 Hey, welcome to the Verge Mobile Show. This is episode 70 for the week of November 25th. It's Turkey week here in the US, so it is Thanksgiving and lots to be thankful for. I'm Dan Seifert. I'm Evan Rogers. Where was Vlad on that? Vlad just dropped out at the moment of truth. So pro. Well, I'm Chris Stigler and apparently Vlad has decided not to join us. There was something about Dan's mention of Thanksgiving that made him very, very angry. He just peed out. He dropped in a huff. To be fair, Commonwealth countries do Thanksgiving on different days. I don't know if it's Commonwealth countries or just Canada. I know that Canada had their Thanksgiving in October. Yeah, but that's because winter starts in Canada so much earlier. You're just in perpetual winter as far as I know. I don't think there is any other season. The great frozen north. That's right. Oh, podcasts. So. So this has been a smooth start. I guess we should probably talk about, we should at least acknowledge the fact that Evan Rogers, our producer, is joining us for I believe his third appearance, is that right? Yes, yes that is the case. That's very, very exciting and the reason, oh and we also have an infant joining us today. The podcasting star. I believe and we're not going to spoil the surprise. Actually we are going to spoil the surprise. I believe, I'm being told, it's being fed into my ear as we speak. No it's not. That Dieter may be joining us later. I still know why Dieter's not here, by the way. We're going to have to talk about this later. Yes, yes. So I am sitting in for Dieter for the time being and theoretically he will in fact join us. Good. And Vlad, he is a person that exists but not on the internet for the moment. He is a person that exists, this is true. So yeah, that's what's up. That's podcasting. So do you guys want to talk about mobile stuff? I guess. I'm just looking at our, I'm admittedly looking at our topic list for the very first time and the top of the list is apparently three high level BlackBerry executives have been given the old boot and shown the door. John Chen is the new CEO is starting to clean house and right the ship it seems. Well you know, as they say, rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic is always the way to go. So that's my first question I guess. Knowing not very much about BlackBerry, like BlackBerry's corporate structure, I don't know how much these three individuals influenced kind of the sinking, the Titanic if you will. Well I mean again, we've said this in past weeks. I mean these are C level executives right? Yeah, they are, but I don't think, I mean anything that happened in the period of time between the departure of Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis and BlackBerry today, I think it's very very difficult to attribute a lot of blame to anyone in the C suite up to and including Torsten Heinz because they just didn't, I mean their fate was kind of sealed by the time those guys were shown the door. And granted there are probably things that they could have done to soften the blow, maybe, but you have to second guess Heinz decision to push the launch of BlackBerry 10 out what, by three or four months, if not more. I can't remember how long he delayed it, but he delayed it for a while and that may have hurt them a bit, but at the end of the day, I mean it's six and one half dozen the other. But their fate was sealed I think, so that's my take. Did we talk about the Porsche design last week? I guess we did didn't we? Yeah because Vlad had one. For reasons that are so much. I should probably say hello. Oh he's here. Yeah he's here, nice. Vlad's here. I snuck in, I snuck in but since I am completely uninformed about what those three people who left BlackBerry did or what their value was or where they're going, so just keep quiet. The ones that left, at least one of them was a pretty public face. Frank Bulbin was the chief marketing officer. He was always out there talking about, as much as Heinz was at least talking about BlackBerry and its plans and things like that. And it's been a very important role in hiring Alicia Keys I guess. So it's a high level executive position. I honestly, if somebody is going to be brought in as a fixer, upper type of person as what this interim CEO John Chen is supposed to apparently be, then it only makes sense for him to get rid of the old guard and figure out something new. So I'm not terribly surprised by this move. But like Chris said, it's like rearranging the deck chairs in the Titanic. I remember talking to Frank Bulbin when he was first hired, which wasn't that long ago. He was hired by Heinz, if memory serves me correctly. And I can't remember where he came from. But yeah, he was a pretty, I think I talked to him literally within a couple weeks of him being hired. And I specifically remember asking a bunch of questions and him being like, look, I don't know. I just got here. So hopefully he was at least able to bring himself up to speed on the company before he was shown the door. Here's my question. Why wasn't Alicia Keys fired in a very public way? Why hasn't any BlackBerry executive said, you know what, we put a lot of faith and trust into Alicia to turn this company around. She wasn't able to pull it off. We're going to have to let her go. My question is, why wasn't she immediately promoted to B-level executive? Yeah, she should be the new chief executive. That would be incredible. Well, actually, there is something else. Especially if she's still tweeting from her iPhone. YOLO. The first thing that bugs me with all of these departures is that nobody seems to be willing to say the word fired anymore. We all know people are getting fired left, right, and right, but everybody is stepping aside or stepping down. Well, so this is how it goes with all of these companies. I just finished reading, I was saying this before we started, but I just finished reading Hatching Twitter, which is Nick Biltons of the New York Times. He wrote a book about how Twitter was started and all of the executive drama that happened for like three or four years there. And like