesting to hear basically all the big guys, Jawbone, Belkin, and there was another one, Logitech maybe, that he talked to. And all of them sort of hinted at the fact that the dock connectors' days are numbered. Eventually, everything is just going to be wireless whether you like it or not. And so, yes, in the short term, they do get to profit by turning around all these new dock devices with lightning connectors. But in the long term, they think that it's just all going to be this wireless ecosystem. Of course, one of the advantages of these dock devices is that they charge your phone while you're playing music or whatnot. And you'll lose that advantage once you go completely wireless. Maybe by then we'll have wireless charging too, over-the-air wireless charging, which has long been a dream of the industry. How horrendously ugly and bulky are the first generation of battery packs going to be for this thing? You remember in the early days of the iPhone battery packs, they were super thick on the bottom because people hadn't figured out how to minimize the amount of extra plastic they had to have next to the dock connector? They're going to have to start that whole process over again. They're going to have to leave space for the headphone jack in addition to the microphone and the speakers. I mean, they're just going to be the worst. They're going to be terrible. And I mean, not to belabor this because I'm not really surprised, but Apple chose not to go with wireless charging. And they also chose not to put NFC on there. And it's funny. I don't know about the wireless charging because I do find that really convenient. But the NFC thing, I'm kind of on their side. I feel like if it's not there, it's not there. And Apple's not going to try and force it. And I'm totally OK with that decision. I'm going to challenge you on the wireless charging thing because wireless charging, to me, is one of those features that sounds really cool and you really think that you want it. But then once you have it, you're like, well, it only works on this one pad, which I would be running a micro USB cable to anyway. So what is actually the advantage of having it? So the extra three seconds of my life every day when I just go and set my phone down on the charger instead of reaching for a cable and plugging it in. So the convenience of getting in my car and just setting it on, at least with the web OS days, the magnetic charger, you just set it on your dash and you're done. It sounds really stupid, but it is really convenient. It's really nice. And if they had enabled wireless charging and they had stuck to the G standard like Nokia did, then I wouldn't be looking at this hellstorm of having only one cable for the next however long and losing it and not being able to charge my phone at all. I'd at least be able to use the wireless charging. Fair enough. Yeah, I think you brought up all the points that I had intended to say. Because I remember with my pre, I stuck one of the touchstone things to the dash of my car at the time and I just would get in my car and plop my pre right on there. And it was like the most convenient thing ever. And if a notification came in, I could see it quickly and easily and it was charging up. It was fantastic. I don't think wireless charging is the answer for everything because if you want to use your phone while it's charging, it's really inconvenient while it's sitting on a wireless charging dock. But just having the option there would be nice. Also does anyone know what the maximum current is for Qi? Ooh, that I don't know. And that's actually one of the things I'm curious about, about what the current is going to be on this connector. If it'll be 2.1 or whatever the different amperages are. Yeah, the problem, I mean I have this problem with basically every modern smartphone now where the phone just in an idle state or certainly when you're using it is drawing enough power so that plugging it into a micro USB cable just barely keeps up with it. Like it doesn't really charge, it just keeps the battery level stable. Or maybe it's very, very slow. Yeah, or if you're tethering, you're just watching it slowly die. Or if you're using GPS services in your car and it just can't keep up with it. Right. And that problem's only going to get worse. And we've heard, in fact, I think we talked about it on the show before, there is an addendum to the USB 3 specification that increases the maximum current. But that's still, I don't even think it's approved yet. I don't have anything else to say about the hardware now that I've gotten my little rants out. Despite everything I've complained about with this connector, I still am actually pretty excited for the hardware. I think it's going to be impressive and I'm going to feel really good in my pocket. And I'm even excited about the, what's the phrase, the chamfered edges, the bezels that they made that angled instead of straight across. I think that'll feel nicer too. The sandwich look is gone. So it's a smoother look, I guess you could say. So we talked a little bit about AT&T and Verizon, but Chris, you put together a report about our LTE network's going to suddenly start sucking now that we're going to have all these iPhones on them. Can you tell us that I screw up by staying with AT&T? We'll find out. There's only one way to know for sure. And that's to see what happens over the course of the next few weeks. So I think I've talked about it before. I've noticed that AT&T's network has gotten noticeably slower since the Galaxy S3 launched. And I don't think it's any coincidence that I see Galaxy S3s on the street nonstop. I think that it's been an enormously successful phone for AT&T and Verizon and all the carriers that it's launched on. So you take that level of success, multiply it by two or three or four, and do it all over again. And that begs the obvious question, are the LTE networks going to be able to survive in their current configurations? We talked to an AT&T spokesman about it. And he emphasized the fact that they've learned lessons since the HSPA days. And they're implementing new technologies like small cells and self-optimizing networks that account for that sort of heavy usage. But at the end of the day, your physical limit, your ultimate limit is the fact that you have a certain amount of spectrum available. And if you run out of spectrum and if everybody's trying to tweet at the same time, you're going to run into problems. So we just don't- Really tweeting is going to be the problem? Tweeting will bring LTE networks to their knees. My point remains the same though. We'll have to see. The new Twitter app is really inefficient. It's not just limited to 140 characters. Every single one of those characters is a megabyte. And so when you send a tweet out, it takes up a huge chunk of your data. Every character is an emoji icon. I would not doubt it. The way Twitter is going. So yeah, we'll have to see what happens. But if it does bring the networks to their knees, that is a very, very damning conclusion and a damning statement about the state of wireless in the US. So we all have to collectively hope that these networks stay operational and that there's fast enough to actually use. So Chris, I got to ask you, which of the networks do you think is going to be the least hit by the iPhone? I have my own theory. I know the answer. I know the answer. I got it. In the US, you want to know what the answer is? Sprint. T-Mobile. Sprint. T-Mobile. T-Mobile. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you have to look at... To answer that question, you need to look at what carriers are shouting from the highest hilltops that they're still offering unlimited data. And the reason they're doing that is because their networks are underutilized and over-engineered. And so, yeah, those are T-Mobile and Sprint. That also means, of course, that if those networks rapidly load up for whatever reason, then they're probably at greater risk of ultimate failure. That's just... And I'm not saying that out of any knowledge that I have. I just have to assume that would be the case. So but yeah, I do agree. It's going to be either T-Mobile or Sprint that's in the best position. Also that question is you have to take it on a market-by-market basis. I'll give you a prime example. AT&T only has 5 megahertz up and down Ford's LTE network in Chicago, whereas in most markets, it has 10 by 10. So Chicago is more likely to have major LTE problems on AT&T brought about by the launch of the iPhone 5 than, say, Dallas. You know, Chris, we need to move you to Atlanta or Memphis or Seattle, any other city other than Chicago, because you and the depth of knowledge that you have about AT&T's network failures in Chicago is second to none. We really need to spread that knowledge around. We need to embed you in other cities so that you can complain about their wireless just like you do about Chicago. Well, Seattle still does not have AT&T LTE. They're supposed to launch soon, but I think that they are – if you look at the major cities in the US that haven't launched with AT&T LTE yet, Seattle is probably the biggest at this point, and I do get complaints almost weekly from people saying, why the heck don't we have LTE yet? It's a great question because AT&T has a big smartphone office in Seattle. Of course, Microsoft is there. You would just think that it would behoove AT&T to launch LTE there as quickly as possible. Right. Well, okay. We've got to start talking about other stuff. By other stuff, I mean other iPhone stuff. Let's talk about iOS 6. I guess – I mean, there's a bunch of little things, but they showed off everything, and it was all the same stuff that we'd seen before. I mean, genuinely, the only new feature that we hadn't already seen from WWDC that I can think of is that it has a different aspect ratio. We have another great report from Ellis, right? Yeah, about what app developers think. What kills me about this – okay, they're going to letterbox apps. That's fine. But most of the developers that he spoke to were like, yeah, we figured this was coming, and it's not like the end of the world. What blows my mind is we have spent the past five years hearing this cudgel about fragmentation based on screen size and what a huge problem it is for Android developers to have to target all these different screen sizes. My feeling has always been that the screen size difference wasn't the real problem here. It was other fragmentation issues. The fact that most of these developers have responded to this with kind of a collective shrug – it doesn't surprise me, and it shouldn't surprise anybody. It's just so funny that we've spent so much of our collective psychic angst about the screen size was wasted when really I think at the end of the day it's not that big of a deal. That was a lot of preamble for me to say shrug, but there you go. Well so I have a few thoughts on this. First off, I think that the letterboxing is – correct me if I'm wrong, I think that the apps appear in the middle. Is that right? Yeah, you're going to get black bars on the top and bottom if you're holding in a portrait or left and right if you're holding in landscape. So the app should appear at the bottom, not in the middle. And that's so that you're maintaining the relationship between the thumb of the user's dominant hand and the bottom of the application. And that is the most UI forward thing that I think I've ever said in my life. On a letterbox app, if the software keyboard pops up above the letterbox and not from the bottom of the screen, that will drive me completely insane. Yeah, that'll be pretty nuts. Because this is one of the things that really bothered me about the original implementation of Android 4 on the HTC One X with that big black menu bar. I mean I wasn't that angry about losing those pixels, but what I was angry about was that the keyboard wouldn't be in the exact same spot on the screen every time you'd open it up. It would be above the menu and sometimes it would be flush to the bottom of the screen. And so I really hope that when you pop open the keyboard on these letterbox apps that it'll be flush to the bottom of the screen. Right, right. But I also think that Apple's expectation is that, and I think it's a very fair expectation, is that the developers of any apps that matter in the App Store are going to be updated to support the new resolution very quickly. In fact, the major guys have probably spent the past... Yeah, we've already seen some updates, to be honest with you, that are iOS 6 and iPhone 5 compatible. I think 3.5 just updated today, actually. Right. Yeah, and that's just going to continue and it's going to happen very fast. So you'll just have this, you know, you'll have the long tail of apps that are abandonware and things that are sort of longer cycle apps that I'm sure will be a problem for the next year. But those aren't really Apple's concern. It's the major apps and those are just going to get refreshed very, very fast. So the rest of iOS 6, I mean, it's coming out on the 19th for other phones, which is tomorrow if you're listening to this live or today if you're listening to it today it's released or last week if you're just catching up on Verge Mobile Show podcasts, which really you should be listening to these the moment they're out. I mean, I don't know. So the story went around the day of the event and I put up a piece the day after. There's this idea that iOS 6 is boring. And I mean, the truth is it's a little boring. There's not anything here other than maps, which we got to talk about maps, oh my God, that is completely wildly different than iOS 5. And Apple always iterates