 So, last night I got in like a Twitter fight about which Dungeons & Dragons campaign is the best, and I picked Dark Sun for what I think are really obvious reasons. But let's face it, that's pretty nerdy. And Chris Ziegler, if you want to talk to him about the Fast and the Furious, he will fastly, quickly and furiously tell you which one is the best and why. And if you want to talk to Vlad about whether kale or wheatgrass has a higher and more important nutritional value for your body, bless his beating heart under his well-muscled chest, he can talk to you about that at length. So we're all nerds. We're all nerds together, and we're all nerds together about phones. And if you're watching this show right now, let's face it, chances are you are too. And you know what? That's actually kind of awesome. So let's not be ashamed. Let's be nerds together. Stay tuned for the Verge Mobile Show. Hi, I'm Dieter Baum. I'm Vlad Samov. And I'm Chris Ziegler. And this is Verge Mobile Show. It is lucky episode number 13 for the week of August 20th, 2012. And we've got a lot of mobile phone news to talk about. How are you guys? How are you nerds? I'm good. I feel really good about that introduction. You really got to the heart of me there. I actually can opine on the different categories and types of cabbage, which one is my favorite on a given day of the week. Well, I went to different categories. Cabbage and wheatgrass really aren't directly comparable, are they? I mean, that wasn't really fair. But I'm not a huge nutritional cabbage nerd. So I guess I can't really speak to that. But I do love kale. We joined a co-op that delivers fresh vegetables to our apartment door. And so I've been eating a ton of kale lately, which is pretty awesome. Good. I'm proud of you. I don't know if this counts toward any nutritional street cred. But I just had a tall, cool glass of V8, which I'm told has eight different vegetables in it spanning several different color groups. They've got the red group, the orange group, and the green group. I'm pretty sure it also has your monthly allowance, your RMA of salt. No, that's why you get the lowest. Stop being an amateur, Dieter. You got to get the lowest sodium V8. All right. Okay, so I'm a V8 nerd apparently. Hey, everybody. Say hi to Nate Ralph. Where's Nate Ralph? I don't see Nate Ralph. He's right behind. I'm looking at the video feed. Yeah, well, there he is. So yeah, he's at the Verge West office, which is pretty awesome. We should just get started talking about the news. And I think the main thing to talk about is just how insane September 5th is going to be. Right? Well, really, September in total, right? Because you have Apple presumably in the middle of the month. But yeah, September 5th in particular is going to be just a complete nightmare. Yeah, let's not disregard IFA because I'm actually going to be there. So let's not undersell IFA, which is the thing that happens before September 5th. That's 10 end of August, first few days of September. That's when we're going to see the Galaxy Note 2 from Samsung and maybe something else. You kind of expect the other companies to wake up and do something as well since Motorola is going to do a new device on the 5th, which is, you know, it's going to be an Android device. What are the other Android device makers doing? If Motorola is doing something, Samsung is doing something with the Galaxy Note 2, how do the others respond? How does HTC respond? Is LG still in this market at all? Let's not overplay this Motorola announcement. I know that Motorola wants you to think that this is the most important event of September. But you'll notice that on the invite for that event, they have the Verizon logo, which I think almost certainly means that this is going to be the Razer HD, which is sort of correct me if I'm wrong, but I mean, it's basically just an Atrix HD in a Razer body for Verizon. So I mean, it's cool and all. I mean, that's great. But I don't think that that is going to be the most exciting thing happening next month. I mean, I'm personally excited because I mean, I like the Atrix. And I think that, you know, an Atrix done right could be well, I guess it wasn't done wrong in the first place, but you know, that could be interesting. But I mean, someone in the chat just said that Motorola trolled Nokia by saying, join us for the day's main event. Oh, big time. Like, that's totally true. Like, that is so terrible. That's exactly so. So we should talk about Nokia though. Yeah. Just a moment. I'm being distracted by people in chat, in whole separate chat. Yes, well, Nokia, the Nokia event, September 5th is going to be Windows Phone 8. It's going to be at least one device. Stop sending me chat messages, you troll. I'm talking to Chris. I wasn't sending a chat message to you. I was sending a chat message to our producer, Brandon. I was right. I was right. Actually, we should just point out that while this podcast is happening, we have the chat on the site, so we're watching what people are saying to us as we talk. We have our own chat where we're talking to each other and sending each other secret messages, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. We also have got our internal chat for Verge work. And actually, there's anywhere between like four and six rooms that we might be in and looking at text flowing down. And I don't know about you guys, but I usually have got- While D2 was giving that explanation, somebody peeked in through the door of my bedroom. So it's just, we're so freaking popular, we can't be left alone for a good few, 60, 90 minutes to nerd out about kale. Wait, wait, wait. Vlad, I want to go back for just one second. The vagueness of that statement concerns me. Someone peeked in through the door of your bedroom? Like how many random people did you just have crawling around your house where someone, some mysterious individual peeks through your bedroom? Yes, but Chris, if I personally identify the individual and you don't know the individual, how useful is it to you or to anybody in our audience? That's true. To them, it's just somebody. We've already established that Vlad is into nutrition and we've established for a long time now that Vlad is a communist. It's obvious that he lives on a collectivist farm somewhere. And so there's no way of knowing which crazy Kibbutz inhabitant has opened his door to peek in. That's true. Seriously, Nokia, come on. Let's try and stay in track for a moment. The point I was making is the amount of text that we have flowing by while we're trying to talk is insane. How many one-line communiques do you see in the course of a day? It's completely insane. And this is why we can't talk about Nokia because we're completely distracted all the time. Yeah. I had a really nice quote from some old timey people. Oh, God, the quote from Civilization, the one about bureaucracy, people appreciated that. So I recall another quote which reminds me here. A French philosopher, again, I've managed to forget the name, said that distractions are our worst enemy. And I've also managed to forget the freaking quote. I don't know why I'm quoting it. But it's like we try and find distractions from the misery of life, but then they actually take over and then they become our worst enemy. They then themselves become essentially the misery and the tragedy of life. And there's a lot of truth to that. If you sit down and think about it, you might just cover more of that truth if you go to an Amsterdam cafe and really sit down and think about it. But seriously, Nokia, let me just finish up with these guys. So they're doing a Windows Phone 8 announcement, at least one device. Could be a couple. We don't know exactly. They're doing it in conjunction with Microsoft. So as far as you know, this is going to be the first Windows Phone 8 device announcement. Both of them are making essentially the flagship Windows Phone 8 announcement. I would expect that to be the case anyway, given their close partnership. And as Dieter was saying, Motorola is trying to troll the entire thing by calling its event on the same day the main event for September 5th. And I totally agree with Dieter. The main event for September 5th, OK, Microsoft Windows Phone 8. That's it. What do you think, Chris? Yeah. And it's not just about Nokia, of course, right? It's about sort of the rest of the reveal for Windows Phone 8, which is a pretty big deal. And I think it's very notable. This is something that I don't think that people have discussed too much. But just the fact that Microsoft is allowing Nokia to take the lead on doing the full consumer reveal of the next version of Windows Phone is a big step for both companies and their partnership. And I don't know what that means to other OEMs. But I don't think that anyone has really known exactly where the other Windows Phone OEM teams have stood for for a good year now. But but yeah, this is going to be a really big deal both for Nokia and for Microsoft. And I'm excited. I know that I say that leading up to every single Windows Phone announcement. But this is a platform that I'm genuinely intrigued by and really want to see succeed and become entrenched as a viable player because they are genuinely trying to do something different and cool and notable. So hopefully this is it. I don't you know, not to say that I want to see these particular Nokia phones succeed, but just this platform. I hope that this causes it to flourish in a way that it hasn't so far. The thing that I'd be really interested in is if we get carrier announcements alongside Nokia stuff, because, you know, we've had rumors for quite a long time that Verizon might be jumping in with both feet on Windows Phone. And if you stop and think about it, you know, Verizon going all in on Windows Phone at the same time and maybe going all in with Nokia would actually be a pretty big deal for all three of the companies involved here. And I think that would that would really help. The other thing that I'm really curious about is, you know, what else haven't we seen in the full reveal of Windows Phone 8? I mean, we know what the smaller tiles we know about, you know, a couple like small sort of nerdy developer type features and whatnot. But I still feel like there's got to be some other big flashy consumer facing feature that hasn't been put forth yet. I think so. I think that they're they're holding back. And I think that that Greg Sullivan, who kind of did the PR tour around the last Windows Phone 8 event, he actually said that, right. There's still a lot yet to be revealed. And I hope that's true. I hope we see some really cool stuff at that event on the 5th. But you know, I hate to belabor the point about other OEMs, but where does this leave? You know, HTC obviously is the big one. Samsung, I don't know. We're hearing rumors about this Odyssey device and there's one other from Samsung I think we've talked about in the past that came out of the trial documents in Apple versus Samsung. But it's the fact that that they're basically co-branding this as a Nokia Microsoft event and doing this big Windows Phone 8 reveal there is just really interesting to me. Of course, I mean, I guess I guess Google did the same thing with with ICS, right? They they co-branded that as a Samsung Galaxy Nexus ICS event. So, you know, whatever. Well, to reverse the point about Samsung, I know that both Ross Miller and Neelai have been very forthright about their opinion with Samsung. And the way that they express it is take a look at Samsung's latest and greatest Android phone and take a look at Samsung's latest and greatest Windows Phone. One of them says, this is our business, this is what we rely on. The other one says, eh, you know, we'll just do this so there's some diversity to our portfolio. That's it. And also the thing that we've seen with these Samsung leaks, stuff that has emerged from the documents kind of seems like they're going to do a Galaxy S3 shell, but for Windows Phone, which again, for Windows Phone enthusiasts is exciting, right? They want that software and they want Samsung's latest hardware. But the fact of the matter is the Galaxy S3 is no longer Samsung's very latest hardware. You know, it's a few months old. Samsung brings the trend first and then trickles it down to Windows. It is still their latest hardware. Well, no, the latest hardware is in the labs, Chris. But you know what I'm saying? It's been a few months. And the latest hardware by the time these Windows Phone devices come out will be the Galaxy Note 2. But what I'm saying is Windows Phone is essentially the trickle down OS for Samsung. Right. Yeah, I will definitely agree. That's fair. I can agree with that. But I mean, the question about it continuing to be the trickle down OS, I think you're right about Samsung, but will it be for HTC? You know, HTC is not doing well right now. And you know, is there space for Windows Phone to give them a bump, especially with so much attention being given to Nokia? Well, I'm not convinced that that would be the case, because in that case, it would be essentially change for change's sake. Because as you feel like if you look at the options that the OEMs have, Android is the best. Like the iPhone isn't an option. iOS isn't an option for them to pick up. So that's not even a conversation. And Android is clearly ahead of Windows Phone, unless the hidden feature that Microsoft has for Windows Phone is some underground ecosystem that has been cooking up. And all of a sudden, boom, there's like 100 pretty superb apps for Windows Phone, which you didn't know about before and which are now awesome. So switching over to Windows Phone would be just, well, we're different as far as HTC is concerned. But then who are you different from? You're different from the Android guys, you're different from Samsung, but you're not actually different from Nokia. And then you're falling into another trap, which is if you invest really severely and deeply into Windows Phone, you're having to fight Nokia. And Nokia's strength is design and all of the things that they've established that distinguish an OEM. So I don't really like that fight for HTC either. I think HTC needs to just keep doing what it's been doing and hope that it can just do it better, essentially, just execute better. Well, on a macro level, I think the question is, is there some economic principle that ultimately dictates that there needs to be a one-to-one relationship between platforms and successful profitable OEMs? And that's the question that remains to be answered. But the market cannot feasibly support more than three, maybe four platforms. There's no evidence to suggest that anything beyond that will survive over the past few years. So now the question is, can these, I don't want to call them second tier, but these OEMs that aren't the leading OEM on each platform, can they carve out enough market to stay profitable? And of course, Nokia has the Windows Phone relationship locked up. Samsung has Android locked up. Where does that leave everybody else? Not just HTC, but LG. We have these Chinese guys that are really trying to make a splash right now, like Huawei and ZTE. I'm sure that they can be successful in the Asian market. But can they find a niche in North America? I don't know. I don't think so. I mean, even HTC has said that they're going to make a push in China, right? Didn't we see that come through? And I mean, we've got the story of the HTC CEO, Peter Chow. There was a memo that there's multiple areas where HTC needs improvement. I mean, Vlad, you said they need to just keep on doing what they've been doing and just do it better. And I'm hard pressed to disagree with you. But if the One Series didn't do it for them, what other ammo have they got sitting in their arsenal? Yeah. Stuck Android. It's never going to happen. Listen, it's a stuck answer, but it's true. But it is actually. No, it isn't. Last night, no, no, no. Let me, last night, because there's another Apple versus Samsung case going on besides the main one, which by the way, there's a live blog of Apple's closing arguments right now happening, which you should read while you listen to this. But in the other case, which was the Galaxy Nexus ban, and that's about universal search. So it went to an appeals court and Samsung is trying to argue that the Galaxy Nexus hasn't caused irreparable harm to the iPhone. And the quote from their lawyer was that it had a minuscule amount of sales. And Samsung has only made, I think it was 250 million off of the Galaxy Nexus in the US. So that was not a tiny event, the launch of the Galaxy Nexus. Google was behind it. It was the thing. It wasn't a huge Apple level event. But it's on three carriers. It's on four if you want to buy it unlocked. And it hasn't taken off. So I don't feel like, it's not about stock. It's about marketing muscle and push. And I guess we haven't really seen anybody put that behind stock. But I just have a feeling like if HTC were to do it, they'd get some goodwill from the hardcore Android fans. I would love it, but I'm a hardcore Android fan, I guess. But I just don't see that it's a path to huge success for them. I totally agree. To this day, there's no evidence to suggest that the average consumer walking into a US retail store can differentiate between skin Android and stock Android, nor do they care. Yeah. OK. I agree with the first part. I disagree with the second part. The first part, they can't distinguish