on the public side of things, everything is done to save the face of the executive and save the face of the company by having them say, so and so is stepping aside and so and so is stepping down. But behind the scenes, it's like screaming in boardrooms and definite firings and things like that. But they always seem to give the up, unless in very rare circumstances where somebody legitimately gets fired for being violent, I don't know. But it's always made to seem like they stepped down or stepped aside or pursuing other interests or will be spending more time with their family or some other innocuous thing that lets them save their face for when they get hired on the next. And I think a lot of that is tied to the departure package. The Louis Vuitton golden parachute? Exactly. A good example is Sanofsky when he left Microsoft. I think this actually came out in some SEC filing that Microsoft had to make where they disclosed that he was under an NDA for some period of time and he couldn't disparage Microsoft publicly and in return he got some ridiculous amount of money. And me personally, if you give me $10 million to not say anything negative about an employer that I feel treated me poorly, I think that's an offer that I would probably take. You know, I actually have a really awesome troll idea right here, which is that each one of these executives as part of the golden parachute should get one of these Porsche design Blackberries. Nice. We're going to recompense you with loads and loads of money in the form of Porsche design Blackberries. Yeah, instead of giving $10 million they get 500 Porsche design Blackberries. I would also like to see how long we can last without acknowledging Dieter trolling us. Wait, is Dieter in the hangout? Dieter is present, but he's occupied right now. He's occupado. That doesn't mean he's not present and his heart's not with us. Yes. Isn't occupado like Spanish for the bathroom is in use? That's just occupied. You're saying that Dieter is going to the bathroom right now. Dieter is going to the bathroom right now. The bathroom is in use. Yes, this is the micro studio slash bathroom. It's a really weird place to broadcast video. What is he doing? If you're watching the video of this, I apologize. If you're listening to the audio of this, I also apologize. I now have two Vlads. I think we all have two Vlads. I am the real one. I've got two Vlads. I am the real one. There is probably a remnant one of me left over because this Google hangout hates me, but I'm not giving up. I'm just going to keep coming back and multiplying until it lets me stay. Yes. Awesome, guys. Okay, so I've had enough talking about Blackberry. So apparently the FCC has allowed, it's already allowed gadgets in the first 10,000 feet of a flight, and now it's considering allowing phone calls, which is apparently, well not apparently, this is actually my worst nightmare ever. But it's up to the airlines, right, if they want to allow passengers to make phone calls while they're on a plane. So here's my thought. Why is everybody so outraged about that? So here's my thought on this. The FCC, they gave us one. You can use your devices on planes now, but you're going to suffer through the phone calls of every other passenger. It's equivalent exchange. Vlad, if you've ever been trapped on a train with somebody who's like gabbing on the phone the entire time and you can't get away from it, that's what's wrong with it. Just magnify that on a plane. All right, fair enough. There's a problem, but that is entirely a social problem. That is not a technological problem whatsoever. That basically tells you you need to sort out your culture and your fellow man, right? So next time you're stuck with somebody on the train and they're gabbing on and on, what you want to apply is a very subtle, very proportionate bit of violence so that they know not to do that. And from there, you evolve your society, evolve your culture and things improve. Don't hold technology back just because you're kind of evil and weird and inconsiderate. Well, I mean, I don't think that's holding technology back. The technology is there to do it now. It's just not allowed by regulations and the FCC is considering allowing it and letting airlines decide whether they will allow it on their planes or not. So I mean, the technology is already moved on. The regulation is holding the technical thing back, which is, you know, saying don't do, I don't know, it's holding people back from doing the technical thing, I guess. But still, I feel like if we were just a bit more considerate, this is a bonus and a positive thing for people. Like if you're on a plane and there actually is some sort of real emergency, I mean, you know, listen, let's not get into like the terrorist situations or whatever, but when you look at documentaries, people try to leave messages for their loved ones and whatnot and I don't know, I mean, in those circumstances, it's kind of a useful thing and in more innocuous ones as well. I just think if we annoy one another, that's a social problem and we shouldn't be regulating that out of the way. We should be more considerate as society. Well the silver lining here is that while it may be, you know, permissible from a regulatory standpoint, the airlines do have the option to just tell you to please, please don't use your phone. It's like a movie theater. You can still use your phone in a movie theater. You just really shouldn't. No, no, they'll kick you out of the movie theater. They can't like open the door. Well they could. That would just be, that would be a really, I mean, that's like a pretty severe penalty for using your phone. So the point that's been made to me in the past, and this is a very fair point, is that until relatively recently, you could make calls on planes using Air, I think it was called Aircel, which was later purchased by Verizon and that spectrum that was used for that service, I believe, is what eventually became GoGo. So GoGo's data service is terrestrial based. They just use their own set of cell towers that are pointed upward instead of laterally, and that's