small bits OS to OS on these updates, but there's usually one big tentpole feature that you can be like, this is the thing that changes the way you use your phone. And the thing that changes the way you use your phone in iOS 6 is an app. And as great as iOS is, and I think it's great, I really do. It's not a location OS. It does a better job of providing location services to third party developers. But for most consumers, mapping and navigation is an app. It's not a core OS experience. And so I mean, that's why we went with this angle that it's always 73 degrees and sunny on the iPhone's home screen. Because it hasn't changed, and that's OK for a lot of people. But on the other hand, there's a sense of forward moving innovation and thinking about the future of computing that Apple hasn't changed their vision for years and years on it. And that seems a little bit, I'm not freaking out. I'm not troubled. But I don't know. I feel like I say it every year, like, man, next version, they got to really shake it up because this is the same. Like, we're just saying it again with iOS 6, like we said with iOS 5. You know, Neelai said something very interesting the other day. And I think that I agree with him, which is that iOS 6 feels like Lion. It's sort of this weird hodgepodge of features that nobody necessarily asked for. And there is no single compelling, you know, there's no must have feature that sets it apart. And I do think, like looking at the holistic picture of the iPhone 5, I do think that the story is about the hardware on balance, not about iOS 6. And but to your point, Dieter, I think that we might be in for a long haul here. Like if you look at OS X, you go back over the past decade, how much has the platform really changed? Go back and look at screenshots from, you know, 10.0, 10.1. You know, this might just be the UX that Apple has settled on and they're going to continue to put Chrome on it until it's impossibly stale. And I don't even know if Apple has a game plan for OS X, much less iOS at this point. Yeah, I mean, if you were to dump into like, you know, OS X 10.0 or whatever, you wouldn't feel terribly, you wouldn't feel like you're in a different world, even if you've been using Mountain Lion for the past few months. Whereas, you know, other platforms, if you were to jump back 10 years, it definitely feels like a different operating system. Right. And Windows 8 is the perfect example of that. Right. Like Windows 8 is like a clean, I mean, you still have the desktop mode, right. But if you look at the UX that Microsoft is pushing for Windows 8, it is a clean break from everything you know about Windows. And that's something that, I mean, Apple is eventually going to have to cross that, you know, that very scary gap. And I think that the problem, I was on Twitter the other day, I think the problem for companies like Apple and Nokia and RIM and Microsoft, they've all had this problem where at some point, even in the face of overwhelming success, they need to feel this invisible inflection point where they need to make a clean break and find the next big thing. And it becomes almost impossibly difficult to do that when you're experiencing this massive overwhelming success like Apple is doing right now. Yeah, well, the way I put this is the faster you go, the harder it is to turn. They're going really fast right now. They're selling a ton of phones. Right. Right. So I don't think any of us can reasonably say when that point is going to come for them. What, you know, when do they need to make that clean break? I don't think anybody really knows. Are they planning for that clean break at this point? I don't think anybody knows. But, yeah, in the meantime, they're selling just bucket loads of iPhones. Yeah. OK. So let's, I mean, so, I mean, you know, FaceTime works over 3G or 4G. That's great. Except unless you're on AT&T and don't want to switch plans. Siri's got sports scores. Mail has this thing called VIP where you can have, you know, emails from certain people give you different notifications. A feature that was introduced on Windows Mobile. You can reply to a text from a missed phone call. The feature that was introduced on Windows Mobile. There's I'm just saying, man, there's shared photo streams. That's like, I don't know, interesting. But it's like this weird, like not quite a social network kind of, I don't know, it's weird. But the thing I'm working up to, like the big change is maps. Maps all Apple. It's all new. They've kicked Google to the curb. And from everything that I've seen, like it looks very pretty and it seems run pretty well in their flyover feature. It's not as useful to me as Street View, but it is pretty cool. And there is turn by turn navigation, which is really important. And you know, you don't have to keep hunting for third party apps that have weird subscription models and blah, blah, blah. The third party navigation apps on iOS, I've never been fond of at all, especially compared to Android. So you get all that and all the third party apps should still work fine and everything should be great. Unless you live in a city and you need to use public transit. Right. Yeah, that seems to be the big divide between iOS 6. We'll have to see how it plays out, or maps I should say in iOS 6. We'll have to see how it plays out. But like there's a lot of features that say someone who lives in a rural or suburban area would really appreciate that turn by turn navigation that a lot of, I think a lot of users have been wanting on iOS since Android introduced it a few years ago. But at the flip side, there's the urban user who might rely on those transit directions that are going to be no longer available directly and you'll have to go to a third party app option. Yeah. Yeah, this feels like change that was driven solely on political and, you know, a snap political decisions between Apple and Google and not any desire to actually improve the user experience. Because, you know, I don't think there's anything, I mean you can make some arguments about the flyover mode, but there is nothing with actual material benefit to the user in iOS 6 maps. Not to say that Apple's version of Google Maps was very good either, right? Google Maps had essentially remained unchanged in iOS since the start. And Google Maps on Android has lapped that product several times over. So I think that, you know, if you're upgrading from iOS 5 to 6, that jump is probably less of a shock to the system than if you're moving from an Android device to iOS 6. Unless you need transit directions. Right. Unless you need transit directions. Which I'm totally dependent on, by the way. The other thing is that, you know, that these new map features that are the headline features, Apple says won't be coming to the older devices. So if you are on an iPhone 4 or an older iPod touch or an older iPad, you won't get the turn-by-turn navigation and you won't get the 3D flyover. So especially for iPhone 4 users, this really feels like they're losing features more than they're gaining anything. You know, we'll have to see how the final product is and once we run some tests on it and see how well it performs. But at least if you're an iPhone 4S or an iPhone 5 user, you gain that turn-by-turn feature. If you're losing the transit directions, you're gaining the turn-by-turn features. So it can be kind of like a net zero. Whereas on the iPhone 4, you lose the transit directions and you don't gain the turn-by-turn feature. Yeah. Right. You guys think that Google's going to go all out and release a new app for iOS, Maps app? I think they did a really good job with the YouTube app and their Google Plus app is good. They've figured out how to code decent native iOS apps. Except for the Gmail app. Yeah. Every other Google app is great. Except for the Gmail app. So I would hope that they do release a Maps app, a Google Maps app. But I hope that the team that built the YouTube app and the Google Plus app work on it and not the team that built the Gmail app. See, I really like, I'm a big fan of conspiracy theories and I really like the notion that Google goes out of its way to either A, make iOS apps crappy or B, nerf them in some tragic way. And of course, to your point, Dan, the Gmail app is absolutely terrible. The Chrome app for iOS of course is still built on Safari. It's not actually using- Well, that's not- But the important Chrome features are there. You get the syncing, you get the Omnibox, you get the cool tab management. So that's like the only thing that's really different when you jump from iOS to Android in Chrome is the rendering engine behind it. Like the experience feels the same. Google can't put the Chrome rendering engine on iOS. Right. They just can't. Yeah, no, you're right. They can't. But the fact remains, I just want to have my fantasy world where I think that Google is trying to nerf iOS products. Specifically Gmail. Yeah. Which I mean, theoretically that's what they bought Sparrow for, but that remains to be seen. We don't know how that's going to play out yet. Yeah. Hopefully it plays out fast. Well, one of the other nerfed, if you will, if I can steal your term, Chris, iOS apps from Google recently was the Drive app, which was virtually useless when it came out because it was just a viewer and you couldn't create new files and you couldn't upload anything. But that recently got updated with the ability to create files and to upload files and stuff like that. So that got unnerfed, I guess. So hopefully Google can do the same with the Gmail app. And hopefully if Google does decide to release a Google Maps app, it's good from the beginning. Yeah. Are we done talking about the iPhone 5? That's awesome. Well, we can talk about pricing. Yeah. OK. So the iPhone 4S is down to 99 bucks on contract. The iPhone 4 is free and the 3GS is finally at long last gone, which took forever. So I think we stuck around for so long. Well, I mean, nowadays the iPhone 4 is the same age as the 3GS was when it was moved to the free price point. But I think we talked about this a little bit last week. And having an iPhone 4 class device at free is kind of a wild thing to think about. I mean, the iPhone 4 in 2010 was introduced a crazy display that we had not seen before. Great hardware, obviously, and a really solid camera. And now you can get that for free on contract. And if you compare it to the other phones that are available for free on contract, it's like not even a contest. Yeah. Not even close. Even though it's two and a half years old, it's still not even a contest. Right. Now, Apple, I have to say, Apple has figured out how to create a range of products. And that's just to take its amazing, excellent old products and keep them on the market and continue to lower the prices. And I think that the brand strength of the iPhone name carries all these products more or less equally so that you don't have these random names for the low end products. It's a beautiful model. And it's obviously working extremely well for them. However, I do think that they would have been very well served. And the world would have been well served if they had continued to sell the 3GS as just a dirt cheap prepaid device, both in the US and abroad. And you imagine if you could get the 3GS for, say, $79 or $99 contract free, it would still be a great product even now as a prepaid phone. Right. That would be the go to unlocked roaming phone to bring with you if you travel to Europe or whatever. Right. Well, the march of progress continues. The iPhone is coming on Friday. But tomorrow, the 19th, no, the day after tomorrow, no, tomorrow, there's going to be an HTC event. We're expecting Windows Phone 8 devices, I think, from them. There's the Zenith, the Accord, and the Rio. There's also been this 5-inch Android phone that's been floating around. And I mean, I hope, I mean, we've talked about this a lot, that the One Series and the One X in particular hasn't helped revitalize HTC much. And so I'm hoping that whatever they're bringing to the table here will be awesome, first of all, but will get serious support from carriers or partners, either Google or Microsoft, depending on what it is they're announcing. Because I would hate to see HTC just fade into irrelevance. I don't think that they deserve that as a company. Yeah. So, you know, we've seen a few leaks from this Windows Phone lineup from HTC. And they, I mean, it's hard to get a sense, it's really hard to get a sense without actually seeing the devices in person and being at the event or whatnot to feel out how they actually compare to what Nokia has on offer for Windows Phone 8. And so, you know, I don't feel comfortable really making any sort of definitive comment on these things. But in general, I do feel more bullish. And again, I know I say this with every new release of Windows Phone, but I feel more bullish about the hardware and the software going into this release than ever before. It's just a question of whether, you know, they get that, like you said, Dieter, you know, they need the carrier support. They need to get their story straight with updates and upgrades going forward. They just need to present. I mean, you know, iPhone just keeps getting stronger and stronger. And you know, if they want to compete in that end of the market, they just need to deliver an extremely powerful message going into the holiday season. So hopefully, I mean, I think that what the current rumors are tracking for an early November launch, right, for most of these Windows Phone 8 devices, including the 920. I don't know. You know, so we've held, you know, I think that all three of us have held the 920. And it is a very beefy and heavy