and differentiate. Fine. But do they care? Yes, they care. Stock Android versus Sense is a better user experience. And my question was for Dieter, on your HTC One X, what software are you running at the moment, Dieter? That's a very interesting question. I am running Cyanogen Mod 10, which, by the way, is not stock Android. But it is an effort to add it. It's so much closer to it than Sense. I don't even know what to tell you guys. I write a piece where I say the Galaxy Nexus is still the best Android phone you can buy. Chris disagrees with me. Then both of you end up on the Galaxy Nexus, at least temporarily. Then I argue stock Android is preferable to Sense just on the quality of user experience. Never mind if people can recognize which is which. I'm saying they can recognize the quality of the user experience, which is better on stock. And then you guys are using it on your phones. So I mean, the facts bear out that I'm just always right. And also, there's another fact that Tom Warren bought a Galaxy Nexus the other day. And Tom Warren, he's got Microsoft tattoos on every body part. Which is really painful, by the way. But he buys Android just because of the stock experience in Galaxy Nexus. I mean, he wanted to learn about it, but he loves it. That's the other thing. He bought it and he's fallen in love with it. So look, Vlad, I want to make it very clear. The only reason I'm using Galaxy Nexus now is because I like there's still something very magical to me about tapping in a cab to pay for my fare. And the Galaxy S3, as far as I know, does not have the secure element necessary to get Google Wallet working. At least not the North American versions. With the exception of the Sprint. So what you're telling me is you're only using this phone because it has more functionality than other phones. I get it. No, look. That's like a pretty shallow reason to buy this. Look, Google Wallet has nothing to do with stock, right? Can we all agree? There are two completely unrelated issues. Yeah, OK, fine. They are fine. Should we move on? I'm interested in this. We have one more thing that we need to talk about with this September 5th event, which is the elephant in the room, which is that it's a week before the rumored iPhone event. And so it's hard to get around the sense that these companies are trying to get their announcements out before the iPhone just so that they can get a little bit of attention. Because after the 12th, the rumored new iPhone announced, they'll just be iPhone, iPhone, iPhone. And that's it. Yeah. But by the way, I think that's the wrong strategy. I think that's completely the wrong strategy, because what that means is that they are giving themselves a fixed, like a known fixed amount of time in which they can get any attention whatsoever. And then there's the Apple event and then boom, like any, you know, any attention that they had, any spotlight, any fraction of the spotlight that they had is instantly wiped off the map. If they announce after the iPhone, they control, you know, they can dial in the product in the event and the way they announce the event. And then there's really no bound. There's no limit to how long they can control that spotlight. So I don't really understand the notion of like rushing to get something announced before an Apple event. It just doesn't really make any sense to me. I'm not sure, Chris. I mean, first of all, it's very much in line with the habit in the industry. I mean, if you think of CES, CES kicks off, let's say, the fifth of January, thereabouts. Everybody pre announces their announcements on like 31st of December nowadays just to get there first, just to be able to say first, we got there first, we did this first, which is a terrible habit. But so many companies maintain it. And if you recall Microsoft with its Surface launch event, everybody commented that although the promotional video was great and the Surface tablets were clearly well developed and designed over a long period of time, the actual event felt extremely hurried. So Microsoft was also in a rush to get there ahead of somebody else, get there in the right news cycle, whatever. And I'm not even convinced that if you announce, let's say, a week after the iPhone, as opposed to a week before it, I'm not convinced that you can get that much hype because everybody will be too busy saying, okay, it's two days until the iPhone pre-orders start shipping. Has anybody got the iPhone pre-orders? Have you had a shipping confirmation? I mean, it's always my new share that comes with an iPhone launch. And it annoys me and I'm sure it annoys most people, but it happens. And that then tends to become the news coverage, which is annoying for everybody, but it's just the way it is. I wholeheartedly disagree, but you are entitled to your opinion. Well, how about something we can all agree on? AT&T's FaceTime policy, they are not charging extra technically, but they are requiring a different, I believe slightly more expensive plan. You're going to need to get on the mobile share plan in order to use FaceTime as opposed to their standard plans. And am I right that mobile share is replacing what's currently DataPro, which is their tethering plan, or am I high and drunk? I've been assured by AT&T that the mobile share plans are supplemental to their existing plans. And now over time, through moves like this FaceTime move, they are hoping to kind of like naturally obsolete the quote unquote legacy plans. So when they announced mobile share, one of the things that they were touting was the fact that unlike Verizon, where they are now putting everybody on a share everything plan, on AT&T, they are not doing that. But this is, I mean, it's six and one half dozen of the other. They're going to end up with moves like this, just putting all these old plans in a very bad place. Yeah, I mean, I'm paying for the DataPro plan right now, which is the plan that costs a bit more to include tethering, which like, given how easy it is to like get tethering sneakily on smartphones these days, I kind of feel like I'm just doing it out of like a Boy Scout sense of morality. But there it is. So I mean, this won't affect me. I'm sure I'll switch over to the mobile share and that'll be that. But I imagine there's going to be a bunch of people that are going to have to be making a hard decision of, do I want to pay more for basically the same data in order to get this feature? And so there's been a lot of noise about whether or not it breaks the FCC's open internet rules. And Chris, you actually wrote a really good piece on exactly what the story is here. Yeah, I think that everybody is hoping that this move violates the FCC's existing rules that are a part of its open internet initiative. And I don't have the exact verbiage in front of me, but it says something to the effect of a wireless carrier cannot block an application or service that competes with its own voice or video services. And I'm postulating that AT&T is going to argue very hard over the coming weeks and months when this becomes a huge public policy debate that FaceTime does not compete directly or really even indirectly with any service that it offers itself, right? Because AT&T does not offer a mobile video calling service. And you can't really make a compelling argument that FaceTime is a direct replacement for AT&T's voice service because FaceTime can't, at least currently can't be used in a voice only mode and you can't call people that are using non-Apple devices with it. I have a piece of duct tape here that disagrees with that assertion. I'm just pointing that out. Fair enough. Yeah, I mean, I just think that AT&T believes that they've carved open just enough of a loophole in the existing open internet regulations so that this is not going to be a problem for them. Verizon, you know, so the next obvious question is will Verizon do the same thing? They are in a slightly more tenuous position only because they're sitting on that 700 megahertz spectrum, the block C spectrum, so-called block C spectrum that has the open access provision attached to it. And that is a much more stringent set of regulations just on that one block of spectrum that would make it almost certainly illegal for them to try to do something like this. But I think unfortunately, I'm not happy about it. I wasn't happy about writing this report. I was just delivering the bad news that I really don't think that there is any existing law in place that prevents AT&T from legally doing this. Well, you know, what could prevent AT&T from doing this, Chris, is some actual competition as opposed to your essentially state-sponsored duopoly over in the US, which I am going to just use as a segue, a perfectly self-serving segue to transition into the UK and our carrier situation, which has had quite a tumultuous day today because Everything Everywhere, which is the company that was set up from the combination of T-Mobile and Orange, they got approval from Ofcom, local regulator, to do an LTE network on some spare spectrum that they had, 1800 megahertz. So now they have licenses to do 4G LTE on 1800 megahertz. And everybody is freaked out and pissed off about it. Vodafone, O2, Free, everybody. They're just- Okay, actually, can you explain to me why I should feel bad for these companies that aren't going to get to launch their LTE networks at the same time as Everything Everywhere? Because I don't get it. I genuinely am like, what's the problem? I'm like, sorry guys, they happen to get lucky with the way that they manage their spectrum and they're going to be able to launch sooner. Maybe it's just that in the US, we've seen carriers launch networks ahead of each other and that's just the way it is. And so I'm just used to carriers competing on the quality of their spectrum and what kind of data speeds that can offer as opposed to Europe, everybody pretty much is on a more equal par there. But I don't see where the justification is to be unhappy about this. Of course, the other companies, it makes sense for them to say, oh, yeah, this is unfair. But what's genuinely unfair about it? Your point is fair enough, Tieto. But the primary issue is the delay. Because first of all, there's going to be an auction to set off the spectrum that the UK government has assigned for 4G LTE in the UK. That's going to be 800 megahertz, which is going to be the primary real estate. And I believe it's 2.6 gigahertz, which is going to be the slightly rougher one, a slightly cheaper version. The trouble is, everything everywhere is allowed to launch this 4G service almost now, like two weeks from now, 11th of September. I don't know that they'll have the service ready on that date, but that's when you can start rolling it out. Everybody else has the same sort of spectrum or bandwidth that everything everywhere has to make use of the same. What I actually found out was that the Ofcom decision affects all carriers. So if anybody else wants to do LTE at 800 megahertz, 1800 megahertz, they can do it. They just don't have, as I say, the bandwidth to do that. I just don't know why is that everything everywhere is a problem, though. The issue is that the auction isn't going to start taking bids until early next year, and people won't be able to get actual service from every carrier on an even footing on an equal basis until at least this time next year. So everything everywhere is getting, essentially, a year's head start. That's all well and good. And I'm shedding a single tear for Vodafone, one of the largest conglomerates in the world. But the fact remains that under no circumstances should Ofcom or FCC or the CRTC or any other regulatory body around the world be artificially inhibiting innovation just because other companies don't think that it's quote unquote fair. Well, the thing is market distortions, Chris. It's something that the Europeans care about and the Americans don't. There are effects. I mean, that's the other thing. In the US, you guys, and this is kind of straight into the legal side of things, you guys take a more formalistic perspective, where it's like, are the originating conditions fair and then let people go and kill each other if that's what the market decides? Whereas here in Europe, people take a more consequentialist perspective and they say, OK, this appears fair on the surface, letting these guys have the network. And as I say, Ofcom, the European Union, they've approved this. The European Union separately, it's all of the thing, approving the merger between T-Mobile and Orange previously. But they've approved it, so they're fine with it. But the point is that the concern here was about what the effect would be of having one carrier in the UK with 4G for a whole year in front of everybody else. And the thing that makes this more interesting and exciting is if this next generation iPhone, which we all kind of anticipate will have OT, if that actually runs on this network. Right? Because any- Yeah, that particular thing, the piece you wrote on that, that explains why these other carriers are freaking out and trying to make the case that this is unfair. That perfectly explains it. Yeah. Look, if you're the only LTE network, you've got a massive advantage over everybody else. Because the other thing is nobody in the UK has done the false 4G claims that you've had in the US. So people in the UK, I'm sorry, aren't as jaded to the idea of 4G as Americans are. So if you come out and you say, yes, Chris? I've got news for you. It had WiMAX for a long ass time before anyone had LTE here and no one gave two you-know-what about it. Well, that's because it's WiMAX. No, it's not. No. No. Sorry. I mean, it was way faster than anything else on the market when it was available. But I don't think that it's... I mean, you got to keep in mind that some people are still under tariff. But I mean, it's not like the entire country is going to rush into everything everywhere just because they started advertising LTE. That's absolutely correct, Chris. And I had to tell you, reading the comments from our UK readers and also speaking to Aaron, who's my local colleague, a lot of people actually aren't all that excited. A lot of people would prefer to have more data on the 3G and more reliable data on the 3G service than to have a faster 4G service. I'm not convinced that once they get a taste of 4G, they won't be like, holy, you know, such and such. This is like the written iPad. It's so much better. I can't live without it anymore. Because that's how you guys feel, right? Over in the US now that you have LTE services. But at the moment, the latent excitement, the anticipation of 4G and LTE in the UK isn't that strong. So Chris's point is valid. But here's the thing, all of these reservations and considerations that we might have about the impact of one network, because it is one network, even though it's two brands, having 4G and nobody else having it for a year, they get kind of nullified, again, by the iPhone's effect. Because if nobody appreciates the value of having LTE, that's Apple's strength, educating people on why LTE is going to be a good thing. So and educating people why they're going to want to pay a premium and why they're going to want to cut off their contract early, get the new iPhone. And this is really the point. You're going to have two tiers of iPhones if this materializes. And PocketLint, one of the UK publications, cite sources that say, yes, the next generation iPhone will run on the LTE network, that everything everywhere will roll out. Which, you know, you can take that as credible as you consider PocketLint to be. And they're good guys. So yeah, hopefully they're right. It's going to make it interesting in any case. But the point is, in people's perceptions, it's going to be very easy to distinguish. There's going to be the fast iPhone, fast in terms of the broadband speeds, and the regular iPhone. And since the iPhone is being purchased, at least in some respects, because of its- what's the factor I'm thinking of? Well, bragging rights, right? Yeah. If you want bragging rights and you purchase an iPhone, you're not going to purchase the regular one. You're going to purchase the full fat LTE one. And this is what makes it- I just feel like the iPhone magnifies the effects of this advantage. Well, let's get down to brass tacks. Who's your current carrier? Free. And so what's your plan when the iPhone comes out with LTE on everything everywhere? Let me correct myself. My current carrier is free. I have this habit of pronouncing free as free. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I'm just correcting myself to save the trouble for the really pedantic person in comments. I'm sticking with my carrier because I just exchange phones too quickly and too rapidly. I wouldn't switch for this. But Vlad, I'm going to once again mightily strike down your meticulously constructed argument because this exact same thing happened when the CDMA iPhone 4 came out and again with the 4S, where AT&T has been advertising the fact that they have a significantly faster data experience than Verizon does or Sprint because it's EVDO Rev A versus whatever mysterious form of HSPA plus that AT&T is using. And of course you have the simultaneous voice and data advantage on AT&T as well. And the numbers just don't bear out that there's been this- I mean, like Verizon sells iPhones, Sprint sells iPhones, AT&T sells iPhones. But the net effect of those bragging rights for carriers in terms of customer flow between carriers, I don't think those numbers are particularly large. And so I think you're going to find the same- Well, but so actually I've got to jump in and defend Vlad here because we haven't- this experience that the UK is about to have is going to be unique because with the exception, I think of maybe I'm going to say the EVO 4G on Sprint, which was a new network on a genuinely good phone. We have not had a simultaneous launch of a next generation data network along with a phone that didn't suck. Right? I mean- That's right. You can't say that the Thunderbolt on Verizon, is it all comparable with the iPhone is going to be on everything everywhere? And so did people switch to Verizon for LTE? Yes, but it wasn't a huge like, boom, let's do this now because it took a while to roll out and the first generation of phones were pretty bad. But I know people did switch to Sprint for the EVO 4G. And so I think that we are going to see people buy into the argument that a 4G iPhone is better and faster than the 3G iPhone and we're switching for. The only thing I'm thinking of right now is like the Apple adverts. Think about those. Like first of all, everything everywhere gets free promotion from Apple advertising its next iPhone. But then there's the ads and the ads are going to be really simple and straightforward. It's going to be, I'm downloading a full album and then you see the progress bar. It's like zip, zip, zip with the LTE connection. It's like super fast. And then there'll be an unidentifiable phone on the side or something. If Apple wants to be tongue in cheek, it doesn't matter. But the point is Apple will make it really crystal clear to people why they want LTE and why they want 4G and it's just going to be one place to get it. That's the thing. And everything everywhere, they also revealed today that they're going to launch a new brand, which is just completely nuts and bonkers. But it seems like this new brand they're going to launch might launch together with the 4G service. It might be the brand for the 4G service immediately or initially. And then after a while, after a few months, they might phase out Orange and T-Mobile in the UK. But for a while, there will be Orange, T-Mobile and an unnamed brand from everything everywhere. So we can look forward to complete consumer confusion apart from the iPhone action. To be fair, everything everywhere is pretty much the worst name for a joint venture in the history of the corporate world. Agreed. So anything would be better than that. Anything anywhere would be better than everything everywhere. We can move on now. I'm sorry. It had to be done. Speaking of things that have to be done, we have to talk about BlackBerry 10. Do we? If we do. We have got official screen resolutions, 1280 by 720 and 720 by 720. Yes, with square displays. And we've got a good report from Josh about BlackBerry 2. Let me see if I can find that. But yeah, so square display, which I don't know. I miss square displays. I rocked a trio for a really long time. I think square displays could be a fun instinct. They're the hotness. Let me blow your minds for a minute. Just allow me to just sit back, relax, and let me blow your mind. Imagine a 720 by 720 full touch phone. Think about it for a minute. Just that. Kind of like a kin. Yeah, just exactly like the kin, except without the bottom slide part. Just the top part and perfectly square. You know what, Chris? I'm imagining it and all I can think is you're going to want a strap so you can put it on your wrist. It would probably be a little bit too big. But if it was under three inches, I would probably consider doing exactly that. If it was the size of a Palm Pixie display, which I think was what, 2.8 inches or something like that, I would definitely put that on my wrist. Motorola flip out. Hopeless Wizard just brought it up in the chat. Can't forget about the flip out. Yes. That is what is going to save rim. That form factor. I mean, I'm with you, Chris. If you do a really good, well-designed square form factor phone, that can definitely be a total differentiator and something that people see and are like, yeah, that's a Blackberry. Rim has always had that with its Blackberry because of the iconic keyboard design. So why not move to a new form factor that nobody else uses? Yeah. I'm sorry. I got a photo of the Motorola flip out and I'm just the happiest person ever. The other funny thing is that CEO Thorsten Heins, here's a quote from Josh's piece, sales of the devices in the US took a major hit as carriers transitioned to 4G phones. According to the executive, carrier version to marketing 3G devices was the main culprit for the company's dipping numbers. Oh, man. They're in complete denial. Yes, denial. That's exactly what I was thinking. It's indicative of a worldview that died like three or four years ago where whatever the carrier decides to put in the front window is what sells, right? Well, not just that. You have to admit, if you're him, you have to admit that your devices just aren't competitive anymore. Who does he think he's fooling? Look at your share price. As a CEO, I get it. You want to be communicating to consumers, other businesses, partners, and investors, but everybody sees through this. There isn't even the hint of clothes on the emperor at this stage. Just giving us this BS about Verizon doesn't want to promote 3G phones. Yes, that's true, but that's just a tiny, tiny aspect of why people aren't buying Blackberries anymore. There's also one market. People aren't buying Blackberries now in the UK because there's better alternatives. Earlier in the show, we were saying we hope that Windows Phone 8 becomes a viable contender in the smartphone marketplace. Apparently, Blackberry 10 is out for beta testing right now, beta testing. There's a Blackberry Jam, which is a developer event coming up in late September. We're getting close to 2013. That thing is going to launch. Are you rooting for it at all? Do you care? I've been the secret Blackberry 10 fanboy here, which is a really weird place to be. Yeah, I know. There's some interesting ideas in the OS, but I really want to see the final OS to see if it coheres and makes sense. If it is like, oh yeah, this is a genuinely new way to interact with the phone. I don't know if they're going to be able to pull it off, but if they do, I would like to see them claw back enough market share to survive and continue to provide competition. I think everybody wants to see it. It's the same morbid curiosity that people had toward Palm leading up to the initial webOS announcement. They're like, okay, these guys have been in the labs for a long time now. Let's see what they have cooking. But whether that translates to sales, that's a really, really big stretch for me because Microsoft still has not been able to parlay its initial success with Windows Mobile into any meaningful market share for Windows Phone. The most recent numbers from the major research firms indicate that maybe they've gotten past that bounce, but I don't know if it's a dead cat bounce or if it's a genuine uptick in market share that remains to be seen. To suggest that RIM is going to be able to show something really cool and then immediately turn that into market share, I think it's just a bridge too far. It still comes down to these BlackBerry jam events getting major, not just individual really cool indie developers on board. They need to get all the big names on board and they need to have a concentrated push. That is one very small part of the puzzle, but it is a critical part. Without that, they're totally dead. What's a dead cat bounce? A dead cat bounce is an artificial bounce. It's most commonly associated with a stock price. If a stock price falls dramatically because something bad has happened to a company, there's sometimes an artificial bounce in the stock price because investors think that there's suddenly a really good deal on that stock, but it turns out to be a false bounce and then it immediately crashes again. It's like the stock hits bottom and then there's a short uptick, which is just an after effect of it hitting bottom. It's a fitting analogy, even if it's just freakishly morbid. I think we can all agree that dead cat bounce is a great code name for a square screen BlackBerry. I totally agree. Or maybe dead cat and then the testing of it in the labs when they're doing the ruggedness testing, they call that the dead cat bounce because they're actually throwing the dead cat. Wow. This conversation is getting weird really fast. And dark. Do you guys want to talk about Apple versus Samsung? We already mentioned the Galaxy Nexus ban. As we are recording right now, the closing arguments from Apple are getting live blog on the site. We mentioned this last week, there's a whole other Vergecast special edition you can listen to where they talk about the issues of the case. What blows my mind is that this is going... They're letting the jury decide this? The CEOs met, I want to say two nights ago, and they didn't come to a resolution. They're letting the jury go and decide this thing. We'll see if they settle before the jury comes back. It's crazy, right? Yeah, it is. What it is is it's a multi-billion dollar game of chicken. I think that both sides are so entrenched in their beliefs at this point and feel so strongly about what's happening here that they're really letting that cloud their judgment. Just follow Neelai on Twitter. I'm sure everyone who's listening to this show does, but if you don't, please follow him. He's at Reckless, and he has been providing some very, very concise and important insight into what's happening in the courtroom right now. He's as shocked as anybody that this is actually going to the jury right now. Also, one of the amazing things to mention is that Judge Koh, who's in charge of the entire proceeding slash carnival, she's making people actually stand up in the courtroom to make sure we're still alive. That's an actual vote that we got out of the courtroom. Honestly, I envy Brian from our team for getting to attend these things in person because it really is going to be one of those once in a lifetime surreal experiences that we're going to miss out on, honestly. The fact that there's no live stream for this event is breaking my heart. My favorite Lucy Koh moment. Each side only had 25 hours to present their case, and so they were both trying to get in as many witnesses before the 25 hours got up as possible. Apple says, we want to get in these 20 witnesses in the next hour or whatever it was. Koh says, unless you're smoking crack, you know these witnesses aren't going to get called. The Apple attorney had to be like, first, your honor, I am not smoking crack. I can promise you that. That's amazing. A huge amount of money on the line, the future of Apple's patents and Samsung's patents and the design for both of these companies on the line, and we're talking about smoking crack. It's awesome. Yeah, I have to say both Koh and Posner in the Moberla case have just shown a lot more personality than ever would have expected out of. You think of these kinds of trials, or really the court system in general as being this very stuffy institution, and in many ways it is, but there are these moments of just complete humanity bubbling up out of these cases that you really don't expect. Do we? Okay, I guess we should talk about Google's adding gift cards to Android Market. Let's not talk about what we want to talk about. Let's just freaking talk about something. Let's talk about Google. I don't care. Just get into it, man. No, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I do want to talk about the play cards. Then you girls will do it. I do too. I don't understand what, pardon my French, but I don't understand what the big whoop is about these cards. Can someone please explain to me why anyone cares? I can explain because Google thinks that they're going to compete with iTunes, and you can't compete with iTunes unless you can buy gift cards at Walmart or 7-Eleven. They think that people are going to be putting these gift cards in Christmas cards instead of getting an iTunes gift card, you'll get a Google gift card, and it's going to be a real genuine content store that people want to go and buy movies and TV shows from. They think that they've got a full ecosystem that will, I can buy a TV show and watch it on my Google TV and watch it on my Nexus 7 and watch it on my Android phone. They've got all the pieces of having a content ecosystem except for the content ecosystem. It's all there for Google Play. They need more content in there, but nobody thinks of it that way. Google Play is buying Android apps, but do people really think of like, I'm going to buy five seasons worth of shows on Google Play and just have them around the way that people used to do and maybe I guess still do on iTunes when it's not available to stream on Netflix? It's just, they're, yeah. Obviously the cue, in theory, what the cue was trying to do would be very important to that strategy, but unfortunately the cue was executed so dramatically poorly that it actually plays no role whatsoever, especially now that it's on indefinite hold. So that leaves them without a big screen. There's execution failures all over the place. We had Eric Schmidt saying that Google TV was going to be embedded in every smart TV by now, and that didn't happen. We've got Google TV boxes that are completely underwhelming. The Nexus 7 is far and away the best success story they have in terms of thinking about Google Play as a content ecosystem, but even then, as great as we all think the Nexus 7 is, it's certainly not enough to carry that on its shoulders. So Google Play to me, it's great for getting apps, but it feels like it's a checkbox more than it is a compelling content feature, if only because they're so far behind iTunes in terms of mindshare. And so it's great that they're doing this. They'll get it on store shelves. I'm sorry, I talked so over you, but it's a checkbox for now, but then maybe again Google is laying the foundation to evolve and finally fashion it into a career competitor. No, I mean, gift cards, they're not news in the sense that, wow, fascinating, something I really need to know, but they're new in the fact that they exist now. And they're just one of those formalities, like I say, checkbox stuff that you just need to have to spread your distribution and all of these things. I do have a confession to make here actually. When Chris started talking about the Q, I heard that as Q as in Q-U-E-U-E, the actual word as opposed to the Nexus Q. And for a moment, I just completely forgot about the Nexus Q's existence. So there's two observations to make about that. Now, first of all, I really like the name Q for a streaming device because you can think of it as like the place where your media queue is and where it's waiting for you. So Nexus Q, that actually makes sense to me in that kind of punny way. But second of all, like Chris was saying, that thing is kind of, it was really exciting. It was really interesting when it happened and raised a lot of eyebrows and then just kind of disappeared off the map. Which again, like you guys are saying, like Google TV is just an unfinished something. It has some potential and it's unfinished. I also do kind of feel that way about Google Plus in many ways. You see the potential to take it and just like kick everybody's ass with it. But then Google just isn't putting the finishing touches on it. I don't know. The company lacks polish. Is that what it needs? Well, what's crazy to me too is that the Q is essentially the exact same thing. I can't remember the code name, but they showed it in basically a development kit form at the Google I.O. Prior in 2011 and it evolved into the Q, which is basically just a spherical repackaging of that development kit that didn't really add any functionality as far as I could tell. And so they took a year to, I guess part of that was the fact that they had to build this completely American supply manufacturing chain for it. That took time, I'm sure. But in that year, they didn't really seem to add any functionality or capability to it that would get people excited, particularly at $300. So this is kind of a very Laura wrote about this on the site, but back when the Q was originally announced. But this is kind of a disappointing first attempt at creating an American manufactured consumer electronics device by a major company, right? Because I think that there's so much talk about that right now that it would have been very, very encouraging and interesting to see a wildly successful product at a price point that made sense, that was manufactured in the US. But this just goes to show, I mean, it's the proof that you can't do that at a price. You know, you're going to end up with sticker shock. There's no way to get around it. Well, the thing that's crazy about the Q is like the hardware is great and the price is expensive, sure. But like Google, the software company, like failed on software, right? They failed on execution implementation on the Q. And that's what's so disappointing about it is that it could have been more and maybe it will be. Maybe they'll come back and say, we added the functionality we talked about. But like, what's a bummer about the Q is that there is no earthly reason for them to not have done more with it from the software side. I want to get back to the gift cards, though, because there's one thing I totally think is important to note. Gift cards on iTunes were always super important because they would allow teenagers with iPod touches to buy apps and stuff. So parents could buy gift cards or kids could pay for gift cards with cash at a store and then be able to use that in order to buy stuff on the virtual iTunes store. And it's actually kind of insane that that hasn't happened on Android, which theoretically, since there's so many cheaper Android devices out there, you'd think a lot of teenagers who don't have full access to credit cards would want some kind of gift card solution there. So I'm not saying that it's going to stop piracy because obviously it won't. But it could be that it at least fills that checkbox that if you think about it is actually kind of crazy that wasn't there before. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's a very good point that you make. It's essentially like you can now buy prepaid credit for Google Play Store, which couldn't do before you needed a credit card. But actually on the point about making software and Google software failings, again, I totally agree with you, Dieter. That reminds me of Adobe again and how sometimes you can see a company doing something so well, like one product so well, and then just thinking up the joint with multiple other products. And with Adobe, it's pretty obvious. Photoshop excels. Other products like Lightroom are also strong. And then you have Flash and then you have Premiere Pro, which some people love. Other people like me find just completely overbearing. And I mean, with Google, my example would be Chrome, which I still feel is the best browser hands down. Have you spent quite a bit of time testing Safari 6, which I think is very strong, but Google is just better in the small and the subtle things. Chrome that is. So I think as much as I was just saying that Google might have a systemic problem of never finishing up things clearly and properly, maybe I'm wrong. And maybe it's wrong to consider these companies, just because they're so big nowadays, maybe it's wrong to consider them as one unified company. Because the guys who make Chrome the browser, they're like one group and one team. And the guys who make the Nexus Q software, the guys who make the Google TV software, they're a whole other team, probably anonymous and never to be mentioned again. And I think we might be fairer to products and to pieces of software if we just analyze them on their own strengths and just kind of stop talking about the overarching companies anymore because they're so massive nowadays. It's not like Instagram makes product number two or some other small company like Sparrow before it got taken over by Google, now it's just the Google department. If Sparrow was going to do an RSS reader, for example, then you could say, it's these guys doing that. You can't really say that with Apple, Google, or Microsoft or any of these massive names that we keep talking about. But no, see, here's the thing. These companies are selling themselves on the strength of the ecosystem that you could buy into. And this applies perfectly to Google Play, right? Microsoft has got its ecosystem, but the Xbox and that Windows talking to Xbox better and now smart glasses coming and blah, blah, blah. Apple has got its Apple TV talking via airtime to the computer and the iPads and all those things are talking to each other now with iCloud. So if these companies are going to market themselves on the strength of their ecosystem and interoperability between the devices made by all these disparate different divisions, then I think it's fair to judge them on that. And it's fair to say, you're a giant company. And yes, it's a small team that built this particular product, but it's your responsibility as the giant company to make sure that this team has the resources it needs to make something awesome. Well, I want to believe- It's fair to judge them on that basis. But think about this. Motorola's promise for September 5th is the main event. I can prejudge them right now and say, no, you're wrong. But what I'm saying is that that doesn't really help anybody understand Motorola and what September 5th is going to hold for that company. So as a responsible journalist, which we sometimes try to pretend that we are, I don't think we're being constructive in taking the premise of the ecosystem and then running with it the way that these companies and their press departments are doing, because I don't really think they have these ecosystems. They don't have the ecosystem within their organizations. Most of these companies don't. It's why HP's takeover of Palm was such a freaking disaster because everything is insular and siloed. HP probably has more middle management people than it has cleaners in its offices. And this is the thing that bothers me. I can tell you this. I was speaking to somebody working at Nokia a few years back who probably won't mind me mentioning this because it was a few years back and Nokia's surely fixed everything up since then. But he told me that what you have is separate teams working on one aspect of software. So one team is working on this part of the UI, another team is working on radios and cellular signal and all of that stuff. And then in the final month or two before they decide to launch an announcer device, they all come together and they have a big integration meeting. And to me, that's the crazy thing. If you don't, as a company, have that meeting to start with and then have that consistently going on, how all things fit together, then you can't sell us this ecosystem product. Whether you Google or Apple or anybody. No, and I think that with the exception of Apple, Microsoft especially, I think with Microsoft, things get better. But Google's just not there yet. Wait, you guys are arguing that Microsoft is really good at presenting a unified ecosystem strategy? I'm saying that they're really close. I think Microsoft has one now, which is a change. You can really see it with the Metro style slash modern design style slash whatever Microsoft is going to call it. The way that they're trying to roll it out across their devices points to a strategy. I'm not saying Microsoft is great at communicating that, no. Microsoft is legendary for having these internal warring factions that all have different priorities and different things that they're trying to get done. And I think that that is a, with the exception of Apple, like you said, Dieter, because of the nature of the way that organization is always operated. With the exception of Apple, most large companies suffer from that problem to some degree, particularly at a place like Google, that is really comprised of dozens and dozens of acquisitions over the years. Android was an acquisition. And I think that some of that culture clash continues, it perpetuates. And I continue to believe to this day, I've never been able to get anybody to confirm or even hint to me that this is in fact the case. But I strongly believe that there is a lot of distrust and dislike between Google's Android and Chrome teams over the ongoing debate between Chrome OS versus Android and how those two platforms mesh. And the fact that they seemingly don't. There's like an entire category of devices where it is unclear which direction Google is trying to go. And I would guess that inside the company, both of those divisions are trying to argue that they are the best platform to control this particular class of devices. But didn't that fight get settled already? No, I don't think so. I mean, a new bunch of Chromebooks just came out, right? Oh, yeah. And everybody's thrilled, Chris. You, Louis and Adrian on our team and two other people. Yes, I can't do my Chromebook. Look, I'm just saying they they, you know, Google internally put a lot of work into a brand new UI for Chrome OS. So they are clearly not giving up on it. Last we heard, they're deploying Chromebooks internally as like, you know, Google devices or for staff. So it's not going anywhere. So I just I just think that that kind of mentality where you have all these different divisions that are kind of, you know, set off to go in their own directions and sometimes those directions overlap a little bit. That's where you start to run into that that politicking that kind of is is opposed to what it is that the company as a whole is trying to do. And that's that's the mentality that they constantly need to be fighting. I have no way to wrap that up in a clever conclusion other than they need to get their act together and do it. Yes. They do. Well, I mean, OK, I do want to say like. I like the philosophy behind Chrome OS a little bit better than I like the philosophy behind Android, but in terms of like implementation, Android kicks it up and down the street. Right. And the same is applied to everything that's sort of tried to be based on the Web and be a big consumer success other than, you know, the Web and Web. So we'll see. I would argue I would argue that the the aura UI, which is I think that's what they're calling the new Chrome OS. Yeah, and it just got a tweet today. Yeah, I mean, the the aura UI is excellent, but the reason why it's excellent is because they've abandoned their their attempt to make the device completely browser centric. There is now a UI that exists outside of the browser. So it's kind of like it's a victory, but it's also a loss. Well, it's it's a UI that exists outside the browser, but it's still like, you know, it lives and breathes with Web and Web apps. Right. Right. It doesn't look like a browser, but it's still a Web device. And I mean, I I prefer that openness to. Android's philosophy, I guess, but, you know, nevertheless, the bottom line is, you know, what plays games, what gets work done for you and the open Web isn't there yet as a platform. So, yeah. On that note, I'm going to wrap up. Oh, no, I'm not. Just before we do, just before we do, I would like to just do a little update on my Razer Max adventure here in the UK. Because I mentioned on the last show that I had turned it on as the show started and I wanted to see how long it would last. The first time actually was really disappointing because I unplugged it from the charger in the evening on the Tuesday and then it needed to recharge by the evening on the Wednesday, which was weird to me because it has this massive, massive battery and it was just in standby. Whatever happened between that first charge and the second was magical because from Wednesday night with standby, a little bit of camera use and just regular phone use, it lasted until Monday night. Which for any sort of smartphone is epic. So it's insane. But like that's Android. Android on a first boot after like a reset. It needs to like settle in. And this is a really common topic, you know, since I've been flashing ROMs on my One X, people are like, let it let the ROM settle in for a day or two before you start judging the battery life. It seems like most of these phones get better battery life after the OS has sort of gotten into a groove. And I have no idea if that actually is reflected by what's happening behind the scenes, you know, with what the software is doing. But I've seen like that advice repeated over and over and maybe it's just to make people go away. But I don't know, it's really abusing. It sounds like a wine drinking advice. What you want to do is you want to open it up and then just let it settle down. Let it breathe. Let it settle down overnight. The next night you just keep it in a nice cool area. If you haven't got one, just like move to the South of France. They have them in abundance. And yeah, then you let it down and it's beautiful. No, but I was going to say thumbs up for the battery life, which is excellent. But thumbs down for Motorola's really horrible rollout of the Android 4.0 update. Because this phone that I've got still has gingerbread. And first of all, the Droidrazr Max and Droidrazr in the United States got ice cream sandwich first before the European version. Why that needed to happen, I don't know, but fine. Okay, so this is late for the European version. Then the European version comes and all you can actually find on the web about it is it's happening. It's OTA. You can get yours. And I haven't had mine. And it's been like a month since they announced they're doing the European rollout. It's not acceptable. It's really late. Seriously. Part for the course. I mean, that's not getting fixed and it's not getting fixed with Jelly Bean. How long has that been announced? And, you know, maybe we'll see it on the Galaxy S3 soon. That would be impressive if that actually happens. But I like I've given up even being angry about Android OS updates because I just my expectations have just been beaten down into the ground. And so I just I just assume it's going to be terrible. Yeah. And do you know what else? This is the fifth event. Whatever comes out of it is going to be running ice cream sandwich. Of course. Not the Nokia event. Not the Nokia event. That's true. Yes. Yes. Great correction, Chris. Great correction. And I know it seems like really spoiled and weird for me to be complaining. Oh, it's only running ice cream sandwich. But the point is the same point we've been drumming on with Gingerbread is not running the latest version of the operating system. And if it's not, why the hell are you launching it? Like sort your phone out, sort your software out. Give me the latest at the time that I can buy it. Because that's what Apple does. That's what Microsoft and Nokia are going to do on September 5th. And if all of these Android OEMs just keep finding it acceptable to just update their phones later, and as I say, do it in an inconsistent manner that gets into some people, doesn't get into other people, it's going to piss me off. And that's a bad thing. Because I'm one of the people. And the people speak with their wallets. That's all I have to say. On that inspiring note, thank you very much for watching and listening to the Verge Mobile Show. If you want to follow us on Twitter, you totally should. Together we are at Verge, I'm at Backlant, Vlad is at Vlad Savov, Chris is at ZPower, and we will be back at the internet next week. Thanks for watching.
 So, last night I got in like a Twitter fight about which Dungeons & Dragons campaign is
 the best, and I picked Dark Sun for what I think are really obvious reasons.
 But let's face it, that's pretty nerdy.
 And Chris Ziegler, if you want to talk to him about the Fast and the Furious, he will
 fastly, quickly and furiously tell you which one is the best and why.
 And if you want to talk to Vlad about whether kale or wheatgrass has a higher and more important
 nutritional value for your body, bless his beating heart under his well-muscled chest,
 he can talk to you about that at length.
 So we're all nerds.
 We're all nerds together, and we're all nerds together about phones.
 And if you're watching this show right now, let's face it, chances are you are too.
 And you know what?
 That's actually kind of awesome.
 So let's not be ashamed.
 Let's be nerds together.
 Stay tuned for the Verge Mobile Show.
 Hi, I'm Dieter Baum.
 I'm Vlad Samov.
 And I'm Chris Ziegler.
 And this is Verge Mobile Show.
 It is lucky episode number 13 for the week of August 20th, 2012.
 And we've got a lot of mobile phone news to talk about.
 How are you guys?
 How are you nerds?
 I'm good.
 I feel really good about that introduction.
 You really got to the heart of me there.
 I actually can opine on the different categories and types of cabbage, which one is my favorite
 on a given day of the week.
 Well, I went to different categories.
 Cabbage and wheatgrass really aren't directly comparable, are they?
 I mean, that wasn't really fair.
 But I'm not a huge nutritional cabbage nerd.
 So I guess I can't really speak to that.
 But I do love kale.
 We joined a co-op that delivers fresh vegetables to our apartment door.
 And so I've been eating a ton of kale lately, which is pretty awesome.
 Good.
 I'm proud of you.
 I don't know if this counts toward any nutritional street cred.
 But I just had a tall, cool glass of V8, which I'm told has eight different vegetables in
 it spanning several different color groups.
 They've got the red group, the orange group, and the green group.
 I'm pretty sure it also has your monthly allowance, your RMA of salt.
 No, that's why you get the lowest.
 Stop being an amateur, Dieter.
 You got to get the lowest sodium V8.
 All right.
 Okay, so I'm a V8 nerd apparently.
 Hey, everybody.
 Say hi to Nate Ralph.
 Where's Nate Ralph?
 I don't see Nate Ralph.
 He's right behind.
 I'm looking at the video feed.
 Yeah, well, there he is.
 So yeah, he's at the Verge West office, which is pretty awesome.
 We should just get started talking about the news.
 And I think the main thing to talk about is just how insane September 5th is going to
 be.
 Right?
 Well, really, September in total, right?
 Because you have Apple presumably in the middle of the month.
 But yeah, September 5th in particular is going to be just a complete nightmare.
 Yeah, let's not disregard IFA because I'm actually going to be there.
 So let's not undersell IFA, which is the thing that happens before September 5th.
 That's 10 end of August, first few days of September.
 That's when we're going to see the Galaxy Note 2 from Samsung and maybe something else.