how you get Wi-Fi in your plane right now. But this service effectively already existed, and no one ever used those phones, which is why the spectrum was sold off. And part of that was that it was just a very, very expensive service. I'm sure that lots of people would have liked to call their family and friends and say, hey, I'm calling you from 30,000 feet, but it was like $10 a minute or something. So I could see a situation where the airlines do allow it, but say we're going to put just a ridiculous price on it, and so if you need to make an emergency call, some business related thing that needs to happen right now, you can do it. It's just going to cost you an arm and a leg, and that's going to keep the riff-raff off their phones. Thinking back over my lifetime and all the plane rides I've been on back when AirCell existed, I never saw a single person use any of those phones. So they can just price it as poorly as they priced AirCell that'll keep people off their phones. But then there's another point, which is if I'm in one of those situations, my first port of call might actually be Skype using an internet connection. Boom. Right, so if you have Wi-Fi on the flight already, you can... But they block VoIP over... Yeah. Airline Wi-Fi has VoIP blocked almost universally. They block all streaming pretty much. And I mean, the bandwidth is so terrible that... Okay, so... They block streaming? I don't know about that. I see people constantly sucking down massive Netflix quantities of data. Who is watching Netflix on a plane? Like, what magical aircraft have you been on? Everyone is trying to use Netflix on a plane, okay? Not successfully. I guarantee you they're not doing it successfully. There are a lot of people who buy movies ahead of time on their iPad or iPhone or whatever and then watch it on the plane, but they're not streaming Netflix. Wait, I'm sorry. How do they do that? Do they use iTunes? Yeah. To purchase DRM-free music and MP4 files? No. Wait, what are you talking about? I don't know where Evan is going with this. I don't... Wait, I really want to know how Evan knows this much detail about the type of file being played back on somebody else's tablet. Yeah, what's going on here, Evan? Actually, this is an incredible segue to a thing that is not on our topic list, but that I am extremely passionate about and that I would love to talk about. Before you do it, I just have to clarify for my fellow European podcast participants, because we're all participants in this. My understanding of this is basically that America is land of the free, but heir of the regulated. Because all I've heard so far is, we don't do this, we don't allow that, we regulate the other. Guys, this doesn't really fit with your whole... In all honesty, the airline industry is probably one of, if not the most regulated industries in the US. It's like, when you compare that to the firearms industry, it's like a complete different world. Oh, also, complete irrelevant aside, but worth mentioning, I don't think you guys have... The Federal Agency for Food Safety doesn't have the right to shut down a particular production food. I think that's done at a state level, which kind of freaked me out. I don't know enough about our own government to say yes or no, that's true or false, but I wouldn't be surprised. Let's cast this using avocados as an example. There's an avocado plant in California that's producing rancid avocados. You're saying that the FDA can't be like, yo, stop doing... Or no, it wouldn't be the FDA, it would be the USDA. The USDA can definitely do that. They can definitely shut down a factory that's producing rancid avocados. The USDA has shut down entire tomato pipelines for salmonella before. I like the idea of an actual pipeline with tomatoes going through it. They screw down a valve and the tomato supply just cuts off. It's all routed through the USDA headquarters. They're just like, well, tomatoes, not today. To Chris' example about avocados, that would actually be a pretty major impact on the California economy, particularly if it happens sometime around the Super Bowl. It would be, yeah. Because guacamole consumption around the Super Bowl is a major deal for the US economy. I guess I might be spreading some misinformation, but all I know is it was part of my research. When the US was shut down, when the state things were running in skeletal mode, there was a salmonella outbreak, again, in California with some chicken. Well, when the government was shut down, that was the major problem, was because things like the FDA didn't have the resources available to do their job. They couldn't enforce their jobs and do the necessary food inspections and all that jazz because the government was shut down. While I was looking into that, somebody pointed out that they didn't have quite as much regulatory reach and power as they really should do, even when they're fully functional. Again, that was not today, so obviously it's not part of my memory. Evan, I would just like to point out, you've been to this podcast. It's just tradition to cut off a perfect segue, but now that I've taken care of that, please pick up the segue. I wanted to speak a little bit about a recent Anandtech article by Brian Kluge about removable storage and removable batteries on Android phones. One of them is very important to me. The other one I could not care less about. Removable batteries, I mean, we've talked about this before. It's really great. You get an extra Galaxy S4 battery and you just slap it in there when you're out of juice. But removable storage, this is something I'm very, very passionate about. In fact, it was one of the main motivating reasons for me to get an Xperia Z1, by the way. America, oh God, it's so great. The Z1 is the best cell phone I have ever owned in my life. For example, I'm going to come back to removable storage in just one moment, but anecdotally, yesterday I had this phone in the sauna for 20 minutes, 25 minutes, totally fine. Asterisk, I'm not responsible if you take your phone in the sauna and it doesn't work. Then I took it in the shower, perfectly