phone. That I think is already a strike against it for people, for anyone who's considering. If you walk into, say, an AT&T store and you want to compare a 920 to an iPhone 5, that's already a pretty powerful strike against it. But it does have the color range going for it. And I think that the Windows Phone 8 home screen just looks really cool. I like the fact that you've got these multiple box sizes going on now. And yeah, I mean, we'll see. I'm definitely going to, there's no question about it that I'm going to own and use a Windows Phone 8 device of some sort for some period of time. I don't know if that's going to be one of these HTCs or a 920 or what. But I said that with the 900 and I did. I used it for several weeks. And like I said before, the Achilles heel, what ultimately killed it for me was the lack of any sort of reasonable Gmail support. So we'll see if, I mean, seriously, all Google needs to do is enable its iOS web view on mobile IE 10. That is all they need to do. And my prayers will be answered. So we'll see if they can pull that off or if Google feels the need to pull that off. I don't know. I think that's a junky fix if you ask me, because you still have to go to the web view to deal with your email. Yeah. So you don't get proper notifications, but you kind of do. So here's what I always do on iOS, which is, this was before the sparrow days. But what I would do is I'd set up an exchange account pointing to my Gmail. So I'd still get notifications. And then I would replace mail in the fixed bar of icons at the bottom with a web icon pointing to the mobile Gmail view. So that in between the two, I kind of made it work. And that's what I, theoretically, if mobile Gmail worked properly on Windows Phone, that's what I would do on Windows Phone. But you get the WAP view, which is completely worthless. So we either need something that is the equivalent of sparrow for Windows Phone, or we need Google to fix the web, at the very least, the minimum effort fix is for Google to fix the web view. But we need something. Because the mail client, I mean, I get that it's great for like pop email or whatever. It does not work well when you have something as rich and advanced as Gmail is, especially if you actually put the time and effort into organizing it the way that you can do if you take advantage of all the features. I use priority inbox. I use labels of the wazoo. And it's just it's completely unmanageable with a standard email client. Yeah, I agree. The standard email client looks really great. And it's fun to use, at least on Windows 7.5, it was. And it was very fast. But it really lacked the robust Gmail support that you'd be looking for. Yeah. So I think the last thing I want to talk about today is this insane thing that happened with Acer. They were going to launch a phone based on the Alleyoon OS. Am I even pronouncing that right? And so they had like reporters going to this event. And they just canceled it. And they're like, Google says we can't do this. So we're not going to do it. And like, what the heck happened? And so then Google comes out and says, yeah, no, we said they can't do it. They can't launch this phone because it's based on Android. And then the guys behind Alleyoon are like, no, it's not based on Android. And there's been this back and forth between Andy Rubin and the guys behind this Alleyoon OS about whether or not it's a fork of Android. And whether or not Acer is allowed to launch a phone based on it. And if they do, that Google would kick them out and stop giving them support of Google apps and kick them out of the open handset alliance. It's a really weird story. Yeah. So I think the damning, I think that the nail in the coffin of Acer's story here was when Rubin, I think it was Rubin who pointed out that Alleyoon's app store has pirated versions of Google apps in it. Google Android apps. So I mean, like, come on. What's your defense at that point? I mean, theoretically, I guess you could build a platform that is binary compatible with Android. But first of all, odds are you didn't. And second of all, that doesn't change the fact that you have these pirated apps chilling in your app store. So. Right. Yeah. So I mean, the story from Alleyoon is that they built this thing that they're not using the Dalvik engine, which is the engine that runs a bunch of Android apps. They're using their own custom thing that mirrors its functionality, which is ironic because Dalvik's whole point was to do the same thing to Java, right? Yeah. Anyway, Google saying, no, that's not true. You're actually using our technology somewhere in here. This is technically a fork. And as a member of the Open Handset Alliance, Acer has agreed not to launch stuff that is based on Android but not Android compatible. What's funny about that is Amazon's totally free to do that. It's just not part of the Open Handset Alliance. So there's been a lot of joke running around about, oh, so ha ha ha, Google's not so open anymore. Ha ha ha. And I don't know how I feel about that. Part of me wants to be sympathetic to this hating on Google for being evil about this and limiting one of their partners and telling them what they can and can't do. But on the other hand, I guess I'm kind of happy to see the Open Handset Alliance finally actually mean something, because today, it seemed to me like it was just this PR show. And it didn't actually have any teeth, or there wasn't actually any real contributions from the other members. But this and even Sony putting its stuff into this experimental project to launch an AOSP stock Android on Sony's handsets recently, it's starting to feel a little bit more like an ecosystem and a little bit less like just Google's bag, which is a totally ironic thing to say after Google just swung the hammer at Acer. I have a different view. I think that this hammer that Google swung is something that people have been wanting Google to do for a long time. I think the way it happened was not how everybody wanted it to happen. But people have been complaining about how you pick up one Android device and it doesn't feel like another Android device. And you move to another Android device, and it's a totally different experience. And I know a lot of people just wanted Google to put its foot down and say, you can conform to these standards or you don't get Gmail. And that's kind of what happened here. Google said that Aliun is not, or Acer is not, conforming to our standards with the open handset alliance with this Aliun OS. And you can do that, but you're not going to get the open handset privileges. And I think a lot of people have been asking for Google to do that. But it just kind of went about the wrong way here. So let's be clear. I think that two years ago, there's no way that Google would have done this. They wouldn't have cared. But I think that what Amazon did to Android is something that Google never anticipated. And I think that they are more anxious than ever to keep the spirit of Android close. And we're seeing that bear out with this. I think that you put this exact story two years ago. Not Ruben, not anybody else inside Google would have cared that this was happening. But it's a different Google now, and they have different priorities and a different understanding for what they need to do to advance the platform in light of how successful Amazon was at forking Android in a meaningful way and went on to build successful products on top of it. I don't think that Ruben ever anticipated that happening with Android. You know the other thing about this that rubs people the wrong way, and I think rightly so, is that it was Acer. It feels like picking on the little guy. If Samsung had gotten to the point where they were launching an OS that claimed to have Android compatibility, do you really think that Google would have done this to Samsung? The answer is no. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. But I mean, it's also like I'm sure that there just wasn't proper communication between Acer and Google in the first place earlier on in this process. But I take your point about Amazon and what it's done with the Kindle Fire. I think Google has finally drawn a line of this is where Android compatibility has to be. The question now is are they going to move that line to try and create more consistency across different manufacturers, or is this where this line is going to stay? Right, right. I mean, we know there's still that Wall Street Journal rumor from several months ago hanging over our heads that we haven't heard a peep about ever since about there being a line of Nexus phones supposedly announced right about now. I'm expecting this to happen anytime now if the rumor actually comes to fruition. So if Google wants to expand the meaning of Nexus into something that's truly useful to consumers, that gives them more leeway to kind of ignore the rest of the noise. But if they don't do that, if they continue with the existing Nexus model, which isn't very commercially successful in any meaningful way, then yeah, then they might need to say, okay, well, we need to rein in all of our OEMs and sort of create more consistency across the entire Android range, which might actually be the more desirable. As much as I would like to have a selection of Nexus phones to choose from that are true Nexus devices, at the end of the day, it might be more meaningful for Google to put more, you know, to exert more control over their main OEM partners. It's actually not a bad note to end on. Now that the iPhone rumors have wrapped up and we actually know what the iPhone 5 looks like definitively, it's time for us to get some sweet, sweet brand new Nexus action, whether it's these multiple devices or just a brand new Nexus device from whoever it's going to be. There's still no option of me to get stock Nexus, stock Android on AT&T with LTE without hacking and I'm tired of that. I'm tired of that situation. I'm tired of the flagship Android Nexus phone being on boring, crappy hardware with a terrible screen and even worse camera. I'm ready for a really good Nexus phone. Yeah. And it's, I mean, the Galaxy Nexus wasn't the most cutting edge phone when it was released and at this point it's pretty long in the tooth. Yeah. Well, everybody, thank you so much for watching the Verge Mobile Show. If you want to follow us, you can comment on this post when it goes up. You can follow us on Twitter as well. We are all at Verge. I am at Backlund. Dan is at DC. Seferc, Chris is at ZPower. Vlad, who you will hopefully see next week, is at Vlad Savov. And like I just said, we'll be back next week. So tune in then. Thanks. That's good.ável. Alright.
 So, the Verge Mobile Show is kind of like an iPhone launch.
 You wait for it, you wait for it, you're so excited, and then it finally comes!
 And it's pretty much what you expected, but you know, maybe that's not so bad, because
 it's also everything that you hoped for.
 Stay tuned for the Verge Mobile Show.
 Hi I'm Dieter Bohm.
 I'm Dan Seifert.
 I'm Chris Ziegler.
 And this is episode 17 for the week of September 17th, 2012 of the Verge Mobile Show.
 It's our golden Verge Mobile Show.
 Golden?
 Yeah, what makes it golden?
 Isn't that like your golden birthday is like when the birthday falls on the day of your
 age?
 I thought golden would be like the 50th show or something.
 I think gold is like the 30th.
 50th is diamond platinum.
 I'm looking it up now.
 Hold on.
 Wait, everybody hang on.
 Yeah, no, 50 is golden.
 50 is golden.
 There's a pony boy joke here, but I'm not gonna reach for it.
 This is our crystal, no, our 15th show is our crystal show, and our 20th show will be
 our China show.
 Nice.
 Yeah, 25th will be our silver show.
 Anyway.
 So if you notice, Vlad Savov is not with us today, unfortunately.
 Yeah, he is at Photo Kina taking amazing pictures of cameras that also take amazing pictures.
 Very meta at Photo Kina.
 Very jealous, to be honest with you.
 They've actually done a really excellent...
 If you haven't seen the coverage, there's a stream explaining all the stuff that's happened
 at Photo Kina.
 And I'm not a camera nerd, but they've done a really good job of making all this camera
 news accessible and understandable.
 So I can actually read through the stream, read our stories, and not feel like I'm an
 idiot, which is what most camera coverage makes me feel like.
 When I go to DP review, it just makes me feel dumb.
 Can I just say that I am in the process of eBaying both my kidneys and selling a large
 amount of cocaine for a Leica M. I will do a wide variety of legal things for a Leica
 M. I had the opportunity to use an M9 for a couple of weeks a couple of years ago, and
 I was just...
 It's a really hard thing to explain in specs because it doesn't compare very favorably
 to anything.
 But there's something about the experience of using a Leica that is just extremely appealing,
 and it is hard to describe.
 You just got to use it, and then you understand why people pay upwards of $10,000 or $15,000
 for Leica bodies and lenses.
 Indeed.
 That has nothing to do with phones, though.
 So here's the thing.
 There was a big iPhone event last week, and it's dominated the mobile news, and we're
 going to talk about the iPhone for, I think it's fair to say, a very long time.
 We have a lot of thoughts and feelings and things to say about the iPhone.
 There's a lot of details to dig into and just a lot of stuff to say.
 And so if you're here looking for us to talk about the fact that there is an orange version
 of the Lumia 820 but not of the 920 and how angry that makes me, that rant is going to
 have to wait until next week.
 Is that a direct shot at me, Dieter?