 You kind of expect the other companies to wake up and do something as well since Motorola
 is going to do a new device on the 5th, which is, you know, it's going to be an Android
 device.
 What are the other Android device makers doing?
 If Motorola is doing something, Samsung is doing something with the Galaxy Note 2, how
 do the others respond?
 How does HTC respond?
 Is LG still in this market at all?
 Let's not overplay this Motorola announcement.
 I know that Motorola wants you to think that this is the most important event of September.
 But you'll notice that on the invite for that event, they have the Verizon logo, which I
 think almost certainly means that this is going to be the Razer HD, which is sort of
 correct me if I'm wrong, but I mean, it's basically just an Atrix HD in a Razer body
 for Verizon.
 So I mean, it's cool and all.
 I mean, that's great.
 But I don't think that that is going to be the most exciting thing happening next month.
 I mean, I'm personally excited because I mean, I like the Atrix.
 And I think that, you know, an Atrix done right could be well, I guess it wasn't done
 wrong in the first place, but you know, that could be interesting.
 But I mean, someone in the chat just said that Motorola trolled Nokia by saying, join
 us for the day's main event.
 Oh, big time.
 Like, that's totally true.
 Like, that is so terrible.
 That's exactly so.
 So we should talk about Nokia though.
 Yeah.
 Just a moment.
 I'm being distracted by people in chat, in whole separate chat.
 Yes, well, Nokia, the Nokia event, September 5th is going to be Windows Phone 8.
 It's going to be at least one device.
 Stop sending me chat messages, you troll.
 I'm talking to Chris.
 I wasn't sending a chat message to you.
 I was sending a chat message to our producer, Brandon.
 I was right.
 I was right.
 Actually, we should just point out that while this podcast is happening, we have the chat
 on the site, so we're watching what people are saying to us as we talk.
 We have our own chat where we're talking to each other and sending each other secret messages,
 which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.
 We also have got our internal chat for Verge work.
 And actually, there's anywhere between like four and six rooms that we might be in and
 looking at text flowing down.
 And I don't know about you guys, but I usually have got-
 While D2 was giving that explanation, somebody peeked in through the door of my bedroom.
 So it's just, we're so freaking popular, we can't be left alone for a good few, 60, 90
 minutes to nerd out about kale.
 Wait, wait, wait.
 Vlad, I want to go back for just one second.
 The vagueness of that statement concerns me.
 Someone peeked in through the door of your bedroom?
 Like how many random people did you just have crawling around your house where someone,
 some mysterious individual peeks through your bedroom?
 Yes, but Chris, if I personally identify the individual and you don't know the individual,
 how useful is it to you or to anybody in our audience?
 That's true.
 To them, it's just somebody.
 We've already established that Vlad is into nutrition and we've established for a long
 time now that Vlad is a communist.
 It's obvious that he lives on a collectivist farm somewhere.
 And so there's no way of knowing which crazy Kibbutz inhabitant has opened his door to
 peek in.
 That's true.
 Seriously, Nokia, come on.
 Let's try and stay in track for a moment.
 The point I was making is the amount of text that we have flowing by while we're trying
 to talk is insane.
 How many one-line communiques do you see in the course of a day?
 It's completely insane.
 And this is why we can't talk about Nokia because we're completely distracted all the
 time.
 Yeah.
 I had a really nice quote from some old timey people.
 Oh, God, the quote from Civilization, the one about bureaucracy, people appreciated
 that.
 So I recall another quote which reminds me here.
 A French philosopher, again, I've managed to forget the name, said that distractions
 are our worst enemy.
 And I've also managed to forget the freaking quote.
 I don't know why I'm quoting it.
 But it's like we try and find distractions from the misery of life, but then they actually
 take over and then they become our worst enemy.
 They then themselves become essentially the misery and the tragedy of life.
 And there's a lot of truth to that.
 If you sit down and think about it, you might just cover more of that truth if you go to
 an Amsterdam cafe and really sit down and think about it.
 But seriously, Nokia, let me just finish up with these guys.
 So they're doing a Windows Phone 8 announcement, at least one device.
 Could be a couple.
 We don't know exactly.
 They're doing it in conjunction with Microsoft.
 So as far as you know, this is going to be the first Windows Phone 8 device announcement.
 Both of them are making essentially the flagship Windows Phone 8 announcement.
 I would expect that to be the case anyway, given their close partnership.
 And as Dieter was saying, Motorola is trying to troll the entire thing by calling its event
 on the same day the main event for September 5th.
 And I totally agree with Dieter.
 The main event for September 5th, OK, Microsoft Windows Phone 8.
 That's it.
 What do you think, Chris?
 Yeah.
 And it's not just about Nokia, of course, right?
 It's about sort of the rest of the reveal for Windows Phone 8, which is a pretty big
 deal.
 And I think it's very notable.
 This is something that I don't think that people have discussed too much.
 But just the fact that Microsoft is allowing Nokia to take the lead on doing the full consumer
 reveal of the next version of Windows Phone is a big step for both companies and their
 partnership.
 And I don't know what that means to other OEMs.
 But I don't think that anyone has really known exactly where the other Windows Phone OEM
 teams have stood for for a good year now.
 But but yeah, this is going to be a really big deal both for Nokia and for Microsoft.
 And I'm excited.
 I know that I say that leading up to every single Windows Phone announcement.
 But this is a platform that I'm genuinely intrigued by and really want to see succeed
 and become entrenched as a viable player because they are genuinely trying to do something
 different and cool and notable.
 So hopefully this is it.
 I don't you know, not to say that I want to see these particular Nokia phones succeed,
 but just this platform.
 I hope that this causes it to flourish in a way that it hasn't so far.
 The thing that I'd be really interested in is if we get carrier announcements alongside
 Nokia stuff, because, you know, we've had rumors for quite a long time that Verizon
 might be jumping in with both feet on Windows Phone.
 And if you stop and think about it, you know, Verizon going all in on Windows Phone at the
 same time and maybe going all in with Nokia would actually be a pretty big deal for all
 three of the companies involved here.
 And I think that would that would really help.
 The other thing that I'm really curious about is, you know, what else haven't we seen in
 the full reveal of Windows Phone 8?
 I mean, we know what the smaller tiles we know about, you know, a couple like small
 sort of nerdy developer type features and whatnot.
 But I still feel like there's got to be some other big flashy consumer facing feature that
 hasn't been put forth yet.
 I think so.
 I think that they're they're holding back.
 And I think that that Greg Sullivan, who kind of did the PR tour around the last Windows
 Phone 8 event, he actually said that, right.
 There's still a lot yet to be revealed.
 And I hope that's true.
 I hope we see some really cool stuff at that event on the 5th.
 But you know, I hate to belabor the point about other OEMs, but where does this leave?
 You know, HTC obviously is the big one.
 Samsung, I don't know.
 We're hearing rumors about this Odyssey device and there's one other from Samsung I think
 we've talked about in the past that came out of the trial documents in Apple versus Samsung.
 But it's the fact that that they're basically co-branding this as a Nokia Microsoft event
 and doing this big Windows Phone 8 reveal there is just really interesting to me.
 Of course, I mean, I guess I guess Google did the same thing with with ICS, right?
 They they co-branded that as a Samsung Galaxy Nexus ICS event.
 So, you know, whatever.
 Well, to reverse the point about Samsung, I know that both Ross Miller and Neelai have
 been very forthright about their opinion with Samsung.
 And the way that they express it is take a look at Samsung's latest and greatest Android
 phone and take a look at Samsung's latest and greatest Windows Phone.
 One of them says, this is our business, this is what we rely on.
 The other one says, eh, you know, we'll just do this so there's some diversity to our portfolio.
 That's it.
 And also the thing that we've seen with these Samsung leaks, stuff that has emerged from
 the documents kind of seems like they're going to do a Galaxy S3 shell, but for Windows Phone,
 which again, for Windows Phone enthusiasts is exciting, right?
 They want that software and they want Samsung's latest hardware.
 But the fact of the matter is the Galaxy S3 is no longer Samsung's very latest hardware.
 You know, it's a few months old.
 Samsung brings the trend first and then trickles it down to Windows.
 It is still their latest hardware.
 Well, no, the latest hardware is in the labs, Chris.
 But you know what I'm saying?
 It's been a few months.
 And the latest hardware by the time these Windows Phone devices come out will be the
 Galaxy Note 2.
 But what I'm saying is Windows Phone is essentially the trickle down OS for Samsung.
 Right.
 Yeah, I will definitely agree.
 That's fair.
 I can agree with that.
 But I mean, the question about it continuing to be the trickle down OS, I think you're
 right about Samsung, but will it be for HTC?
 You know, HTC is not doing well right now.
 And you know, is there space for Windows Phone to give them a bump, especially with so much
 attention being given to Nokia?
 Well, I'm not convinced that that would be the case, because in that case, it would be
 essentially change for change's sake.
 Because as you feel like if you look at the options that the OEMs have, Android is the
 best.
 Like the iPhone isn't an option.
 iOS isn't an option for them to pick up.
 So that's not even a conversation.
 And Android is clearly ahead of Windows Phone, unless the hidden feature that Microsoft has
 for Windows Phone is some underground ecosystem that has been cooking up.
 And all of a sudden, boom, there's like 100 pretty superb apps for Windows Phone, which
 you didn't know about before and which are now awesome.
 So switching over to Windows Phone would be just, well, we're different as far as HTC
 is concerned.
 But then who are you different from?
 You're different from the Android guys, you're different from Samsung, but you're not actually
 different from Nokia.
 And then you're falling into another trap, which is if you invest really severely and
 deeply into Windows Phone, you're having to fight Nokia.
 And Nokia's strength is design and all of the things that they've established that distinguish
 an OEM.
 So I don't really like that fight for HTC either.
 I think HTC needs to just keep doing what it's been doing and hope that it can just
 do it better, essentially, just execute better.
 Well, on a macro level, I think the question is, is there some economic principle that
 ultimately dictates that there needs to be a one-to-one relationship between platforms
 and successful profitable OEMs?
 And that's the question that remains to be answered.
 But the market cannot feasibly support more than three, maybe four platforms.
 There's no evidence to suggest that anything beyond that will survive over the past few
 years.
 So now the question is, can these, I don't want to call them second tier, but these OEMs
 that aren't the leading OEM on each platform, can they carve out enough market to stay profitable?
 And of course, Nokia has the Windows Phone relationship locked up.
 Samsung has Android locked up.
 Where does that leave everybody else?
 Not just HTC, but LG.
 We have these Chinese guys that are really trying to make a splash right now, like Huawei
 and ZTE.
 I'm sure that they can be successful in the Asian market.
 But can they find a niche in North America?
 I don't know.
 I don't think so.
 I mean, even HTC has said that they're going to make a push in China, right?
 Didn't we see that come through?
 And I mean, we've got the story of the HTC CEO, Peter Chow.
 There was a memo that there's multiple areas where HTC needs improvement.
 I mean, Vlad, you said they need to just keep on doing what they've been doing and just
 do it better.
 And I'm hard pressed to disagree with you.
 But if the One Series didn't do it for them, what other ammo have they got sitting in their
 arsenal?
 Yeah.
 Stuck Android.
 It's never going to happen.
 Listen, it's a stuck answer, but it's true.
 But it is actually.
 No, it isn't.
 Last night, no, no, no.
 Let me, last night, because there's another Apple versus Samsung case going on besides
 the main one, which by the way, there's a live blog of Apple's closing arguments right
 now happening, which you should read while you listen to this.
 But in the other case, which was the Galaxy Nexus ban, and that's about universal search.
 So it went to an appeals court and Samsung is trying to argue that the Galaxy Nexus hasn't
 caused irreparable harm to the iPhone.
 And the quote from their lawyer was that it had a minuscule amount of sales.
 And Samsung has only made, I think it was 250 million off of the Galaxy Nexus in the
 US.
 So that was not a tiny event, the launch of the Galaxy Nexus.
 Google was behind it.
 It was the thing.
 It wasn't a huge Apple level event.
 But it's on three carriers.
 It's on four if you want to buy it unlocked.
 And it hasn't taken off.
 So I don't feel like, it's not about stock.
 It's about marketing muscle and push.
 And I guess we haven't really seen anybody put that behind stock.
 But I just have a feeling like if HTC were to do it, they'd get some goodwill from the
 hardcore Android fans.
 I would love it, but I'm a hardcore Android fan, I guess.
 But I just don't see that it's a path to huge success for them.
 I totally agree.
 To this day, there's no evidence to suggest that the average consumer walking into a US
 retail store can differentiate between skin Android and stock Android, nor do they care.
 Yeah.
 OK.
 I agree with the first part.
 I disagree with the second part.
 The first part, they can't distinguish and differentiate.
 Fine.
 But do they care?
 Yes, they care.
 Stock Android versus Sense is a better user experience.
 And my question was for Dieter, on your HTC One X, what software are you running at the
 moment, Dieter?
 That's a very interesting question.
 I am running Cyanogen Mod 10, which, by the way, is not stock Android.
 But it is an effort to add it.
 It's so much closer to it than Sense.
 I don't even know what to tell you guys.
 I write a piece where I say the Galaxy Nexus is still the best Android phone you can buy.
 Chris disagrees with me.
 Then both of you end up on the Galaxy Nexus, at least temporarily.
 Then I argue stock Android is preferable to Sense just on the quality of user experience.
 Never mind if people can recognize which is which.
 I'm saying they can recognize the quality of the user experience, which is better on
 stock.
 And then you guys are using it on your phones.
 So I mean, the facts bear out that I'm just always right.
 And also, there's another fact that Tom Warren bought a Galaxy Nexus the other day.
 And Tom Warren, he's got Microsoft tattoos on every body part.
 Which is really painful, by the way.