great. Listened to podcasts while I was in there. So good. There's no, there's no reason to be afraid of that. There's no, there's no... That is a lie. That is a lie. I have to dispute that, because if you're in the shower, the splashing of the water actually gets in the way of listening to the podcast. Well, you don't like bathe with the Z1 like as a bar of soap. Like you set it off to the side. Yeah, but still... This whole conversation is making me really uncomfortable, okay? Like don't take your phone into the Turkish bathhouse and you'll be fine. Okay, anyway. So, part of what Brian is saying is that there are a lot of trade-offs that you give up for removable storage and removable batteries. And one of his points, and that's very true, I mean it's really, really true. He makes a point about unibody kind of product design. And I mean, you can fit a 3000 milliamp battery in a space that would only allow you to get a 2200 milliamp battery from a few generations ago with a removable back. That's very true. And really, I don't miss removable batteries at all, because I'm not really road warrior-ing that hard. But on Android, there's kind of this thing that I wanted to talk about, and that is that Android is not set up to integrate very well with external storage. And this is something that I find to just be like malarkey. First and foremost... Watch your language, Evan. I know, I know. This is a family show, Evan. I'm really... Throwing around those... Taking us to a dark... Seven-letter words. Is that everyone had to build up the courage for like five minutes to call out Brian Kug. He's just kind of dodging around the issue, dodging around the issue. And now, let's get to the meat, Evan. What is your issue? So there's two things going on here, and that is a technological issue, like a technological and software issue. And then there's the kind of corporate strategy issue that I have with Google and its control over Android and its pleasure with external storage. And basically, what it comes down to is Google doesn't want you to have external storage, and Google doesn't really want you to have a very high-capacity phone. I don't want you to have external storage. That's a personal problem, and I take offense to that. Think about all the horrible things you could be doing with external storage. I think the world is just better if you don't have external storage. Yeah, well, it's such a pain in the you-know-what to have to think about where your media is going. It should just be one contiguous block, and the only effective way to do that is to have it all be... I mean, this has been the Windows Phone argument, too, right? That is not true. That is absolutely not true. If you remember the original Windows Phones, the Windows Phone 7s... Yeah, but that was a nightmare. That was a nightmare, and Samsung got into a world of hurt because of it. What do you mean? Okay, why was it a nightmare? It seems like the actual opposite of a nightmare in that that was part... A dream. It was a dream. No, what you can do is you can absolutely format and contain your storage even on two different volumes. You can format it and either stripe it or just make two logical drives into one logical drive. It's very possible from a software front, and it could be integrated into Android very, very easily. That does prevent you from ever taking it out. If you ever take it out, all your stuff is gone. So what is the point of external storage? I think Evan is on the brink of suggesting RAID storage and multiple microSD cards. It can be done. It can totally be done. Now the problem that Chris just brought up with the Samsungs was that the... I can't remember the name of the phone right now, but the first Samsung Windows Phone had a microSD card slot and you put your card in and it would format it and then you could never use that card for anything else. It was like your card was just shot. Okay, so what you're talking about is one poor software implementation from Samsung. Who ever heard of that, A. And B, it can be done better. It can absolutely be done better. I feel like this is a conversation and argument you should have made in like 2009, man. Okay, yeah. And guys, I need to make a point here. Hold on. A physical point, which is quite aside from the really in-depth and techy stuff that everyone is talking about, microSD cards are just tiny. And I'm digging around for one right now and I can't find it. And the thing is, I can get behind the whole... Let's have removable storage. Let's have like, I have one card with all of my movies on it. I have another card with like my dubstep albums on it and such and such. And if we do a really good implementation... One whole card just for your dubstep? 64 gigs of dubstep. At least. You can't... It's only like... I will find a microSD card. It's three songs on one card. Okay, nope. SIM card adapters. I have... Are you really struggling to find your SD card right now? I'm holding one up to the camera. Here we go. Here we go. See? Okay. There. Yeah. There we go. I mean, look at how freaking tiny these things are. I mean, the best... The most common thing people do with them is lose them when they're not in the phone. So this is my issue... That works out for SanDisk. Yeah, but we... I don't own any stock in SanDisk, so I can keep going. Well, listen. So basically the point I want to make... I was just trying to make my point, man. Let me just finish it quickly. Do it. It's very brief. It's... Removable media made sense back in the day when removable media was something you could graph. Like, you know, something you could handle. A cartridge. Like a CF. A mini disk. Or whatever. Right. A CF. Yeah. Perfect example. When it's this freaking tiny, it's just way too easy to lose. So the removable aspect actually just becomes a pain and a chore. I mean, that is true. That is very true. And really, like, once you put in your microSD card, it's kind of just, like, in there. And I don't know very many people that are, like, actively swapping, like, I take so many pictures, then I have to swap to the next card so I can blast through 3,000 more 8 