 Because that felt like you were aiming that at me.
 No.
 They're making an orange version of the 820 but not of the 920, and it drives me crazy.
 I guess we should also mention that Nokia showed—we got to get into the iPhone stuff—anyway,
 that Nokia showed literally a quarter of a second blip of a cyan Lumia 920.
 It was one frame.
 It was one frame.
 Yeah.
 So I have a theory about this.
 I have a theory about this.
 I'm sorry to derail the conversation already, but actually it's not my theory.
 This was going around on Twitter.
 Apparently a previous version of the video that had been uploaded by Nokia showed more
 of that cyan phone.
 And so I think what happened was they realized their mistake and attempted to trim it out
 and missed that one frame.
 How do you miss a frame in the middle of a shot?
 That's ridiculous.
 I don't know.
 I don't know.
 Who knows what sort of weird editing tools they're using, but I think that's what happened.
 I love that we're like, we're not going to talk about anything but the iPhone, and we
 immediately start talking about the Lumia.
 I would personally be totally fine with a 90-minute show about Nokia phone colors.
 I could do that every week at nausea.
 The real question is what color phone would Paul Walker use if he had a Lumia phone?
 That is a supernova of all my favorite things that you're literally about to pass out just
 thinking about this topic.
 Let's talk iPhone, please.
 First things last, did you guys pre-order?
 I did.
 I did not.
 What?
 Really?
 This blew my mind when Chris told me that he did not.
 This is what happens.
 I was telling Dan this, I think last week.
 What I do, and this happens every single year and has since the second iPhone, the iPhone
 3G, what happens to me is I swear up and down that I'm not going to get an iPhone.
 I don't pre-order.
 Then the morning of the event comes and I wake up at 4 a.m. and I'm like, ah, shucks.
 I'm going to go get in line.
 Then I go get in line and I buy one.
 Happened with the 4S, happened with the 4.
 It's going to happen again with the 5S.
 We'll see what happens on Friday, but there's a very real chance that I will be standing
 in line at four in the morning.
 With the 4S, I rolled in 4S and the iPad 3, sorry, the new iPad.
 I rolled into an AT&T store for the 4S and a Verizon store for the iPad at 11 o'clock
 in the morning, just like waltzed in, zero line, bought the phone and the iPad and waltzed
 out no problem.
 I think that that's going to happen this time around.
 I don't think that there'll be no lines at the carrier stores.
 We know they pre-sold twice as many is the story.
 They broke all of their sales records.
 Well, yeah.
 This time around, you've got all the people with the iPhone 4 coming off contract or have
 been off contract waiting for the 5 where you didn't have quite as many for the 4S.
 I have a feeling there's going to be some selling out and some lines.
 Oh yeah.
 Yeah.
 Yeah, no, I pre-ordered a 32 gig black on AT&T.
 I think the black one is great.
 Copying my style.
 Hey man, I think that the fact that they painted or they brushed over, they darkened the metal
 rail around it.
 I think it looks awesome.
 Yeah.
 I'm actually super excited for this hardware, which I didn't think I would be, but I really
 am.
 I think it looks great.
 We'll see how I feel about the larger screen.
 I've been using a One X or a Galaxy S3 and a Galaxy Nexus and all these other big screen
 phones for so long that I think it's going to actually feel a little bit cramped.
 I think having a super thin phone and a reliable LTE phone, I'm actually pretty excited about
 that.
 I'm pretty excited about being able to tether off of this thing because tethering off of
 Android works for the most part, but USB tethering especially seems to be hit or miss, especially
 after Android 4.0.
 They changed their driver model a little bit.
 It's often the case that I'll plug in an Android phone and it won't show up as a USB modem
 on my Mac and it's a big hassle.
 The iPhone 5, I'm excited to go back to totally reliable USB tethering.
 Yeah.
 I feel pretty strongly... Going back to your color selection, Dieter and Dan, I feel pretty
 strongly that with this generation, white and black have flip-flopped and black is the
 chic color and white is the standard normal color.
 Do you guys agree?
 I totally agree.
 Last generation, I was all about the white model.
 I think the white model looks great.
 It's the one I owned, et cetera.
 I usually go for the white phone, but this time around, I hate to use the murdered out
 phrase, but that black really just grabbed me in that matte finish and I went black.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 Well, let's stick with talking about hardware specs here.
 Of course, we know about the larger display.
 We know about LTE and LTE bands.
 This is actually interesting.
 With the 4S, they had basically a single model with single radio setup for CDMA and GSM and
 it was basically the same thing worldwide.
 With this one, there's how many different?
 Because the Verizon and the AT&T are different and the Sprint one also, I don't know how
 that ties in.
 I believe there are three models in total.
 There's three skews, but I'm of the feeling and I know a lot of other people in the industry
 are as well that there's really only two models and the extra skew is just with certain things
 disabled and certain things enabled on the same hardware as the other model.
 You've got your AT&T LTE model, which is the A1428, I believe.
 That supports your standard HSPA plus on all of AT&T's bands, standard GSM, of course,
 and then it supports AT&T's LTE bands.
 That model will be sold in Canada.
 It works on the Canadian LTE carriers.
 After that, you've got the A1429 CDMA version, which is going to be offered by Verizon and
 Sprint, and that has compatible LTE bands for both Verizon and Sprint as well as your
 necessary CDMA cover band support and it also has HSPA plus support on the same bands as
 the AT&T model.
 You can use it globally just like you could with the 4S.
 And then the third model is the A1429 GSM model, which has all the same things as the
 Verizon and Sprint model, but it doesn't have the CDMA support, which I feel is just turned
 off because the LTE band support is pretty much the same and the other things are pretty
 much the same.
 So you've got three to choose from, the GSM A1429 is the unlocked model, I guess you could
 say that that's probably going to be offered in various parts of Europe, et cetera.
 And of course, the other global markets that support LTE.
 This is the first time in a really long time that I was tempted to switch to Verizon just
 for the global roaming, but I realized I don't actually globally roam all that often.
 So I decided to take a risk on staying with AT&T.
 So here's the thing, you'll still be able to globally roam with the AT&T model, you
 just won't be able to do it on LTE.
 So if you had gone with the Verizon model, you could roam LTE on the, when EE launches
 its LTE network, you'll be able to roam on there and you can roam on the, I think it's
 T-Mobile's running the LTE network in Germany, but you won't be able to do that with the
 AT&T model, but you will be able to roam on HSPA plus with the AT&T model.
 So.
 I'm sure that it killed Apple to have to roll multiple physical hardware devices for this
 launch because they, you know, they went from two iPhone fours down to one for the four
 S and I think that was a very purposeful move for them.
 And the LTE, you know, the completely disjoint horrible mess of a global LTE band structure
 has destroyed any hope in the near term of launching a global device with a single set
 of skews.
 So until RF engineers do some amazing things that they obviously haven't done yet.
 Yeah, it's, it's, it's kind of crazy.
 Like just, I think this, we, we saw it with the iPad, the new iPad, how there was separate
 models for AT&T and Verizon LTE, but I think it just, the iPhone five really just speaks
 to the mess of the eight LTE bands that are global and are worldwide and how in not interoperable
 they are.
 Right.
 Running down some of the other specs, the camera, like what's different that's still
 an eight megapixel camera.
 I guess they've got a Sapphire thing so it's less likely to get scratched, but they didn't
 really talk up other than the panorama mode.
 They didn't really talk up the camera a whole lot and that panorama panorama mode thing,
 like I hope it's way better than what the third party apps are that are out there because
 if it's basically the same thing that you could have done before, like don't get me
 wrong.
 The camera on the iPhone four S is best of class.
 I think it only, it only wasn't until the one X and the galaxy S three that any other
 phone even came close.
 So it's not like they needed to sprint ahead there, but it's not like, you know, if you're
 not going to want to upgrade to the five just for the camera.
 Right.
 Yeah.
 I think that, I think that all of these guys, Apple included are running up against some
 physical limits about or over what they can do with cameras with the optic, you know,
 the size of the optics that they're, that they're using.
 And that's something that you're seeing devices like the 808 overcome by just including massive
 optics, which isn't really, isn't Apple's bag.
 And I don't think that you're going to see them do that in the future.
 Right.
 Yeah.
 I mean, at this point until the same thing with LTE, until engineers create this, you
 know, crazy breakthrough that, you know, defies the laws of physics as we know them right
 now there is kind of like this, this diminishing returns we get with these, with the phone
 cameras.
 Now as far as the differences between the 4S and the five camera that Sapphire crystal
 makes it a little bit smaller.
 So that, that leads to the thinner design, which I think we're going to speak to in a
 minute.
 But it's also the cameras a bit faster and I think that's leaning on the new processor.
 So the shot to shot time is faster.
 The focusing, all that fun stuff should be faster.
 And I hope that the panoramic thing is, is I expect it to be pretty simple and pretty
 easy.
 But yeah, like you said, Dieter, I hope it's better than the third party apps.
 Yeah.
 Okay.
 So you brought up the thinness.
 I mean, we, I mean it's thinner, right?
 It's 7.6 millimeters.
 Apple kept saying it's the thinnest smartphone on the planet, which is not true, right?
 Isn't there like an arrows phone in Japan?
 That's the thin.
 Yeah.
 There's some like sharp models that are like under seven millimeters.
 Yeah.
 Yep.
 And there's that Oppo.
 And then depending on how you measure it, of course the droid razor is 7.1, but it has
 the hump at the top.
 Right.
 So it doesn't count.
 I'm just saying that flat out.
 I don't know.
 I'm excited for it to be thinner.
 It's weird.
 I never thought of the iPhone four and the four S's being like a chunk.
 I guess the other thing, go ahead.
 I am not excited for it to be thinner.
 I'm going to let you finish, but let me just say that what they should have done is kept
 it the same.
 They should have pulled the razor max trick.
 They should have kept it the exact thing.
 Do you want an iPhone max?
 No, I don't want an iPhone max.
 I want there to be one model and I want them to say it's the same thickness as the four
 S we didn't have to make it any thicker.
 But oh, by the way, you now have two fricking days of battery life.
 That's more impressive than saying it's 7.6 millimeters or whatever.
 Yeah.
 I'm really curious to see what the battery life is going to be because they, when they
 were talking about battery life specs, they basically, I think they only pointed out standby
 time, but everything else was basically the same.
 I have problems with battery life on the LTE phones I've been using so far.
 It's a real struggle to get a full day.
 With this new form factor and the new dock connector, which we've got to get to, if I
 can't get a full day out of this thing, it's going to really suck to be constantly looking
 for a charger for the iPhone.
 Right.
 So I would love to see Apple release something called with two X's in it, the iPhone max,
 like that would be life changing.
 Would be life changing.