 But he buys Android just because of the stock experience in Galaxy Nexus.
 I mean, he wanted to learn about it, but he loves it.
 That's the other thing.
 He bought it and he's fallen in love with it.
 So look, Vlad, I want to make it very clear.
 The only reason I'm using Galaxy Nexus now is because I like there's still something
 very magical to me about tapping in a cab to pay for my fare.
 And the Galaxy S3, as far as I know, does not have the secure element necessary to get
 Google Wallet working.
 At least not the North American versions.
 With the exception of the Sprint.
 So what you're telling me is you're only using this phone because it has more functionality
 than other phones.
 I get it.
 No, look.
 That's like a pretty shallow reason to buy this.
 Look, Google Wallet has nothing to do with stock, right?
 Can we all agree?
 There are two completely unrelated issues.
 Yeah, OK, fine.
 They are fine.
 Should we move on?
 I'm interested in this.
 We have one more thing that we need to talk about with this September 5th event, which
 is the elephant in the room, which is that it's a week before the rumored iPhone event.
 And so it's hard to get around the sense that these companies are trying to get their announcements
 out before the iPhone just so that they can get a little bit of attention.
 Because after the 12th, the rumored new iPhone announced, they'll just be iPhone, iPhone,
 iPhone.
 And that's it.
 Yeah.
 But by the way, I think that's the wrong strategy.
 I think that's completely the wrong strategy, because what that means is that they are giving
 themselves a fixed, like a known fixed amount of time in which they can get any attention
 whatsoever.
 And then there's the Apple event and then boom, like any, you know, any attention that
 they had, any spotlight, any fraction of the spotlight that they had is instantly wiped
 off the map.
 If they announce after the iPhone, they control, you know, they can dial in the product in
 the event and the way they announce the event.
 And then there's really no bound.
 There's no limit to how long they can control that spotlight.
 So I don't really understand the notion of like rushing to get something announced before
 an Apple event.
 It just doesn't really make any sense to me.
 I'm not sure, Chris.
 I mean, first of all, it's very much in line with the habit in the industry.
 I mean, if you think of CES, CES kicks off, let's say, the fifth of January, thereabouts.
 Everybody pre announces their announcements on like 31st of December nowadays just to
 get there first, just to be able to say first, we got there first, we did this first, which
 is a terrible habit.
 But so many companies maintain it.
 And if you recall Microsoft with its Surface launch event, everybody commented that although
 the promotional video was great and the Surface tablets were clearly well developed and designed
 over a long period of time, the actual event felt extremely hurried.
 So Microsoft was also in a rush to get there ahead of somebody else, get there in the right
 news cycle, whatever.
 And I'm not even convinced that if you announce, let's say, a week after the iPhone, as opposed
 to a week before it, I'm not convinced that you can get that much hype because everybody
 will be too busy saying, okay, it's two days until the iPhone pre-orders start shipping.
 Has anybody got the iPhone pre-orders?
 Have you had a shipping confirmation?
 I mean, it's always my new share that comes with an iPhone launch.
 And it annoys me and I'm sure it annoys most people, but it happens.
 And that then tends to become the news coverage, which is annoying for everybody, but it's
 just the way it is.
 I wholeheartedly disagree, but you are entitled to your opinion.
 Well, how about something we can all agree on?
 AT&T's FaceTime policy, they are not charging extra technically, but they are requiring
 a different, I believe slightly more expensive plan.
 You're going to need to get on the mobile share plan in order to use FaceTime as opposed
 to their standard plans.
 And am I right that mobile share is replacing what's currently DataPro, which is their tethering
 plan, or am I high and drunk?
 I've been assured by AT&T that the mobile share plans are supplemental to their existing
 plans.
 And now over time, through moves like this FaceTime move, they are hoping to kind of
 like naturally obsolete the quote unquote legacy plans.
 So when they announced mobile share, one of the things that they were touting was the
 fact that unlike Verizon, where they are now putting everybody on a share everything plan,
 on AT&T, they are not doing that.
 But this is, I mean, it's six and one half dozen of the other.
 They're going to end up with moves like this, just putting all these old plans in a very
 bad place.
 Yeah, I mean, I'm paying for the DataPro plan right now, which is the plan that costs a
 bit more to include tethering, which like, given how easy it is to like get tethering
 sneakily on smartphones these days, I kind of feel like I'm just doing it out of like
 a Boy Scout sense of morality.
 But there it is.
 So I mean, this won't affect me.
 I'm sure I'll switch over to the mobile share and that'll be that.
 But I imagine there's going to be a bunch of people that are going to have to be making
 a hard decision of, do I want to pay more for basically the same data in order to get
 this feature?
 And so there's been a lot of noise about whether or not it breaks the FCC's open internet rules.
 And Chris, you actually wrote a really good piece on exactly what the story is here.
 Yeah, I think that everybody is hoping that this move violates the FCC's existing rules
 that are a part of its open internet initiative.
 And I don't have the exact verbiage in front of me, but it says something to the effect
 of a wireless carrier cannot block an application or service that competes with its own voice
 or video services.
 And I'm postulating that AT&T is going to argue very hard over the coming weeks and
 months when this becomes a huge public policy debate that FaceTime does not compete directly
 or really even indirectly with any service that it offers itself, right?
 Because AT&T does not offer a mobile video calling service.
 And you can't really make a compelling argument that FaceTime is a direct replacement for
 AT&T's voice service because FaceTime can't, at least currently can't be used in a voice
 only mode and you can't call people that are using non-Apple devices with it.
 I have a piece of duct tape here that disagrees with that assertion.
 I'm just pointing that out.
 Fair enough.
 Yeah, I mean, I just think that AT&T believes that they've carved open just enough of a
 loophole in the existing open internet regulations so that this is not going to be a problem
 for them.
 Verizon, you know, so the next obvious question is will Verizon do the same thing?
 They are in a slightly more tenuous position only because they're sitting on that 700 megahertz
 spectrum, the block C spectrum, so-called block C spectrum that has the open access
 provision attached to it.
 And that is a much more stringent set of regulations just on that one block of spectrum that would
 make it almost certainly illegal for them to try to do something like this.
 But I think unfortunately, I'm not happy about it.
 I wasn't happy about writing this report.
 I was just delivering the bad news that I really don't think that there is any existing
 law in place that prevents AT&T from legally doing this.
 Well, you know, what could prevent AT&T from doing this, Chris, is some actual competition
 as opposed to your essentially state-sponsored duopoly over in the US, which I am going to
 just use as a segue, a perfectly self-serving segue to transition into the UK and our carrier
 situation, which has had quite a tumultuous day today because Everything Everywhere, which
 is the company that was set up from the combination of T-Mobile and Orange, they got approval
 from Ofcom, local regulator, to do an LTE network on some spare spectrum that they had,
 1800 megahertz.
 So now they have licenses to do 4G LTE on 1800 megahertz.
 And everybody is freaked out and pissed off about it.
 Vodafone, O2, Free, everybody.
 They're just- Okay, actually, can you explain to me why
 I should feel bad for these companies that aren't going to get to launch their LTE networks
 at the same time as Everything Everywhere?
 Because I don't get it.
 I genuinely am like, what's the problem?
 I'm like, sorry guys, they happen to get lucky with the way that they manage their spectrum
 and they're going to be able to launch sooner.
 Maybe it's just that in the US, we've seen carriers launch networks ahead of each other
 and that's just the way it is.
 And so I'm just used to carriers competing on the quality of their spectrum and what
 kind of data speeds that can offer as opposed to Europe, everybody pretty much is on a more
 equal par there.
 But I don't see where the justification is to be unhappy about this.
 Of course, the other companies, it makes sense for them to say, oh, yeah, this is unfair.
 But what's genuinely unfair about it?
 Your point is fair enough, Tieto.
 But the primary issue is the delay.
 Because first of all, there's going to be an auction to set off the spectrum that the
 UK government has assigned for 4G LTE in the UK.
 That's going to be 800 megahertz, which is going to be the primary real estate.
 And I believe it's 2.6 gigahertz, which is going to be the slightly rougher one, a slightly
 cheaper version.
 The trouble is, everything everywhere is allowed to launch this 4G service almost now, like
 two weeks from now, 11th of September.
 I don't know that they'll have the service ready on that date, but that's when you can
 start rolling it out.
 Everybody else has the same sort of spectrum or bandwidth that everything everywhere has
 to make use of the same.
 What I actually found out was that the Ofcom decision affects all carriers.
 So if anybody else wants to do LTE at 800 megahertz, 1800 megahertz, they can do it.
 They just don't have, as I say, the bandwidth to do that.
 I just don't know why is that everything everywhere is a problem, though.
 The issue is that the auction isn't going to start taking bids until early next year,
 and people won't be able to get actual service from every carrier on an even footing on an
 equal basis until at least this time next year.
 So everything everywhere is getting, essentially, a year's head start.
 That's all well and good.
 And I'm shedding a single tear for Vodafone, one of the largest conglomerates in the world.
 But the fact remains that under no circumstances should Ofcom or FCC or the CRTC or any other
 regulatory body around the world be artificially inhibiting innovation just because other companies
 don't think that it's quote unquote fair.
 Well, the thing is market distortions, Chris.
 It's something that the Europeans care about and the Americans don't.
 There are effects.
 I mean, that's the other thing.
 In the US, you guys, and this is kind of straight into the legal side of things, you guys take
 a more formalistic perspective, where it's like, are the originating conditions fair
 and then let people go and kill each other if that's what the market decides?
 Whereas here in Europe, people take a more consequentialist perspective and they say,
 OK, this appears fair on the surface, letting these guys have the network.
 And as I say, Ofcom, the European Union, they've approved this.
 The European Union separately, it's all of the thing, approving the merger between T-Mobile
 and Orange previously.
 But they've approved it, so they're fine with it.
 But the point is that the concern here was about what the effect would be of having one
 carrier in the UK with 4G for a whole year in front of everybody else.
 And the thing that makes this more interesting and exciting is if this next generation iPhone,
 which we all kind of anticipate will have OT, if that actually runs on this network.
 Right?
 Because any-
 Yeah, that particular thing, the piece you wrote on that, that explains why these other
 carriers are freaking out and trying to make the case that this is unfair.
 That perfectly explains it.
 Yeah.
 Look, if you're the only LTE network, you've got a massive advantage over everybody else.
 Because the other thing is nobody in the UK has done the false 4G claims that you've had
 in the US.
 So people in the UK, I'm sorry, aren't as jaded to the idea of 4G as Americans are.
 So if you come out and you say, yes, Chris?
 I've got news for you.
 It had WiMAX for a long ass time before anyone had LTE here and no one gave two you-know-what
 about it.
 Well, that's because it's WiMAX.
 No, it's not.
 No.
 No.
 Sorry.
 I mean, it was way faster than anything else on the market when it was available.
 But I don't think that it's...
 I mean, you got to keep in mind that some people are still under tariff.
 But I mean, it's not like the entire country is going to rush into everything everywhere
 just because they started advertising LTE.
 That's absolutely correct, Chris.
 And I had to tell you, reading the comments from our UK readers and also speaking to Aaron,
 who's my local colleague, a lot of people actually aren't all that excited.
 A lot of people would prefer to have more data on the 3G and more reliable data on the
 3G service than to have a faster 4G service.
 I'm not convinced that once they get a taste of 4G, they won't be like, holy, you know,
 such and such.
 This is like the written iPad.
 It's so much better.
 I can't live without it anymore.
 Because that's how you guys feel, right?
 Over in the US now that you have LTE services.
 But at the moment, the latent excitement, the anticipation of 4G and LTE in the UK isn't
 that strong.
 So Chris's point is valid.
 But here's the thing, all of these reservations and considerations that we might have about
 the impact of one network, because it is one network, even though it's two brands, having
 4G and nobody else having it for a year, they get kind of nullified, again, by the iPhone's
 effect.
 Because if nobody appreciates the value of having LTE, that's Apple's strength, educating
 people on why LTE is going to be a good thing.
 So and educating people why they're going to want to pay a premium and why they're going
 to want to cut off their contract early, get the new iPhone.
 And this is really the point.
 You're going to have two tiers of iPhones if this materializes.
 And PocketLint, one of the UK publications, cite sources that say, yes, the next generation
 iPhone will run on the LTE network, that everything everywhere will roll out.
 Which, you know, you can take that as credible as you consider PocketLint to be.
 And they're good guys.
 So yeah, hopefully they're right.
 It's going to make it interesting in any case.
 But the point is, in people's perceptions, it's going to be very easy to distinguish.
 There's going to be the fast iPhone, fast in terms of the broadband speeds, and the
 regular iPhone.
 And since the iPhone is being purchased, at least in some respects, because of its- what's
 the factor I'm thinking of?
 Well, bragging rights, right?
 Yeah.
 If you want bragging rights and you purchase an iPhone, you're not going to purchase the
 regular one.
 You're going to purchase the full fat LTE one.
 And this is what makes it- I just feel like the iPhone magnifies the effects of this advantage.
 Well, let's get down to brass tacks.
 Who's your current carrier?
 Free.
 And so what's your plan when the iPhone comes out with LTE on everything everywhere?
 Let me correct myself.
 My current carrier is free.
 I have this habit of pronouncing free as free.
 Sorry, sorry, sorry.
 I'm just correcting myself to save the trouble for the really pedantic person in comments.
 I'm sticking with my carrier because I just exchange phones too quickly and too rapidly.
 I wouldn't switch for this.
 But Vlad, I'm going to once again mightily strike down your meticulously constructed
 argument because this exact same thing happened when the CDMA iPhone 4 came out and again
 with the 4S, where AT&T has been advertising the fact that they have a significantly faster
 data experience than Verizon does or Sprint because it's EVDO Rev A versus whatever mysterious
 form of HSPA plus that AT&T is using.