megapixel cell phone pictures. If you know one of those people, I would like to know them too. Well, I mean, there's lots of people that fill up their phones with pictures all day long. You know, my wife does that all the time. But I think, you know, I understand what you're saying, Evan. But I think that external storage is really not going to come back outside of the world of Samsung any time soon. What I do wish would happen is I wish that manufacturers, especially manufacturers like Apple, would not charge such a huge premium to get a decent amount of storage built into the device. Well, so here's what I would… It doesn't cost $100 to put 16 gigs more storage in it. It costs, like, $3.12. So it's, like, the difference in price between a base level iPhone and an iPhone that's, like, got a usable amount of storage is, like, ridiculous. The same could be said for the iPads. I mean, it's very true. But here's my, like, real kind of larger problem with this, is that, you know, the first… When you talk about removable storage on Android, the first thing people come back with is, well, I mean, phones come with 32 gigs now. Phones come with 64 gigs, you know, storage. Or an option that you can get, it is super expensive. Oh, Evan froze. He can't make his point. Poor Evan. Well, he's been talking about Android phones on Google Hangout. What do you expect? Google shut down that conversation. So let's move on. Well, actually, before we do… It's really anti-communicative, that rant. Before we do, let me actually squeeze in an extra rant, which is on the SIM extractor tool. So, like, in looking for the micro Z card, I dug up all of mine, and like I said, I've got, like, a dozen of them. And the one on the Nexus 5… The one on the Nexus 5 is really, really tiny. Hello. Hey, Evan. Sorry about that. And it's really skinny. And actually, using the LG G2 SIM extraction tool on the Nexus 5, it's too thick. I find quite a lot of them are actually too thick. Then there's this Nokia one, which is, like, really shallow and bent at this point, which doesn't get deep enough on some phones. And this is the thing I discovered, that there's actually fragmentation in SIM extraction tools. Yeah. I discovered this exact issue last year with the Nexus 4, because the Nexus 4 is a really tiny SIM slot hole, and I couldn't… I've always kept a Nokia pin on my keychain at all times for this exact reason, and I couldn't fit it into the Nexus 4. I carry around this bent paperclip, because I can never manage to hang on to SIM extracting tools, and this works for, like, 95% of phones, except for the stupid Nexus 5, and even sometimes the Nexus 4, because it's literally… this tiny little thing is too thick to fit in the Nexus 5's slot. So, yeah. Fragmentation, man. And weirdly enough, I'm with Christian on this one. I think Nokia and Apple make the best SIM extraction tools, if anybody cares. And Evan is so dismissive of this exact conversation, he left us again. What they really do… Do iPhones even come with a SIM extraction tool? Not anymore. They used to, right? At one time, maybe? I don't know. They must… what are you talking about? They must do. I don't think they do anymore. No, because the SIM is already in the phone when you buy it. Yeah. Well, for you guys, I get a lot of iPhones. Yeah, I was going to say, Apple is selling a SIM-free phone now. This just happened in, like, the past week. They started stocking the SIM-free phones in US stores. So, I mean, yeah, they must include a tool with those, I guess. But I'm 99% sure there wasn't one in my box. Yeah, I don't think there is in most retail boxes. I think that Apple just expects you to either have one, if you're looking for one, or their Apple store employees will handle the SIMs. Keep in mind, this is the company that's been trying for at least two and a half or three years now to move to embedded SIMs. So, it's little surprise that they would make the SIM as difficult to get to as possible. I have returned. We'll see how long this one lasts. Yes, yes. Wait, can someone catch me up? You're really talking about SIM extraction tools right now? Yes. Which I'm sure you have some strong thoughts on, Evan. I have no, I mean, it's whatever. I keep a Nokia and an Apple one on my keychain. Both? Yes. But aren't they interchangeable? The problem is the LG... No, the Nexus 5. You need to have a super thin one, like the Nokia one that comes with the Lumia 1020 to get into the phones like... My Nokia one is way too thick for LG phones. Sorry, man. That sounds like a personal problem. I still haven't bought a Nexus 5. Should I buy a Nexus 5? Absolutely not. No, because you missed your opportunity to spend $800 on it from Best Buy, and now you would have to buy it for a reasonable $350. So, I don't see why you would purchase one. I still like the Nexus 4. I don't know. That's not a bad phone. You can buy a Nexus 4. Good reason why you should buy a Nexus 4. But Evan, I intend to hook. Do you want to wrap up the micro SD point here? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I totally do. I totally do. So, in America, all of the flagship phones pretty much come with 32 and 64 gig options, minus the carrier Galaxy S4s. But if you want something cheaper and you're buying phones off contract, it's really hard to find storage options. The HTC One Mini is a good example. That only comes in 16 gigs. And a lot of lower end phones either have removable storage to keep the costs really low, and those are true low cost devices, or smaller phones that you would imagine to be a little bit lower cost. They really only come with 16 gig options. And if you're, like most people I would imagine, if you have constant access to LTE, then you're great. You can use all of Google services and you can contribute to their data sets, and that is super fine and peachy. But if you live internationally, and A, you don't have access to Google Music or some of the streaming options that are available in America, then you're screwed. You get 16 gigs and that's all you can get. Wow, so the rest of us outside of America are just completely off the web as far