 But I mean, seriously, like, you know, that's a trade off that I'm definitely willing to
 make and I'm really fearful that all OEMs, Apple included, are still playing this pissing
 contest where they're trying to make the phones thinner and thinner and thinner with blatant
 disregard for the fact that a phone that can make it from say seven in the morning until
 five or six p.m. is not full day battery life and it is not acceptable.
 I would say that at least once a week, possibly twice on any phone that I use, really, right?
 I'm on the Galaxy Nexus, but any phone, I'm in a situation where I'm out and my phone
 dies and there's nothing I can do about it.
 Right.
 Yeah, I totally agree with you, Chris.
 I think I think when the iPhone four design came out a couple of years ago, it was kind
 of like mind blowing thin at the time.
 And you know, I don't I've never in the two years since then or almost two and a half
 years since then, I've never felt like that design was thick or cumbersome or unwieldy
 or anything like that.
 So if they could have kept that same millimeter and added however much battery capacity that
 would afford.
 Yeah, that would have been pretty great.
 Now the other side of this.
 OK, so if they had added that battery capacity, it would have added a ton of weight.
 I mean, this thing weighs what?
 What is it?
 So it's lighter.
 Yeah.
 So it's significantly lighter.
 I think the iPhone four was like one hundred and forty one grams.
 So if they had just kept it the same weight, I would have been thrilled.
 I never I mean, the iPhone four doesn't feel like a heavy phone.
 It's not like two hundred grams.
 So I would have much rather had the extended battery life and then I won't be using a silly
 like external battery case that I end up doing from time to time with my four s because the
 battery doesn't get me through the day.
 Yeah.
 I do want to give Apple credit for bringing back the aluminum back.
 I think that looks awesome.
 And I'm not sad to see the glass back go.
 I was never happy when they switched to plastic and then, you know, moving to glass was a
 nice fix.
 But I feel like, you know, their original vision with the original iPhone was aluminum.
 Now they've finally gotten back to that.
 I'm pretty excited about that.
 I hope it feels like that's one of my problems with the the HTC One S like it's got that
 that sweet micro arc oxidized aluminum thing, but I don't like the way it feels because
 it feels like a chalkboard.
 So I just hope this feels like just straight up good.
 Well, there is one problem with the aluminum on the original iPhone and maybe they've kind
 of gotten around it with this one.
 We don't know yet.
 But with the original iPhone, you still see it occasionally today.
 You know, every once in a while you see someone that's using an original iPhone for God knows
 what reason.
 But they're they're scratched to hell and they're dented.
 They're physically dented, which is a phenomenon that's unique in the phone world because 99%
 of phones are plastic and which doesn't dent.
 Right.
 Yeah.
 I mean, you still see that on like the iPod touch the most up to up to the new ones that
 were just announced.
 But the other iPod touches from last year, et cetera, they get scratched extremely quickly
 and you frequently see them dented too.
 So yeah, be interesting to see if Apple saw that.
 Nano SIM, whatever.
 It's a little tiny SIM.
 I've already ordered it.
 I'm sure it's going to be the worst.
 Yeah, no, I was going to ask you about that.
 You ordered you took the plunge.
 Are you fearful for what your experience is going to be like with that adapter on Friday?
 I am.
 Now, I think it was CNET Asia put up a story where they took a micro SIM and like shaved
 it down to what they think the size of the nano SIM is.
 And it still worked.
 And they were able to get it to continue to work on a C1 X.
 And so I'm assuming it'll be OK.
 I hope it will.
 I still want to be able to switch phones.
 It's one of the main reasons I stuck with AT&T.
 But if it's not, I mean, you know, there's worse things in the world than being stuck
 on an iPhone five.
 Yeah, I've always had problems with I mean, you know, the problem with these adapters
 is that there's no way to lock a SIM into the adapter.
 So like, you know, I use I use an adapter on a micro SIM in the galaxy Nexus, for instance.
 And it's it's a it's a slide in tray type.
 And when you're when you're pulling it back out, what happens sometimes is that the micro
 SIM will kind of start to fall below the adapter a little bit and then it'll catch on either
 a pin or the indentation where the actual contacts are and then it gets stuck.
 And then you're sitting there trying to pull down and it takes 10 minutes.
 And I'm assuming those kinds of problems are only going to get worse with the nano SIMs
 because it's a physically smaller thing.
 You basically need carny hands to deal with these things.
 So we'll see.
 I'm I'm I'm hopeful that this is going to be manageable.
 But I suspect you're going to hear a lot of horror stories over the next few weeks of
 people trimming their micro SIMs or their standard SIMs down to nano SIM size and, you
 know, breaking the SIM or doing something to the contacts where it shorts them or, you
 know, because you're you're you're if I'm not mistaken, you're physically cutting into
 the contact pad in order to get it down to nano nano SIM size.
 Oh, I'm not cutting down a SIM.
 That's that's great.
 No, you are right.
 I'm going to activate the phone and then hopefully I'll be able to put it in an adapter and size
 up from there.
 I would write I have zero desire to tell anybody that it's a good idea to try and file down
 a SIM to nano SIM size.
 I think that is a recipe for pain.
 Yeah, especially since you with the iPhone five, it's going to have to try.
 You're going to have to get it to to match in that tray perfectly.
 And and like Chris was saying, the contacts footprint on a micro SIM is like the whole
 size of the nano SIM itself.
 So you're definitely cutting it close, I guess you could say, with the contacts.
 Okay, we got to talk about what's left for hardware, the lightning dock connector, all
 new connector.
 It works.
 You know, it's reversible.
 It's all digital.
 And so that's why the adapter to the old dock adapter is so expensive, because they actually
 have to have a digital to audio converter in there.
 The feature that you lose is some of these iPod out features, which to be clear, is just
 like mirroring display, like a BMW car or something, but it'll still work with audio
 docks with this big giant adapter.
 And look, why does Apple think it's too good for USB?
 I don't know.
 And it drives me absolutely nuts.
 Like, I mean, people complain about the micro USB connector, but really, it's not a bad
 connector.
 It's hard to damage.
 It's ubiquitous.
 It's pretty straightforward to use, like, you have to really be trying too hard in order
 to put it in upside down.
 I'll tell you exactly what Apple's problem is with micro USB.
 It's the fact that made for iPod is an extraordinary, and made for iPhone is an extraordinarily
 lucrative seal of approval for Apple that it charges accessory makers extraordinary
 amounts of money to use.
 And if they switch to micro USB, that only incentivizes companies to skirt the made for
 iPad or excuse me, made for iPhone seal and go rogue.
 And as it stands, these companies are going to have to license the lightning port, the
 connector, which is, I mean, that all adds up to dollar signs for Apple.
 That's exactly what's going on.
 It's still frustrating.
 I mean, they're going to have new features that are capable that unless you do something
 crazy to extend the micro USB standard, like audio out and video out and I mean, whatever
 else, I suppose.
 But you know, whatever.
 I don't know.
 I'm pretty bitter about this.
 I just, you know, it's like there's Apple exceptionalism for making money.
 And if you can make the case that this connector is better for consumers, I haven't seen it.
 This does not seem like it's better for consumers than just going to micro USB.
 Right.
 I mean, I think you could have made that argument with the 30 pin connector nine years ago because
 micro USB wasn't around.
 Mini USB might not have even really been around all that much.
 So there wasn't a lot of great connectivity options and that kind of gave a standard connector
 that did a whole heck of a lot for the iPod at the time.
 But today it's a different story and they're making a connector that to the lay person
 looks like a micro USB connector.
 I think the average person will look at the port on an iPhone five and be like, oh, it's
 the same plug as my Galaxy S3 or whatever it is just because it looks almost the same.
 It's almost the same size physically.
 So you know, it's a little, I mean, Chris has probably nailed it right on the head for
 the reason why, but it's just like you said, Dieter, not exactly consumer friendly.
 Now I wonder how many stories you're going to hear of iPhone five owners coming into
 genius bars with micro USB cables jammed into the lightning port.
 It's got to be just a little bit bigger than the micro USB plug so it just won't cram in
 there.
 It'll just fall out.
 You would hope.
 You would hope.
 They're at least that smart.
 I don't know.
 And are they selling the micro USB to nine pin dock connector adapter in the US or is
 it still only the UK?
 I believe it's only the UK.
 I haven't heard that it's in the US.
 The only reason they're selling it in the UK or in the EU is to meet with regulations
 that require the compatibility.
 And that doesn't exist here in the US.
 So Apple's not offering it.
 And I mean, those relations are good.
 They should have, you know, out anyway.
 But the other thing is I ordered a cable.
 Go ahead.
 I was just going to say, to be clear, they aren't they aren't laws.
 They are a number of OEMs agreed to these principles several years ago and Apple is
 just adhering to them.
 But I don't think that there are any actual EU laws that would prevent prevent them from
 selling the iPhone in EU countries if they weren't adhering to them.
 I think that they're just they're doing it voluntarily.
 I don't know why, because they're really half-assing it.
 So the other thing that really bothers me with lightning and we were kind of talking
 about this in our chat room yesterday is the fact that it doesn't support USB 3.0 out of
 the box.
 It supports USB 2.0 even though all of Apple's, you know, 2012 laptops have USB 3.0 ports.
 Plenty of Windows laptops have USB 3.0 ports and USB 3.0 is fully backwards compatible
 with USB 2.0.
 So if Apple's forcing us to use a cable to do a lot of heavy syncing and interface with
 iTunes, why can't it be USB 3.0?
 That's a good point.
 It drives me nuts.
 There's no good answer to that question.
 Not one that I'm happy with.
 So Sean Hollister put up a really good report about the new connector and what it means
 for accessory makers and just accessories in general.
 My personal complaint is like, I ordered an extra cable and it's not ready to ship right
 away.
 So I'm going to be down to just one cable to charge my phone and I'm not comfortable
 with that.
 I carry literally like four micro USB cables in my bag all the time because I know I'm
 going to lose them.
 Deeter, Deeter, this is very easy.
 Just buy two iPhone 5s, take the cable out of one and put the phone away.
 But no, this article made a really good point.
 The big accessory makers, they're excited about this.
 As long as Apple lets them make new accessories, they get to crank out new accessories and
 sell more stuff.
 That's really exciting.
 But it's a problem for this trend of smaller companies and guys launching products on Kickstarter
 where they had gone through this whole plan with the original dock connector and now they
 just don't have the resources to go back from scratch quickly and easily.
 But the Belkins of the world, they're super pumped about this.
 They're going to be able to sell you all new stuff.
 It is interesting though, if you go in and read Sean's report, it's interesting to hear
 basically all the big guys, Jawbone, Belkin, and there was another one, Logitech maybe,
 that he talked to.
 And all of them sort of hinted at the fact that the dock connectors' days are numbered.
 Eventually, everything is just going to be wireless whether you like it or not.
 And so, yes, in the short term, they do get to profit by turning around all these new
 dock devices with lightning connectors.
 But in the long term, they think that it's just all going to be this wireless ecosystem.