 And of course you have the simultaneous voice and data advantage on AT&T as well.
 And the numbers just don't bear out that there's been this- I mean, like Verizon sells iPhones,
 Sprint sells iPhones, AT&T sells iPhones.
 But the net effect of those bragging rights for carriers in terms of customer flow between
 carriers, I don't think those numbers are particularly large.
 And so I think you're going to find the same-
 Well, but so actually I've got to jump in and defend Vlad here because we haven't- this
 experience that the UK is about to have is going to be unique because with the exception,
 I think of maybe I'm going to say the EVO 4G on Sprint, which was a new network on a
 genuinely good phone.
 We have not had a simultaneous launch of a next generation data network along with a
 phone that didn't suck.
 Right?
 I mean-
 That's right.
 You can't say that the Thunderbolt on Verizon, is it all comparable with the iPhone is going
 to be on everything everywhere?
 And so did people switch to Verizon for LTE?
 Yes, but it wasn't a huge like, boom, let's do this now because it took a while to roll
 out and the first generation of phones were pretty bad.
 But I know people did switch to Sprint for the EVO 4G.
 And so I think that we are going to see people buy into the argument that a 4G iPhone is
 better and faster than the 3G iPhone and we're switching for.
 The only thing I'm thinking of right now is like the Apple adverts.
 Think about those.
 Like first of all, everything everywhere gets free promotion from Apple advertising its
 next iPhone.
 But then there's the ads and the ads are going to be really simple and straightforward.
 It's going to be, I'm downloading a full album and then you see the progress bar.
 It's like zip, zip, zip with the LTE connection.
 It's like super fast.
 And then there'll be an unidentifiable phone on the side or something.
 If Apple wants to be tongue in cheek, it doesn't matter.
 But the point is Apple will make it really crystal clear to people why they want LTE
 and why they want 4G and it's just going to be one place to get it.
 That's the thing.
 And everything everywhere, they also revealed today that they're going to launch a new brand,
 which is just completely nuts and bonkers.
 But it seems like this new brand they're going to launch might launch together with the 4G
 service.
 It might be the brand for the 4G service immediately or initially.
 And then after a while, after a few months, they might phase out Orange and T-Mobile in
 the UK.
 But for a while, there will be Orange, T-Mobile and an unnamed brand from everything everywhere.
 So we can look forward to complete consumer confusion apart from the iPhone action.
 To be fair, everything everywhere is pretty much the worst name for a joint venture in
 the history of the corporate world.
 Agreed.
 So anything would be better than that.
 Anything anywhere would be better than everything everywhere.
 We can move on now.
 I'm sorry.
 It had to be done.
 Speaking of things that have to be done, we have to talk about BlackBerry 10.
 Do we?
 If we do.
 We have got official screen resolutions, 1280 by 720 and 720 by 720.
 Yes, with square displays.
 And we've got a good report from Josh about BlackBerry 2.
 Let me see if I can find that.
 But yeah, so square display, which I don't know.
 I miss square displays.
 I rocked a trio for a really long time.
 I think square displays could be a fun instinct.
 They're the hotness.
 Let me blow your minds for a minute.
 Just allow me to just sit back, relax, and let me blow your mind.
 Imagine a 720 by 720 full touch phone.
 Think about it for a minute.
 Just that.
 Kind of like a kin.
 Yeah, just exactly like the kin, except without the bottom slide part.
 Just the top part and perfectly square.
 You know what, Chris?
 I'm imagining it and all I can think is you're going to want a strap so you can put it on
 your wrist.
 It would probably be a little bit too big.
 But if it was under three inches, I would probably consider doing exactly that.
 If it was the size of a Palm Pixie display, which I think was what, 2.8 inches or something
 like that, I would definitely put that on my wrist.
 Motorola flip out.
 Hopeless Wizard just brought it up in the chat.
 Can't forget about the flip out.
 Yes.
 That is what is going to save rim.
 That form factor.
 I mean, I'm with you, Chris.
 If you do a really good, well-designed square form factor phone, that can definitely be
 a total differentiator and something that people see and are like, yeah, that's a Blackberry.
 Rim has always had that with its Blackberry because of the iconic keyboard design.
 So why not move to a new form factor that nobody else uses?
 Yeah.
 I'm sorry.
 I got a photo of the Motorola flip out and I'm just the happiest person ever.
 The other funny thing is that CEO Thorsten Heins, here's a quote from Josh's piece,
 sales of the devices in the US took a major hit as carriers transitioned to 4G phones.
 According to the executive, carrier version to marketing 3G devices was the main culprit
 for the company's dipping numbers.
 Oh, man.
 They're in complete denial.
 Yes, denial.
 That's exactly what I was thinking.
 It's indicative of a worldview that died like three or four years ago where whatever the
 carrier decides to put in the front window is what sells, right?
 Well, not just that.
 You have to admit, if you're him, you have to admit that your devices just aren't competitive
 anymore.
 Who does he think he's fooling?
 Look at your share price.
 As a CEO, I get it.
 You want to be communicating to consumers, other businesses, partners, and investors,
 but everybody sees through this.
 There isn't even the hint of clothes on the emperor at this stage.
 Just giving us this BS about Verizon doesn't want to promote 3G phones.
 Yes, that's true, but that's just a tiny, tiny aspect of why people aren't buying Blackberries
 anymore.
 There's also one market.
 People aren't buying Blackberries now in the UK because there's better alternatives.
 Earlier in the show, we were saying we hope that Windows Phone 8 becomes a viable contender
 in the smartphone marketplace.
 Apparently, Blackberry 10 is out for beta testing right now, beta testing.
 There's a Blackberry Jam, which is a developer event coming up in late September.
 We're getting close to 2013.
 That thing is going to launch.
 Are you rooting for it at all?
 Do you care?
 I've been the secret Blackberry 10 fanboy here, which is a really weird place to be.
 Yeah, I know.
 There's some interesting ideas in the OS, but I really want to see the final OS to see
 if it coheres and makes sense.
 If it is like, oh yeah, this is a genuinely new way to interact with the phone.
 I don't know if they're going to be able to pull it off, but if they do, I would like
 to see them claw back enough market share to survive and continue to provide competition.
 I think everybody wants to see it.
 It's the same morbid curiosity that people had toward Palm leading up to the initial
 webOS announcement.
 They're like, okay, these guys have been in the labs for a long time now.
 Let's see what they have cooking.
 But whether that translates to sales, that's a really, really big stretch for me because
 Microsoft still has not been able to parlay its initial success with Windows Mobile into
 any meaningful market share for Windows Phone.
 The most recent numbers from the major research firms indicate that maybe they've gotten past
 that bounce, but I don't know if it's a dead cat bounce or if it's a genuine uptick in
 market share that remains to be seen.
 To suggest that RIM is going to be able to show something really cool and then immediately
 turn that into market share, I think it's just a bridge too far.
 It still comes down to these BlackBerry jam events getting major, not just individual
 really cool indie developers on board.
 They need to get all the big names on board and they need to have a concentrated push.
 That is one very small part of the puzzle, but it is a critical part.
 Without that, they're totally dead.
 What's a dead cat bounce?
 A dead cat bounce is an artificial bounce.
 It's most commonly associated with a stock price.
 If a stock price falls dramatically because something bad has happened to a company, there's
 sometimes an artificial bounce in the stock price because investors think that there's
 suddenly a really good deal on that stock, but it turns out to be a false bounce and
 then it immediately crashes again.
 It's like the stock hits bottom and then there's a short uptick, which is just an after effect
 of it hitting bottom.
 It's a fitting analogy, even if it's just freakishly morbid.
 I think we can all agree that dead cat bounce is a great code name for a square screen BlackBerry.
 I totally agree.
 Or maybe dead cat and then the testing of it in the labs when they're doing the ruggedness
 testing, they call that the dead cat bounce because they're actually throwing the dead
 cat.
 Wow.
 This conversation is getting weird really fast.
 And dark.
 Do you guys want to talk about Apple versus Samsung?
 We already mentioned the Galaxy Nexus ban.
 As we are recording right now, the closing arguments from Apple are getting live blog
 on the site.
 We mentioned this last week, there's a whole other Vergecast special edition you can listen
 to where they talk about the issues of the case.
 What blows my mind is that this is going... They're letting the jury decide this?
 The CEOs met, I want to say two nights ago, and they didn't come to a resolution.
 They're letting the jury go and decide this thing.
 We'll see if they settle before the jury comes back.
 It's crazy, right?
 Yeah, it is.
 What it is is it's a multi-billion dollar game of chicken.
 I think that both sides are so entrenched in their beliefs at this point and feel so
 strongly about what's happening here that they're really letting that cloud their judgment.
 Just follow Neelai on Twitter.
 I'm sure everyone who's listening to this show does, but if you don't, please follow
 him.
 He's at Reckless, and he has been providing some very, very concise and important insight
 into what's happening in the courtroom right now.
 He's as shocked as anybody that this is actually going to the jury right now.
 Also, one of the amazing things to mention is that Judge Koh, who's in charge of the
 entire proceeding slash carnival, she's making people actually stand up in the courtroom
 to make sure we're still alive.
 That's an actual vote that we got out of the courtroom.
 Honestly, I envy Brian from our team for getting to attend these things in person because it
 really is going to be one of those once in a lifetime surreal experiences that we're
 going to miss out on, honestly.
 The fact that there's no live stream for this event is breaking my heart.
 My favorite Lucy Koh moment.
 Each side only had 25 hours to present their case, and so they were both trying to get
 in as many witnesses before the 25 hours got up as possible.
 Apple says, we want to get in these 20 witnesses in the next hour or whatever it was.
 Koh says, unless you're smoking crack, you know these witnesses aren't going to get called.
 The Apple attorney had to be like, first, your honor, I am not smoking crack.
 I can promise you that.
 That's amazing.
 A huge amount of money on the line, the future of Apple's patents and Samsung's patents and
 the design for both of these companies on the line, and we're talking about smoking
 crack.
 It's awesome.
 Yeah, I have to say both Koh and Posner in the Moberla case have just shown a lot more
 personality than ever would have expected out of.
 You think of these kinds of trials, or really the court system in general as being this
 very stuffy institution, and in many ways it is, but there are these moments of just
 complete humanity bubbling up out of these cases that you really don't expect.
 Do we?
 Okay, I guess we should talk about Google's adding gift cards to Android Market.
 Let's not talk about what we want to talk about.
 Let's just freaking talk about something.
 Let's talk about Google.
 I don't care.
 Just get into it, man.
 No, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
 I do want to talk about the play cards.
 Then you girls will do it.
 I do too.
 I don't understand what, pardon my French, but I don't understand what the big whoop
 is about these cards.
 Can someone please explain to me why anyone cares?
 I can explain because Google thinks that they're going to compete with iTunes, and you can't
 compete with iTunes unless you can buy gift cards at Walmart or 7-Eleven.
 They think that people are going to be putting these gift cards in Christmas cards instead
 of getting an iTunes gift card, you'll get a Google gift card, and it's going to be a
 real genuine content store that people want to go and buy movies and TV shows from.
 They think that they've got a full ecosystem that will, I can buy a TV show and watch it
 on my Google TV and watch it on my Nexus 7 and watch it on my Android phone.
 They've got all the pieces of having a content ecosystem except for the content ecosystem.
 It's all there for Google Play.
 They need more content in there, but nobody thinks of it that way.
 Google Play is buying Android apps, but do people really think of like, I'm going to
 buy five seasons worth of shows on Google Play and just have them around the way that
 people used to do and maybe I guess still do on iTunes when it's not available to stream
 on Netflix?
 It's just, they're, yeah.
 Obviously the cue, in theory, what the cue was trying to do would be very important to
 that strategy, but unfortunately the cue was executed so dramatically poorly that it actually
 plays no role whatsoever, especially now that it's on indefinite hold.
 So that leaves them without a big screen.
 There's execution failures all over the place.
 We had Eric Schmidt saying that Google TV was going to be embedded in every smart TV
 by now, and that didn't happen.
 We've got Google TV boxes that are completely underwhelming.
 The Nexus 7 is far and away the best success story they have in terms of thinking about
 Google Play as a content ecosystem, but even then, as great as we all think the Nexus 7
 is, it's certainly not enough to carry that on its shoulders.
 So Google Play to me, it's great for getting apps, but it feels like it's a checkbox more
 than it is a compelling content feature, if only because they're so far behind iTunes
 in terms of mindshare.
 And so it's great that they're doing this.
 They'll get it on store shelves.
 I'm sorry, I talked so over you, but it's a checkbox for now, but then maybe again Google
 is laying the foundation to evolve and finally fashion it into a career competitor.
 No, I mean, gift cards, they're not news in the sense that, wow, fascinating, something
 I really need to know, but they're new in the fact that they exist now.
 And they're just one of those formalities, like I say, checkbox stuff that you just need
 to have to spread your distribution and all of these things.
 I do have a confession to make here actually.
 When Chris started talking about the Q, I heard that as Q as in Q-U-E-U-E, the actual
 word as opposed to the Nexus Q.
 And for a moment, I just completely forgot about the Nexus Q's existence.
 So there's two observations to make about that.
 Now, first of all, I really like the name Q for a streaming device because you can think
 of it as like the place where your media queue is and where it's waiting for you.
 So Nexus Q, that actually makes sense to me in that kind of punny way.
 But second of all, like Chris was saying, that thing is kind of, it was really exciting.
 It was really interesting when it happened and raised a lot of eyebrows and then just
 kind of disappeared off the map.
 Which again, like you guys are saying, like Google TV is just an unfinished something.
 It has some potential and it's unfinished.