as you're concerned. As far as what's concerned? We need our storage because we have no web services whatsoever. Spotify just popped up in the States one day. Yeah, that's true. There's no wireless outside the US. Didn't Al Gore invent Spotify? Yes. Oh, for the Sunday. They're still communicating by carrier pigeon in the UK. I mean, ugh. When we can, because the other thing is we also don't have any food infrastructure, so we kind of tend to eat our pigeons, particularly here in the winter. There's a really good joke about terrible English food in there, but I'm going to leave it alone. Oh, man. You do know that actually one of the famous curries is invented in Birmingham in the UK, the Bounty Curry. So there you go. But what does that have to do with LTE? It has to do with food. It takes up so much longer to order it. Yeah, that's true. All right, so you guys want to talk about Windows Phone? Instagram? Yes. Let's do that. Let's do that. So last week, Instagram finally came to Windows Phone in an official capacity, and there was a bit of confusion initially about how the app actually worked, but it turns out you can indeed take photos with the Instagram app on Windows Phone, but you can't record videos, which is kind of a bummer and kind of a pretty big feature for Instagram these days. Yeah, it's a – the whole thing was just a train wreck from beginning to end. So they actually – Instagram was telling outlets, including us, that you could not take photos from within the app, and that's still like technically true. Isn't that technically true? Yeah, because you go to the – you go to the camera roll, and then you can take a photo from there, but like why would you mince words against your product? Like go ahead and just take the mulligan and say yes, you can take photos with the app, because in reality you can. It's just on a technicality you have to go outside the app to do it, but still from within the app. So it's really weird. Yeah, it's a different order of things than say like on Android or iOS where you get to like take your photo immediately, but it's – I mean at the end of the day you can still open up the app, hit a button, and take photos. It's just so funny that that was the kind of turn of events, because this is such an anticipated moment for Windows Phone, and then it just gets immediately so weird. Trashed. And even so though, you still can't do video recording with it. So they're not at feature parity, and it seems like there was some rush imposed, most likely by Microsoft, to get this product out of the door, probably in time for the holidays, because Instagram is such a big name and was the most important remaining hole in their app lineup, but it's kind of a hollow victory because they didn't close the gap completely. They wanted the name without regard for making sure that the app was every bit as good as it is on other platforms. And then of course there's the ongoing issue, and Tom Warren pointed this out in a report that he did on quote-unquote closing the app gap, that once the app is launched, be it Instagram, be it Vine, be it Twitter, whatever, none of these developers are as committed to keeping those apps updated on Windows Phone as they are on Android and iOS for good reason, because they have a tenth of the users. So there's not, you know, the impetus and the incentive to keep those users happy isn't as strong mathematically as it is on other platforms, and that is going to be an ongoing challenge for Microsoft. We even see this with Android. Android might have all of the same big name apps as iOS, but when new features come out, they come to iOS first and then maybe months later show up on Android. I think Instagram's been pretty good about keeping its Android app sort of concurrent with the iOS one, but there's still some things that it's missing, and other apps are much worse offenders where it'll be a long time between the feature parity. So you could just magnify that for Windows Phone. And you know, we've seen that with, just an example, is like the official Twitter app. The official Twitter apps on iOS and Android generally get updated the same day. They're the same day, they get the same new features, and then months and months later they'll come to Windows Phone. I think it was just recently updated to let you set, get alerts when somebody tweets. So now you can finally get like mobile alerts through the app when you set, say so when Barack Obama tweets or whatever, it'll alert you through the app, which the Android and iOS have had for a long, long time. Of course the other problem is that there's still, Microsoft is still chasing these big name apps that are already out, but when new like really buzz-worthy apps come out, and the example that I used on Twitter when I was talking about this last week is QuizUp, which is a really hot app for iOS right now. That won't come out for Windows Phone for months if ever. I don't know if QuizUp has plans to launch on Windows Phone, although you probably don't want to download it right now anyway with the privacy issues. Regardless, the point is, the developers that are trying to get these new apps off the ground naturally choose iOS and to some extent Android on day one. Rim Capsule is another example of a huge app. People run two. The biggest one that's the most amusing to me is Mirrors Edge, which is now available on Windows Phone. It came out I believe or less this past summer. I believe if I'm not mistaken that debuted with the iPhone 4 in 2010 on iOS, and it was either early 2013 or middle 2013 when it got to Windows Phone, which is like... Vlad what were you going to say about incentives? Well I'm about to say it. To Chris' point... Wait, wait. Okay, are we done here? To Chris' point, he was talking about incentives and why developers would keep the development part going. I think we all know, even though it hasn't been official, that Instagram coming to Windows Phone was incentivized by big piles of cash from Microsoft. That's pretty much a given. But that payment most likely related to just bring Instagram to Windows Phone. That sentence. From both