 Of course, one of the advantages of these dock devices is that they charge your phone
 while you're playing music or whatnot.
 And you'll lose that advantage once you go completely wireless.
 Maybe by then we'll have wireless charging too, over-the-air wireless charging, which
 has long been a dream of the industry.
 How horrendously ugly and bulky are the first generation of battery packs going to be for
 this thing?
 You remember in the early days of the iPhone battery packs, they were super thick on the
 bottom because people hadn't figured out how to minimize the amount of extra plastic they
 had to have next to the dock connector?
 They're going to have to start that whole process over again.
 They're going to have to leave space for the headphone jack in addition to the microphone
 and the speakers.
 I mean, they're just going to be the worst.
 They're going to be terrible.
 And I mean, not to belabor this because I'm not really surprised, but Apple chose not
 to go with wireless charging.
 And they also chose not to put NFC on there.
 And it's funny.
 I don't know about the wireless charging because I do find that really convenient.
 But the NFC thing, I'm kind of on their side.
 I feel like if it's not there, it's not there.
 And Apple's not going to try and force it.
 And I'm totally OK with that decision.
 I'm going to challenge you on the wireless charging thing because wireless charging,
 to me, is one of those features that sounds really cool and you really think that you
 want it.
 But then once you have it, you're like, well, it only works on this one pad, which I would
 be running a micro USB cable to anyway.
 So what is actually the advantage of having it?
 So the extra three seconds of my life every day when I just go and set my phone down on
 the charger instead of reaching for a cable and plugging it in.
 So the convenience of getting in my car and just setting it on, at least with the web
 OS days, the magnetic charger, you just set it on your dash and you're done.
 It sounds really stupid, but it is really convenient.
 It's really nice.
 And if they had enabled wireless charging and they had stuck to the G standard like
 Nokia did, then I wouldn't be looking at this hellstorm of having only one cable for the
 next however long and losing it and not being able to charge my phone at all.
 I'd at least be able to use the wireless charging.
 Fair enough.
 Yeah, I think you brought up all the points that I had intended to say.
 Because I remember with my pre, I stuck one of the touchstone things to the dash of my
 car at the time and I just would get in my car and plop my pre right on there.
 And it was like the most convenient thing ever.
 And if a notification came in, I could see it quickly and easily and it was charging
 up.
 It was fantastic.
 I don't think wireless charging is the answer for everything because if you want to use
 your phone while it's charging, it's really inconvenient while it's sitting on a wireless
 charging dock.
 But just having the option there would be nice.
 Also does anyone know what the maximum current is for Qi?
 Ooh, that I don't know.
 And that's actually one of the things I'm curious about, about what the current is going
 to be on this connector.
 If it'll be 2.1 or whatever the different amperages are.
 Yeah, the problem, I mean I have this problem with basically every modern smartphone now
 where the phone just in an idle state or certainly when you're using it is drawing enough power
 so that plugging it into a micro USB cable just barely keeps up with it.
 Like it doesn't really charge, it just keeps the battery level stable.
 Or maybe it's very, very slow.
 Yeah, or if you're tethering, you're just watching it slowly die.
 Or if you're using GPS services in your car and it just can't keep up with it.
 Right.
 And that problem's only going to get worse.
 And we've heard, in fact, I think we talked about it on the show before, there is an addendum
 to the USB 3 specification that increases the maximum current.
 But that's still, I don't even think it's approved yet.
 I don't have anything else to say about the hardware now that I've gotten my little rants
 out.
 Despite everything I've complained about with this connector, I still am actually pretty
 excited for the hardware.
 I think it's going to be impressive and I'm going to feel really good in my pocket.
 And I'm even excited about the, what's the phrase, the chamfered edges, the bezels that
 they made that angled instead of straight across.
 I think that'll feel nicer too.
 The sandwich look is gone.
 So it's a smoother look, I guess you could say.
 So we talked a little bit about AT&T and Verizon, but Chris, you put together a report about
 our LTE network's going to suddenly start sucking now that we're going to have all these
 iPhones on them.
 Can you tell us that I screw up by staying with AT&T?
 We'll find out.
 There's only one way to know for sure.
 And that's to see what happens over the course of the next few weeks.
 So I think I've talked about it before.
 I've noticed that AT&T's network has gotten noticeably slower since the Galaxy S3 launched.
 And I don't think it's any coincidence that I see Galaxy S3s on the street nonstop.
 I think that it's been an enormously successful phone for AT&T and Verizon and all the carriers
 that it's launched on.
 So you take that level of success, multiply it by two or three or four, and do it all
 over again.
 And that begs the obvious question, are the LTE networks going to be able to survive in
 their current configurations?
 We talked to an AT&T spokesman about it.
 And he emphasized the fact that they've learned lessons since the HSPA days.
 And they're implementing new technologies like small cells and self-optimizing networks
 that account for that sort of heavy usage.
 But at the end of the day, your physical limit, your ultimate limit is the fact that you have
 a certain amount of spectrum available.
 And if you run out of spectrum and if everybody's trying to tweet at the same time, you're going
 to run into problems.
 So we just don't-
 Really tweeting is going to be the problem?
 Tweeting will bring LTE networks to their knees.
 My point remains the same though.
 We'll have to see.
 The new Twitter app is really inefficient.
 It's not just limited to 140 characters.
 Every single one of those characters is a megabyte.
 And so when you send a tweet out, it takes up a huge chunk of your data.
 Every character is an emoji icon.
 I would not doubt it.
 The way Twitter is going.
 So yeah, we'll have to see what happens.
 But if it does bring the networks to their knees, that is a very, very damning conclusion
 and a damning statement about the state of wireless in the US.
 So we all have to collectively hope that these networks stay operational and that there's
 fast enough to actually use.
 So Chris, I got to ask you, which of the networks do you think is going to be the least hit
 by the iPhone?
 I have my own theory.
 I know the answer.
 I know the answer.
 I got it.
 In the US, you want to know what the answer is?
 Sprint.
 T-Mobile.
 Sprint.
 T-Mobile.
 T-Mobile.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 I mean, you have to look at...
 To answer that question, you need to look at what carriers are shouting from the highest
 hilltops that they're still offering unlimited data.
 And the reason they're doing that is because their networks are underutilized and over-engineered.
 And so, yeah, those are T-Mobile and Sprint.
 That also means, of course, that if those networks rapidly load up for whatever reason,
 then they're probably at greater risk of ultimate failure.
 That's just...
 And I'm not saying that out of any knowledge that I have.
 I just have to assume that would be the case.
 So but yeah, I do agree.
 It's going to be either T-Mobile or Sprint that's in the best position.
 Also that question is you have to take it on a market-by-market basis.
 I'll give you a prime example.
 AT&T only has 5 megahertz up and down Ford's LTE network in Chicago, whereas in most markets,
 it has 10 by 10.
 So Chicago is more likely to have major LTE problems on AT&T brought about by the launch
 of the iPhone 5 than, say, Dallas.
 You know, Chris, we need to move you to Atlanta or Memphis or Seattle, any other city other
 than Chicago, because you and the depth of knowledge that you have about AT&T's network
 failures in Chicago is second to none.
 We really need to spread that knowledge around.
 We need to embed you in other cities so that you can complain about their wireless just
 like you do about Chicago.
 Well, Seattle still does not have AT&T LTE.
 They're supposed to launch soon, but I think that they are – if you look at the major
 cities in the US that haven't launched with AT&T LTE yet, Seattle is probably the biggest
 at this point, and I do get complaints almost weekly from people saying, why the heck don't
 we have LTE yet?
 It's a great question because AT&T has a big smartphone office in Seattle.
 Of course, Microsoft is there.
 You would just think that it would behoove AT&T to launch LTE there as quickly as possible.
 Right.
 Well, okay.
 We've got to start talking about other stuff.
 By other stuff, I mean other iPhone stuff.
 Let's talk about iOS 6.
 I guess – I mean, there's a bunch of little things, but they showed off everything, and
 it was all the same stuff that we'd seen before.
 I mean, genuinely, the only new feature that we hadn't already seen from WWDC that I can
 think of is that it has a different aspect ratio.
 We have another great report from Ellis, right?
 Yeah, about what app developers think.
 What kills me about this – okay, they're going to letterbox apps.
 That's fine.
 But most of the developers that he spoke to were like, yeah, we figured this was coming,
 and it's not like the end of the world.
 What blows my mind is we have spent the past five years hearing this cudgel about fragmentation
 based on screen size and what a huge problem it is for Android developers to have to target
 all these different screen sizes.
 My feeling has always been that the screen size difference wasn't the real problem here.
 It was other fragmentation issues.
 The fact that most of these developers have responded to this with kind of a collective
 shrug – it doesn't surprise me, and it shouldn't surprise anybody.
 It's just so funny that we've spent so much of our collective psychic angst about the
 screen size was wasted when really I think at the end of the day it's not that big of
 a deal.
 That was a lot of preamble for me to say shrug, but there you go.
 Well so I have a few thoughts on this.
 First off, I think that the letterboxing is – correct me if I'm wrong, I think that
 the apps appear in the middle.
 Is that right?
 Yeah, you're going to get black bars on the top and bottom if you're holding in a portrait
 or left and right if you're holding in landscape.
 So the app should appear at the bottom, not in the middle.
 And that's so that you're maintaining the relationship between the thumb of the user's
 dominant hand and the bottom of the application.
 And that is the most UI forward thing that I think I've ever said in my life.
 On a letterbox app, if the software keyboard pops up above the letterbox and not from the
 bottom of the screen, that will drive me completely insane.
 Yeah, that'll be pretty nuts.
 Because this is one of the things that really bothered me about the original implementation
 of Android 4 on the HTC One X with that big black menu bar.
 I mean I wasn't that angry about losing those pixels, but what I was angry about was that
 the keyboard wouldn't be in the exact same spot on the screen every time you'd open it
 up.
 It would be above the menu and sometimes it would be flush to the bottom of the screen.
 And so I really hope that when you pop open the keyboard on these letterbox apps that
 it'll be flush to the bottom of the screen.
 Right, right.
 But I also think that Apple's expectation is that, and I think it's a very fair expectation,
 is that the developers of any apps that matter in the App Store are going to be updated to
 support the new resolution very quickly.
 In fact, the major guys have probably spent the past...
 Yeah, we've already seen some updates, to be honest with you, that are iOS 6 and iPhone
 5 compatible.
 I think 3.5 just updated today, actually.
 Right.
 Yeah, and that's just going to continue and it's going to happen very fast.
 So you'll just have this, you know, you'll have the long tail of apps that are abandonware
 and things that are sort of longer cycle apps that I'm sure will be a problem for the next
 year.
 But those aren't really Apple's concern.
 It's the major apps and those are just going to get refreshed very, very fast.