 I also do kind of feel that way about Google Plus in many ways.
 You see the potential to take it and just like kick everybody's ass with it.
 But then Google just isn't putting the finishing touches on it.
 I don't know.
 The company lacks polish.
 Is that what it needs?
 Well, what's crazy to me too is that the Q is essentially the exact same thing.
 I can't remember the code name, but they showed it in basically a development kit form at
 the Google I.O.
 Prior in 2011 and it evolved into the Q, which is basically just a spherical repackaging
 of that development kit that didn't really add any functionality as far as I could tell.
 And so they took a year to, I guess part of that was the fact that they had to build this
 completely American supply manufacturing chain for it.
 That took time, I'm sure.
 But in that year, they didn't really seem to add any functionality or capability to
 it that would get people excited, particularly at $300.
 So this is kind of a very Laura wrote about this on the site, but back when the Q was
 originally announced.
 But this is kind of a disappointing first attempt at creating an American manufactured
 consumer electronics device by a major company, right?
 Because I think that there's so much talk about that right now that it would have been
 very, very encouraging and interesting to see a wildly successful product at a price
 point that made sense, that was manufactured in the US.
 But this just goes to show, I mean, it's the proof that you can't do that at a price.
 You know, you're going to end up with sticker shock.
 There's no way to get around it.
 Well, the thing that's crazy about the Q is like the hardware is great and the price is
 expensive, sure.
 But like Google, the software company, like failed on software, right?
 They failed on execution implementation on the Q. And that's what's so disappointing
 about it is that it could have been more and maybe it will be.
 Maybe they'll come back and say, we added the functionality we talked about.
 But like, what's a bummer about the Q is that there is no earthly reason for them to not
 have done more with it from the software side.
 I want to get back to the gift cards, though, because there's one thing I totally think
 is important to note.
 Gift cards on iTunes were always super important because they would allow teenagers with iPod
 touches to buy apps and stuff.
 So parents could buy gift cards or kids could pay for gift cards with cash at a store and
 then be able to use that in order to buy stuff on the virtual iTunes store.
 And it's actually kind of insane that that hasn't happened on Android, which theoretically,
 since there's so many cheaper Android devices out there, you'd think a lot of teenagers
 who don't have full access to credit cards would want some kind of gift card solution
 there.
 So I'm not saying that it's going to stop piracy because obviously it won't.
 But it could be that it at least fills that checkbox that if you think about it is actually
 kind of crazy that wasn't there before.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 No, it's a very good point that you make.
 It's essentially like you can now buy prepaid credit for Google Play Store, which couldn't
 do before you needed a credit card.
 But actually on the point about making software and Google software failings, again, I totally
 agree with you, Dieter.
 That reminds me of Adobe again and how sometimes you can see a company doing something so well,
 like one product so well, and then just thinking up the joint with multiple other products.
 And with Adobe, it's pretty obvious.
 Photoshop excels.
 Other products like Lightroom are also strong.
 And then you have Flash and then you have Premiere Pro, which some people love.
 Other people like me find just completely overbearing.
 And I mean, with Google, my example would be Chrome, which I still feel is the best
 browser hands down.
 Have you spent quite a bit of time testing Safari 6, which I think is very strong, but
 Google is just better in the small and the subtle things.
 Chrome that is.
 So I think as much as I was just saying that Google might have a systemic problem of never
 finishing up things clearly and properly, maybe I'm wrong.
 And maybe it's wrong to consider these companies, just because they're so big nowadays, maybe
 it's wrong to consider them as one unified company.
 Because the guys who make Chrome the browser, they're like one group and one team.
 And the guys who make the Nexus Q software, the guys who make the Google TV software,
 they're a whole other team, probably anonymous and never to be mentioned again.
 And I think we might be fairer to products and to pieces of software if we just analyze
 them on their own strengths and just kind of stop talking about the overarching companies
 anymore because they're so massive nowadays.
 It's not like Instagram makes product number two or some other small company like Sparrow
 before it got taken over by Google, now it's just the Google department.
 If Sparrow was going to do an RSS reader, for example, then you could say, it's these
 guys doing that.
 You can't really say that with Apple, Google, or Microsoft or any of these massive names
 that we keep talking about.
 But no, see, here's the thing.
 These companies are selling themselves on the strength of the ecosystem that you could
 buy into.
 And this applies perfectly to Google Play, right?
 Microsoft has got its ecosystem, but the Xbox and that Windows talking to Xbox better and
 now smart glasses coming and blah, blah, blah.
 Apple has got its Apple TV talking via airtime to the computer and the iPads and all those
 things are talking to each other now with iCloud.
 So if these companies are going to market themselves on the strength of their ecosystem
 and interoperability between the devices made by all these disparate different divisions,
 then I think it's fair to judge them on that.
 And it's fair to say, you're a giant company.
 And yes, it's a small team that built this particular product, but it's your responsibility
 as the giant company to make sure that this team has the resources it needs to make something
 awesome.
 Well, I want to believe-
 It's fair to judge them on that basis.
 But think about this.
 Motorola's promise for September 5th is the main event.
 I can prejudge them right now and say, no, you're wrong.
 But what I'm saying is that that doesn't really help anybody understand Motorola and what
 September 5th is going to hold for that company.
 So as a responsible journalist, which we sometimes try to pretend that we are, I don't think
 we're being constructive in taking the premise of the ecosystem and then running with it
 the way that these companies and their press departments are doing, because I don't really
 think they have these ecosystems.
 They don't have the ecosystem within their organizations.
 Most of these companies don't.
 It's why HP's takeover of Palm was such a freaking disaster because everything is insular
 and siloed.
 HP probably has more middle management people than it has cleaners in its offices.
 And this is the thing that bothers me.
 I can tell you this.
 I was speaking to somebody working at Nokia a few years back who probably won't mind me
 mentioning this because it was a few years back and Nokia's surely fixed everything up
 since then.
 But he told me that what you have is separate teams working on one aspect of software.
 So one team is working on this part of the UI, another team is working on radios and
 cellular signal and all of that stuff.
 And then in the final month or two before they decide to launch an announcer device,
 they all come together and they have a big integration meeting.
 And to me, that's the crazy thing.
 If you don't, as a company, have that meeting to start with and then have that consistently
 going on, how all things fit together, then you can't sell us this ecosystem product.
 Whether you Google or Apple or anybody.
 No, and I think that with the exception of Apple, Microsoft especially, I think with
 Microsoft, things get better.
 But Google's just not there yet.
 Wait, you guys are arguing that Microsoft is really good at presenting a unified ecosystem
 strategy?
 I'm saying that they're really close.
 I think Microsoft has one now, which is a change.
 You can really see it with the Metro style slash modern design style slash whatever Microsoft
 is going to call it.
 The way that they're trying to roll it out across their devices points to a strategy.
 I'm not saying Microsoft is great at communicating that, no.
 Microsoft is legendary for having these internal warring factions that all have different priorities
 and different things that they're trying to get done.
 And I think that that is a, with the exception of Apple, like you said, Dieter, because of
 the nature of the way that organization is always operated.
 With the exception of Apple, most large companies suffer from that problem to some degree, particularly
 at a place like Google, that is really comprised of dozens and dozens of acquisitions over
 the years.
 Android was an acquisition.
 And I think that some of that culture clash continues, it perpetuates.
 And I continue to believe to this day, I've never been able to get anybody to confirm
 or even hint to me that this is in fact the case.
 But I strongly believe that there is a lot of distrust and dislike between Google's Android
 and Chrome teams over the ongoing debate between Chrome OS versus Android and how those two
 platforms mesh.
 And the fact that they seemingly don't.
 There's like an entire category of devices where it is unclear which direction Google
 is trying to go.
 And I would guess that inside the company, both of those divisions are trying to argue
 that they are the best platform to control this particular class of devices.
 But didn't that fight get settled already?
 No, I don't think so.
 I mean, a new bunch of Chromebooks just came out, right?
 Oh, yeah.
 And everybody's thrilled, Chris.
 You, Louis and Adrian on our team and two other people.
 Yes, I can't do my Chromebook.
 Look, I'm just saying they they, you know, Google internally put a lot of work into a
 brand new UI for Chrome OS.
 So they are clearly not giving up on it.
 Last we heard, they're deploying Chromebooks internally as like, you know, Google devices
 or for staff.
 So it's not going anywhere.
 So I just I just think that that kind of mentality where you have all these different divisions
 that are kind of, you know, set off to go in their own directions and sometimes those
 directions overlap a little bit.
 That's where you start to run into that that politicking that kind of is is opposed to
 what it is that the company as a whole is trying to do.
 And that's that's the mentality that they constantly need to be fighting.
 I have no way to wrap that up in a clever conclusion other than they need to get their
 act together and do it.
 Yes.
 They do.
 Well, I mean, OK, I do want to say like.
 I like the philosophy behind Chrome OS a little bit better than I like the philosophy behind
 Android, but in terms of like implementation, Android kicks it up and down the street.
 Right.
 And the same is applied to everything that's sort of tried to be based on the Web and be
 a big consumer success other than, you know, the Web and Web.
 So we'll see.
 I would argue I would argue that the the aura UI, which is I think that's what they're calling
 the new Chrome OS.
 Yeah, and it just got a tweet today.
 Yeah, I mean, the the aura UI is excellent, but the reason why it's excellent is because
 they've abandoned their their attempt to make the device completely browser centric.
 There is now a UI that exists outside of the browser.
 So it's kind of like it's a victory, but it's also a loss.
 Well, it's it's a UI that exists outside the browser, but it's still like, you know, it
 lives and breathes with Web and Web apps.
 Right.
 Right.
 It doesn't look like a browser, but it's still a Web device.
 And I mean, I I prefer that openness to.
 Android's philosophy, I guess, but, you know, nevertheless, the bottom line is, you know,
 what plays games, what gets work done for you and the open Web isn't there yet as a
 platform.
 So, yeah.
 On that note, I'm going to wrap up.
 Oh, no, I'm not.
 Just before we do, just before we do, I would like to just do a little update on my Razer
 Max adventure here in the UK.
 Because I mentioned on the last show that I had turned it on as the show started and
 I wanted to see how long it would last.
 The first time actually was really disappointing because I unplugged it from the charger in
 the evening on the Tuesday and then it needed to recharge by the evening on the Wednesday,
 which was weird to me because it has this massive, massive battery and it was just in
 standby.
 Whatever happened between that first charge and the second was magical because from Wednesday
 night with standby, a little bit of camera use and just regular phone use, it lasted
 until Monday night.
 Which for any sort of smartphone is epic.
 So it's insane.
 But like that's Android.
 Android on a first boot after like a reset.
 It needs to like settle in.
 And this is a really common topic, you know, since I've been flashing ROMs on my One X,
 people are like, let it let the ROM settle in for a day or two before you start judging
 the battery life.
 It seems like most of these phones get better battery life after the OS has sort of gotten
 into a groove.
 And I have no idea if that actually is reflected by what's happening behind the scenes, you
 know, with what the software is doing.
 But I've seen like that advice repeated over and over and maybe it's just to make people
 go away.
 But I don't know, it's really abusing.
 It sounds like a wine drinking advice.
 What you want to do is you want to open it up and then just let it settle down.
 Let it breathe.
 Let it settle down overnight.
 The next night you just keep it in a nice cool area.
 If you haven't got one, just like move to the South of France.
 They have them in abundance.
 And yeah, then you let it down and it's beautiful.
 No, but I was going to say thumbs up for the battery life, which is excellent.
 But thumbs down for Motorola's really horrible rollout of the Android 4.0 update.
 Because this phone that I've got still has gingerbread.
 And first of all, the Droidrazr Max and Droidrazr in the United States got ice cream sandwich
 first before the European version.
 Why that needed to happen, I don't know, but fine.
 Okay, so this is late for the European version.
 Then the European version comes and all you can actually find on the web about it is it's
 happening.
 It's OTA.
 You can get yours.
 And I haven't had mine.
 And it's been like a month since they announced they're doing the European rollout.
 It's not acceptable.
 It's really late.
 Seriously.
 Part for the course.
 I mean, that's not getting fixed and it's not getting fixed with Jelly Bean.
 How long has that been announced?
 And, you know, maybe we'll see it on the Galaxy S3 soon.
 That would be impressive if that actually happens.
 But I like I've given up even being angry about Android OS updates because I just my
 expectations have just been beaten down into the ground.
 And so I just I just assume it's going to be terrible.
 Yeah.
 And do you know what else?
 This is the fifth event.
 Whatever comes out of it is going to be running ice cream sandwich.
 Of course.
 Not the Nokia event.
 Not the Nokia event.
 That's true.
 Yes.
 Yes.
 Great correction, Chris.
 Great correction.
 And I know it seems like really spoiled and weird for me to be complaining.
 Oh, it's only running ice cream sandwich.
 But the point is the same point we've been drumming on with Gingerbread is not running
 the latest version of the operating system.
 And if it's not, why the hell are you launching it?
 Like sort your phone out, sort your software out.
 Give me the latest at the time that I can buy it.
 Because that's what Apple does.
 That's what Microsoft and Nokia are going to do on September 5th.
 And if all of these Android OEMs just keep finding it acceptable to just update their
 phones later, and as I say, do it in an inconsistent manner that gets into some people, doesn't
 get into other people, it's going to piss me off.
 And that's a bad thing.
 Because I'm one of the people.
 And the people speak with their wallets.
 That's all I have to say.
 On that inspiring note, thank you very much for watching and listening to the Verge Mobile
 Show.
 If you want to follow us on Twitter, you totally should.
 Together we are at Verge, I'm at Backlant, Vlad is at Vlad Savov, Chris is at ZPower,
 and we will be back at the internet next week.
 Thanks for watching.