perspectives, you can see the strategic advantage. It's about the conversation on the bus where two guys are talking trash about, well I've got my Windows Phone and I've got my iPhone, but mine has the apps. They start comparing which apps, which platform has, etc. Because that's actually happening now in real conversations between real people. You can say I've got Instagram on Windows Phone. Even if it doesn't have proper feature parity, it's there. So the strategic advantage for Microsoft is there. You can justify why Microsoft has pushed so hard to get the app onto its platform, but Chris identifies a really big issue, which is what happens after version 1.0. Because with the iPhone, what keeps happening is here's our iOS 7 update, and then two days later, here's our iOS 7 update with a few fixes. Now that we've seen a few errors and whatever. It's just really instant and there's responsiveness and people working to evolve and improve the app. And what I'm noticing happening is with Android becoming a stronger and more prevalent platform, a lot of the developers are also using Android phones. So they have that kind of unprompted stimulus to keep developing their app on a different platform than iOS. Everybody knows that iOS is the one that you make the most money on. It's the one that makes the most sense to develop for the developer, but if you yourself use Android, like me, for example, I can't use an iPhone anymore because I'm so addicted to the Android Gmail application. So if you're stuck with Android for whatever reason and you're a developer of a... I'm stuck with Android for a very positive and a happy reason. I'm not complaining here. I think it's, for me, for my uses, it's more useful than the iPhone because they also don't screw around with privacy-evading apps like QuizUp. Thank you for the challenge, by the way, Chris. But that being the case, that's a little advantage for people. If people are using your operating system, it encourages them to keep developing for it and developing promptly for it. So it kind of comes down to is Windows Phone an attractive operating system for people to use? It just comes back to the basics there. Yeah, I mean, really, this is the same old story that we've had since Windows Phone came out. It does seem like they are getting more and more of the apps that we've been looking for in addition to Instagram. Vine is now available. The same day that Instagram came out, Waze came out, which I'm not sure why you'd use Waze, but it's out. And there are other big-name apps that have come along. They now have Pandora and PayPal and all these other apps that we're missing for a long time. To be clear, Waze is like the Netflix of navigation apps. Their sole goal is to be on every platform imaginable. So it's like, to an extent, I'm like, when I hear that Waze comes to Windows Phone, I don't think that's actually indicative of any trend. Well the only thing that's really interesting about Waze coming to Windows Phone, to me at least, is the fact that Waze is now owned by Google, and Google has pretty much said that we're not really developing for Windows Phone until it gets more popular. Right. Well part of Waze's whole deal is just acquiring massive quantities of traffic data. So I mean, maybe that's Google's play, or Waze's play. It's like, well, you know, maybe nobody will use it, but we'll still be able to suck down a bunch of traffic and public transit data. Well, I talked to Tom a little bit about that, and his theory, and I think this is probably a reasonable one, is that they had Windows Phone on their roadmap prior to the Google acquisition. And Google, as we've seen from Motorola, has a habit of running some of its acquisitions as independent companies anyway. I don't know if that's the case with Waze or not, but they do still identify as Waze, not as Google, I think. Yeah. So here is one other question I actually have about Windows Phone. Now that the Xbox One has happened, first of all, any of you guys buying, have you obtained an Xbox One yet? Yes. Yes. Okay. Chris. Do you care about the synergies that things like Xbox Smart Glass and whatever other company apps Microsoft does, do you care about those things? I use Smart Glass quite a bit, but only because the Xbox One's control, like AV control environment slash ecosystem is just an enormous bag of hurt, as Neelai did a pretty good job of laying out in his report a few weeks ago. So having Smart Glass as a tool to help control that is a good thing. But what are you using it on, Chris? Oh, on my iPhone. Yeah, so the thing is like there's no reason for you to buy a Windows Phone in order to use your Xbox. Do you gain anything by having Microsoft's own phone platform talking to Microsoft's gaming system? And I think the answer is going to be no, because Microsoft was wise enough to realize that we need to release this app on Android and iOS because that's where the users are. Right, it's funny, going all the way back to Windows Phone 7, Microsoft had made such big, big promises about Xbox Live integration and none of that really materialized, right? One thing has. There's a Halo game on Windows Phone and you can't get that on Android or iOS. So if you really want to play Halo. Yeah, and you can see your avatar and your gamer points and all that nonsense, but it's nothing like, I mean if Microsoft had been really smart in that regard, they would have done something similar to what Sony is doing with Vita and Remote Play. And they never did that. What's really interesting to me is like this kind of goes to Microsoft's play on all of its platforms. They all look very similar now, even the Xbox dashboard looks very much like Windows 8, which looks very much like Windows Phone 8. But the Xbox dashboard doesn't really talk to Windows 8 and Windows 8 doesn't talk to Windows Phone 8. And it's like they have all of these products that look very similar and maybe function very similarly, but there's no benefit to you to have a Windows Phone 8 and a Windows 8 tablet at the same time. Like you can't share your apps, your data might be shared through the cloud, but