 So the rest of iOS 6, I mean, it's coming out on the 19th for other phones, which is
 tomorrow if you're listening to this live or today if you're listening to it today it's
 released or last week if you're just catching up on Verge Mobile Show podcasts, which really
 you should be listening to these the moment they're out.
 I mean, I don't know.
 So the story went around the day of the event and I put up a piece the day after.
 There's this idea that iOS 6 is boring.
 And I mean, the truth is it's a little boring.
 There's not anything here other than maps, which we got to talk about maps, oh my God,
 that is completely wildly different than iOS 5.
 And Apple always iterates small bits OS to OS on these updates, but there's usually one
 big tentpole feature that you can be like, this is the thing that changes the way you
 use your phone.
 And the thing that changes the way you use your phone in iOS 6 is an app.
 And as great as iOS is, and I think it's great, I really do.
 It's not a location OS.
 It does a better job of providing location services to third party developers.
 But for most consumers, mapping and navigation is an app.
 It's not a core OS experience.
 And so I mean, that's why we went with this angle that it's always 73 degrees and sunny
 on the iPhone's home screen.
 Because it hasn't changed, and that's OK for a lot of people.
 But on the other hand, there's a sense of forward moving innovation and thinking about
 the future of computing that Apple hasn't changed their vision for years and years on
 it.
 And that seems a little bit, I'm not freaking out.
 I'm not troubled.
 But I don't know.
 I feel like I say it every year, like, man, next version, they got to really shake it
 up because this is the same.
 Like, we're just saying it again with iOS 6, like we said with iOS 5.
 You know, Neelai said something very interesting the other day.
 And I think that I agree with him, which is that iOS 6 feels like Lion.
 It's sort of this weird hodgepodge of features that nobody necessarily asked for.
 And there is no single compelling, you know, there's no must have feature that sets it
 apart.
 And I do think, like looking at the holistic picture of the iPhone 5, I do think that the
 story is about the hardware on balance, not about iOS 6.
 And but to your point, Dieter, I think that we might be in for a long haul here.
 Like if you look at OS X, you go back over the past decade, how much has the platform
 really changed?
 Go back and look at screenshots from, you know, 10.0, 10.1.
 You know, this might just be the UX that Apple has settled on and they're going to continue
 to put Chrome on it until it's impossibly stale.
 And I don't even know if Apple has a game plan for OS X, much less iOS at this point.
 Yeah, I mean, if you were to dump into like, you know, OS X 10.0 or whatever, you wouldn't
 feel terribly, you wouldn't feel like you're in a different world, even if you've been
 using Mountain Lion for the past few months.
 Whereas, you know, other platforms, if you were to jump back 10 years, it definitely
 feels like a different operating system.
 Right.
 And Windows 8 is the perfect example of that.
 Right.
 Like Windows 8 is like a clean, I mean, you still have the desktop mode, right.
 But if you look at the UX that Microsoft is pushing for Windows 8, it is a clean break
 from everything you know about Windows.
 And that's something that, I mean, Apple is eventually going to have to cross that, you
 know, that very scary gap.
 And I think that the problem, I was on Twitter the other day, I think the problem for companies
 like Apple and Nokia and RIM and Microsoft, they've all had this problem where at some
 point, even in the face of overwhelming success, they need to feel this invisible inflection
 point where they need to make a clean break and find the next big thing.
 And it becomes almost impossibly difficult to do that when you're experiencing this massive
 overwhelming success like Apple is doing right now.
 Yeah, well, the way I put this is the faster you go, the harder it is to turn.
 They're going really fast right now.
 They're selling a ton of phones.
 Right.
 Right.
 So I don't think any of us can reasonably say when that point is going to come for them.
 What, you know, when do they need to make that clean break?
 I don't think anybody really knows.
 Are they planning for that clean break at this point?
 I don't think anybody knows.
 But, yeah, in the meantime, they're selling just bucket loads of iPhones.
 Yeah.
 OK.
 So let's, I mean, so, I mean, you know, FaceTime works over 3G or 4G.
 That's great.
 Except unless you're on AT&T and don't want to switch plans.
 Siri's got sports scores.
 Mail has this thing called VIP where you can have, you know, emails from certain people
 give you different notifications.
 A feature that was introduced on Windows Mobile.
 You can reply to a text from a missed phone call.
 The feature that was introduced on Windows Mobile.
 There's I'm just saying, man, there's shared photo streams.
 That's like, I don't know, interesting.
 But it's like this weird, like not quite a social network kind of, I don't know, it's
 weird.
 But the thing I'm working up to, like the big change is maps.
 Maps all Apple.
 It's all new.
 They've kicked Google to the curb.
 And from everything that I've seen, like it looks very pretty and it seems run pretty
 well in their flyover feature.
 It's not as useful to me as Street View, but it is pretty cool.
 And there is turn by turn navigation, which is really important.
 And you know, you don't have to keep hunting for third party apps that have weird subscription
 models and blah, blah, blah.
 The third party navigation apps on iOS, I've never been fond of at all, especially compared
 to Android.
 So you get all that and all the third party apps should still work fine and everything
 should be great.
 Unless you live in a city and you need to use public transit.
 Right.
 Yeah, that seems to be the big divide between iOS 6.
 We'll have to see how it plays out, or maps I should say in iOS 6.
 We'll have to see how it plays out.
 But like there's a lot of features that say someone who lives in a rural or suburban area
 would really appreciate that turn by turn navigation that a lot of, I think a lot of
 users have been wanting on iOS since Android introduced it a few years ago.
 But at the flip side, there's the urban user who might rely on those transit directions
 that are going to be no longer available directly and you'll have to go to a third party app
 option.
 Yeah.
 Yeah, this feels like change that was driven solely on political and, you know, a snap
 political decisions between Apple and Google and not any desire to actually improve the
 user experience.
 Because, you know, I don't think there's anything, I mean you can make some arguments about the
 flyover mode, but there is nothing with actual material benefit to the user in iOS 6 maps.
 Not to say that Apple's version of Google Maps was very good either, right?
 Google Maps had essentially remained unchanged in iOS since the start.
 And Google Maps on Android has lapped that product several times over.
 So I think that, you know, if you're upgrading from iOS 5 to 6, that jump is probably less
 of a shock to the system than if you're moving from an Android device to iOS 6.
 Unless you need transit directions.
 Right.
 Unless you need transit directions.
 Which I'm totally dependent on, by the way.
 The other thing is that, you know, that these new map features that are the headline features,
 Apple says won't be coming to the older devices.
 So if you are on an iPhone 4 or an older iPod touch or an older iPad, you won't get the
 turn-by-turn navigation and you won't get the 3D flyover.
 So especially for iPhone 4 users, this really feels like they're losing features more than
 they're gaining anything.
 You know, we'll have to see how the final product is and once we run some tests on it
 and see how well it performs.
 But at least if you're an iPhone 4S or an iPhone 5 user, you gain that turn-by-turn
 feature.
 If you're losing the transit directions, you're gaining the turn-by-turn features.
 So it can be kind of like a net zero.
 Whereas on the iPhone 4, you lose the transit directions and you don't gain the turn-by-turn
 feature.
 Yeah.
 Right.
 You guys think that Google's going to go all out and release a new app for iOS, Maps app?
 I think they did a really good job with the YouTube app and their Google Plus app is good.
 They've figured out how to code decent native iOS apps.
 Except for the Gmail app.
 Yeah.
 Every other Google app is great.
 Except for the Gmail app.
 So I would hope that they do release a Maps app, a Google Maps app.
 But I hope that the team that built the YouTube app and the Google Plus app work on it and
 not the team that built the Gmail app.
 See, I really like, I'm a big fan of conspiracy theories and I really like the notion that
 Google goes out of its way to either A, make iOS apps crappy or B, nerf them in some tragic
 way.
 And of course, to your point, Dan, the Gmail app is absolutely terrible.
 The Chrome app for iOS of course is still built on Safari.
 It's not actually using-
 Well, that's not-
 But the important Chrome features are there.
 You get the syncing, you get the Omnibox, you get the cool tab management.
 So that's like the only thing that's really different when you jump from iOS to Android
 in Chrome is the rendering engine behind it.
 Like the experience feels the same.
 Google can't put the Chrome rendering engine on iOS.
 Right.
 They just can't.
 Yeah, no, you're right.
 They can't.
 But the fact remains, I just want to have my fantasy world where I think that Google
 is trying to nerf iOS products.
 Specifically Gmail.
 Yeah.
 Which I mean, theoretically that's what they bought Sparrow for, but that remains to be
 seen.
 We don't know how that's going to play out yet.
 Yeah.
 Hopefully it plays out fast.
 Well, one of the other nerfed, if you will, if I can steal your term, Chris, iOS apps
 from Google recently was the Drive app, which was virtually useless when it came out because
 it was just a viewer and you couldn't create new files and you couldn't upload anything.
 But that recently got updated with the ability to create files and to upload files and stuff
 like that.
 So that got unnerfed, I guess.
 So hopefully Google can do the same with the Gmail app.
 And hopefully if Google does decide to release a Google Maps app, it's good from the beginning.
 Yeah.
 Are we done talking about the iPhone 5?
 That's awesome.
 Well, we can talk about pricing.
 Yeah.
 OK.
 So the iPhone 4S is down to 99 bucks on contract.
 The iPhone 4 is free and the 3GS is finally at long last gone, which took forever.
 So I think we stuck around for so long.
 Well, I mean, nowadays the iPhone 4 is the same age as the 3GS was when it was moved
 to the free price point.
 But I think we talked about this a little bit last week.
 And having an iPhone 4 class device at free is kind of a wild thing to think about.
 I mean, the iPhone 4 in 2010 was introduced a crazy display that we had not seen before.
 Great hardware, obviously, and a really solid camera.
 And now you can get that for free on contract.
 And if you compare it to the other phones that are available for free on contract, it's
 like not even a contest.
 Yeah.
 Not even close.
 Even though it's two and a half years old, it's still not even a contest.
 Right.
 Now, Apple, I have to say, Apple has figured out how to create a range of products.
 And that's just to take its amazing, excellent old products and keep them on the market and
 continue to lower the prices.
 And I think that the brand strength of the iPhone name carries all these products more
 or less equally so that you don't have these random names for the low end products.
 It's a beautiful model.
 And it's obviously working extremely well for them.
 However, I do think that they would have been very well served.
 And the world would have been well served if they had continued to sell the 3GS as just
 a dirt cheap prepaid device, both in the US and abroad.
 And you imagine if you could get the 3GS for, say, $79 or $99 contract free, it would still
 be a great product even now as a prepaid phone.
 Right.
 That would be the go to unlocked roaming phone to bring with you if you travel to Europe
 or whatever.
 Right.
 Well, the march of progress continues.
 The iPhone is coming on Friday.
 But tomorrow, the 19th, no, the day after tomorrow, no, tomorrow, there's going to be
 an HTC event.
 We're expecting Windows Phone 8 devices, I think, from them.
 There's the Zenith, the Accord, and the Rio.
 There's also been this 5-inch Android phone that's been floating around.
 And I mean, I hope, I mean, we've talked about this a lot, that the One Series and the One
 X in particular hasn't helped revitalize HTC much.
 And so I'm hoping that whatever they're bringing to the table here will be awesome, first of
 all, but will get serious support from carriers or partners, either Google or Microsoft, depending
 on what it is they're announcing.
 Because I would hate to see HTC just fade into irrelevance.
 I don't think that they deserve that as a company.
 Yeah.
 So, you know, we've seen a few leaks from this Windows Phone lineup from HTC.
 And they, I mean, it's hard to get a sense, it's really hard to get a sense without actually
 seeing the devices in person and being at the event or whatnot to feel out how they
 actually compare to what Nokia has on offer for Windows Phone 8.
 And so, you know, I don't feel comfortable really making any sort of definitive comment
 on these things.
 But in general, I do feel more bullish.
 And again, I know I say this with every new release of Windows Phone, but I feel more
 bullish about the hardware and the software going into this release than ever before.
 It's just a question of whether, you know, they get that, like you said, Dieter, you
 know, they need the carrier support.
 They need to get their story straight with updates and upgrades going forward.
 They just need to present.
 I mean, you know, iPhone just keeps getting stronger and stronger.
 And you know, if they want to compete in that end of the market, they just need to deliver
 an extremely powerful message going into the holiday season.
 So hopefully, I mean, I think that what the current rumors are tracking for an early November
 launch, right, for most of these Windows Phone 8 devices, including the 920.
 I don't know.
 You know, so we've held, you know, I think that all three of us have held the 920.
 And it is a very beefy and heavy phone.
 That I think is already a strike against it for people, for anyone who's considering.
 If you walk into, say, an AT&T store and you want to compare a 920 to an iPhone 5, that's
 already a pretty powerful strike against it.
 But it does have the color range going for it.
 And I think that the Windows Phone 8 home screen just looks really cool.
 I like the fact that you've got these multiple box sizes going on now.
 And yeah, I mean, we'll see.
 I'm definitely going to, there's no question about it that I'm going to own and use a Windows
 Phone 8 device of some sort for some period of time.
 I don't know if that's going to be one of these HTCs or a 920 or what.
 But I said that with the 900 and I did.
 I used it for several weeks.
 And like I said before, the Achilles heel, what ultimately killed it for me was the lack
 of any sort of reasonable Gmail support.
 So we'll see if, I mean, seriously, all Google needs to do is enable its iOS web view on
 mobile IE 10.
 That is all they need to do.
 And my prayers will be answered.
 So we'll see if they can pull that off or if Google feels the need to pull that off.
 I don't know.
 I think that's a junky fix if you ask me, because you still have to go to the web view
 to deal with your email.
 Yeah.
 So you don't get proper notifications, but you kind of do.
 So here's what I always do on iOS, which is, this was before the sparrow days.
 But what I would do is I'd set up an exchange account pointing to my Gmail.
 So I'd still get notifications.
 And then I would replace mail in the fixed bar of icons at the bottom with a web icon
 pointing to the mobile Gmail view.
 So that in between the two, I kind of made it work.
 And that's what I, theoretically, if mobile Gmail worked properly on Windows Phone, that's
 what I would do on Windows Phone.
 But you get the WAP view, which is completely worthless.
 So we either need something that is the equivalent of sparrow for Windows Phone, or we need Google
 to fix the web, at the very least, the minimum effort fix is for Google to fix the web view.
 But we need something.
 Because the mail client, I mean, I get that it's great for like pop email or whatever.
 It does not work well when you have something as rich and advanced as Gmail is, especially
 if you actually put the time and effort into organizing it the way that you can do if you
 take advantage of all the features.
 I use priority inbox.
 I use labels of the wazoo.
 And it's just it's completely unmanageable with a standard email client.
 Yeah, I agree.
 The standard email client looks really great.
 And it's fun to use, at least on Windows 7.5, it was.
 And it was very fast.
 But it really lacked the robust Gmail support that you'd be looking for.
 Yeah.
 So I think the last thing I want to talk about today is this insane thing that happened with
 Acer.
 They were going to launch a phone based on the Alleyoon OS.
 Am I even pronouncing that right?
 And so they had like reporters going to this event.
 And they just canceled it.
 And they're like, Google says we can't do this.
 So we're not going to do it.
 And like, what the heck happened?
 And so then Google comes out and says, yeah, no, we said they can't do it.
 They can't launch this phone because it's based on Android.
 And then the guys behind Alleyoon are like, no, it's not based on Android.
 And there's been this back and forth between Andy Rubin and the guys behind this Alleyoon
 OS about whether or not it's a fork of Android.
 And whether or not Acer is allowed to launch a phone based on it.
 And if they do, that Google would kick them out and stop giving them support of Google
 apps and kick them out of the open handset alliance.
 It's a really weird story.
 Yeah.
 So I think the damning, I think that the nail in the coffin of Acer's story here was when
 Rubin, I think it was Rubin who pointed out that Alleyoon's app store has pirated versions
 of Google apps in it.
 Google Android apps.
 So I mean, like, come on.
 What's your defense at that point?
 I mean, theoretically, I guess you could build a platform that is binary compatible with
 Android.
 But first of all, odds are you didn't.
 And second of all, that doesn't change the fact that you have these pirated apps chilling
 in your app store.
 So.
 Right.
 Yeah.
 So I mean, the story from Alleyoon is that they built this thing that they're not using
 the Dalvik engine, which is the engine that runs a bunch of Android apps.
 They're using their own custom thing that mirrors its functionality, which is ironic
 because Dalvik's whole point was to do the same thing to Java, right?
 Yeah.
 Anyway, Google saying, no, that's not true.
 You're actually using our technology somewhere in here.
 This is technically a fork.
 And as a member of the Open Handset Alliance, Acer has agreed not to launch stuff that is
 based on Android but not Android compatible.
 What's funny about that is Amazon's totally free to do that.
 It's just not part of the Open Handset Alliance.
 So there's been a lot of joke running around about, oh, so ha ha ha, Google's not so open
 anymore.
 Ha ha ha.
 And I don't know how I feel about that.
 Part of me wants to be sympathetic to this hating on Google for being evil about this
 and limiting one of their partners and telling them what they can and can't do.
 But on the other hand, I guess I'm kind of happy to see the Open Handset Alliance finally
 actually mean something, because today, it seemed to me like it was just this PR show.
 And it didn't actually have any teeth, or there wasn't actually any real contributions
 from the other members.
 But this and even Sony putting its stuff into this experimental project to launch an AOSP
 stock Android on Sony's handsets recently, it's starting to feel a little bit more like
 an ecosystem and a little bit less like just Google's bag, which is a totally ironic thing
 to say after Google just swung the hammer at Acer.
 I have a different view.
 I think that this hammer that Google swung is something that people have been wanting
 Google to do for a long time.
 I think the way it happened was not how everybody wanted it to happen.
 But people have been complaining about how you pick up one Android device and it doesn't
 feel like another Android device.
 And you move to another Android device, and it's a totally different experience.
 And I know a lot of people just wanted Google to put its foot down and say, you can conform
 to these standards or you don't get Gmail.
 And that's kind of what happened here.
 Google said that Aliun is not, or Acer is not, conforming to our standards with the
 open handset alliance with this Aliun OS.
 And you can do that, but you're not going to get the open handset privileges.
 And I think a lot of people have been asking for Google to do that.
 But it just kind of went about the wrong way here.
 So let's be clear.
 I think that two years ago, there's no way that Google would have done this.
 They wouldn't have cared.
 But I think that what Amazon did to Android is something that Google never anticipated.
 And I think that they are more anxious than ever to keep the spirit of Android close.
 And we're seeing that bear out with this.
 I think that you put this exact story two years ago.
 Not Ruben, not anybody else inside Google would have cared that this was happening.
 But it's a different Google now, and they have different priorities and a different
 understanding for what they need to do to advance the platform in light of how successful
 Amazon was at forking Android in a meaningful way and went on to build successful products
 on top of it.
 I don't think that Ruben ever anticipated that happening with Android.
 You know the other thing about this that rubs people the wrong way, and I think rightly
 so, is that it was Acer.
 It feels like picking on the little guy.
 If Samsung had gotten to the point where they were launching an OS that claimed to have
 Android compatibility, do you really think that Google would have done this to Samsung?
 The answer is no.
 Yeah.
 Yeah, that's true.
 But I mean, it's also like I'm sure that there just wasn't proper communication between Acer
 and Google in the first place earlier on in this process.
 But I take your point about Amazon and what it's done with the Kindle Fire.
 I think Google has finally drawn a line of this is where Android compatibility has to
 be.
 The question now is are they going to move that line to try and create more consistency
 across different manufacturers, or is this where this line is going to stay?
 Right, right.
 I mean, we know there's still that Wall Street Journal rumor from several months ago hanging
 over our heads that we haven't heard a peep about ever since about there being a line
 of Nexus phones supposedly announced right about now.
 I'm expecting this to happen anytime now if the rumor actually comes to fruition.
 So if Google wants to expand the meaning of Nexus into something that's truly useful to
 consumers, that gives them more leeway to kind of ignore the rest of the noise.
 But if they don't do that, if they continue with the existing Nexus model, which isn't
 very commercially successful in any meaningful way, then yeah, then they might need to say,
 okay, well, we need to rein in all of our OEMs and sort of create more consistency across
 the entire Android range, which might actually be the more desirable.
 As much as I would like to have a selection of Nexus phones to choose from that are true
 Nexus devices, at the end of the day, it might be more meaningful for Google to put
 more, you know, to exert more control over their main OEM partners.
 It's actually not a bad note to end on.
 Now that the iPhone rumors have wrapped up and we actually know what the iPhone 5 looks
 like definitively, it's time for us to get some sweet, sweet brand new Nexus action,
 whether it's these multiple devices or just a brand new Nexus device from whoever it's
 going to be.
 There's still no option of me to get stock Nexus, stock Android on AT&T with LTE without
 hacking and I'm tired of that.
 I'm tired of that situation.
 I'm tired of the flagship Android Nexus phone being on boring, crappy hardware with a terrible
 screen and even worse camera.
 I'm ready for a really good Nexus phone.
 Yeah.
 And it's, I mean, the Galaxy Nexus wasn't the most cutting edge phone when it was released
 and at this point it's pretty long in the tooth.
 Yeah.
 Well, everybody, thank you so much for watching the Verge Mobile Show.
 If you want to follow us, you can comment on this post when it goes up.
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 We are all at Verge.
 I am at Backlund.
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 Seferc, Chris is at ZPower.
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 And like I just said, we'll be back next week.
 So tune in then.
 Thanks.
 That's good.
ável.
 Alright.