if I'm storing stuff in SkyDrive, it can also access SkyDrive on my Mac and I can access SkyDrive on an iPad and etc. etc. So it's like, there seems like there's some sort of opportunities that are not being taken advantage of, at least not yet. Well, talking about incentives, like if Microsoft can't incentivize developers on a massive scale to develop apps for their platform, perhaps they can incentivize consumers with tighter integration between their three platforms. Exactly. I mean, if I'm playing, like if I'm doing something and I just want to like share data between my Windows 8 tablet and my Windows Phone 8 or you know, share an app across them or something like that, that kind of makes sense, but it's not happening. Not now at least. Well, let's just point out the fact that nobody is really doing that beautiful integration across devices. Well the iPad and the iPhone, I can buy an app on my iPad and I can use it on my iPhone if it's a universal app and vice versa. But it's incomplete. It's incomplete is what I'm saying. So yeah, there are some strengths, but for example, if you go and try to rely on iCloud, you quickly realize that Google services are so much superior. What are you talking about? Okay, and the other thing is, I work for iCloud, it's just a joke. It's like some kid trying to copy Google Docs. It's terrible. It's so far from being useful. But yeah, I mean, in my experience, again, I find the most useful implementation to be Google's. So I can mess around with some notes on my phone, on Google Drive and then jump onto my Chrome on my desktop and the notes are there and things like that. But it's still really rudimentary. It's still a sort of thing where you feel like you're just getting some basic sync between your devices and that's it. Whereas I think the vision that Chris had as well with the initial introduction of Windows Phone was something like, perfect example for me is the Xbox Live Arcade. So those are lighter games, simpler games, ones that don't require as much storage. If you could just bring that onto the phone and have games like Braid and whatever just accessible on your phone, it opens up so many more possibilities. And it frustrates me as well when guys at Microsoft promise things like, well, we now have DirectX compatibility in Windows Phone 8. And I keep waiting, okay, we have DirectX compatibility, where are the more advanced games? Where is this awesomeness that I can't get on the other platforms? And that's what keeps missing. I mean that's the story of every Build Conference for the last couple of years. I mean, you guys remember that demonstration where they showed a game being played on a Windows 8 machine at the initial Windows 8 Build Conference and then kind of seamlessly transitioning over to continuing the game on the Subway. But those kind of features never really materialized and we're still waiting for them. Now Chris, let me ask you this. Have you tried using the Xbox One SkyDrive integration for game streaming? No. So from what I understand, you can use the five minute DVR feature of the Xbox One to record five minutes of gameplay. And then I think that you can have that automatically deposit that five minutes into SkyDrive and I think there's pretty tight integration with Facebook so you can very seamlessly post those gameplay footage directly onto Facebook. So these little integrations are starting to make their way, but I think what we're all realizing at this point is that it's really hard. And that's why no one is really doing it, but Microsoft is at least trying. Well I was just going to say I use, so the Xbox One is a built in video sharing service called Upload. And you can choose, like when you save a video clip, you can choose to save it to upload or to SkyDrive. And I don't think I've ever opened SkyDrive in my life, at least not intentionally. So I'm using the Upload service. SkyDrive is good. Don't hate SkyDrive. Yeah, SkyDrive is actually one of the better cloud backup services. So if you're listening to this podcast like two months from now, maybe in 2014 or some point, we'll probably be talking about a new service, whatever the new name is, right? Because they renamed it SkyDrive. Oh, right, right. But yeah, just to add to the point, Microsoft isn't alone in capturing these gameplay footage things. Sony did a whole extra hardware layout so we can do game recording in the PS4, which means... I am totally not a gamer, and I'm like a self-proclaimed not a gamer. But there's just like, I just cannot grasp the appeal of watching somebody else's recorded gameplay footage. Like I know it's huge and there's like millions of people that use this Twitch service and things like that. But I'm like, why would I want to watch some guy running around through whatever game it is? But there's reasons. There's reasons, particularly for like guides if you're struggling with overcoming a particular boss fight or whatever else. And like hyper competitive gaming. Like StarCraft is huge because people want to see other people's strategies and it's like a big deal. Well, I uploaded a sweet video of me doing donuts in a 1991 GMC Typhoon. Or Cyclone, excuse me. So I don't know what you guys are talking about. Like why people wouldn't want to see that, I don't know. That's 15 seconds of your life well spent. But that's the thing. I think I'm totally involved with Dan. I am the opposite of Dan insofar as games have done more for my upbringing than proper education has. But I don't, I don't get the appeal of particularly like streaming your gaming session and like not doing something clearly focused such as a guide or such as Chris is showing off or whatever else. I've already watched Tom Warren successfully defend his goal in FIFA 14. So I mean, like I'm all about it. Every time I see one of my friends upload a video, I'm all up on it. I love it. It's just so wrong. But also to mention, on the PC, NVIDIA has this shadow play feature which a lot of people are quite enthusiastic about which pretty much does the same thing. I'm just trying to convey the idea that everybody seems to be getting on board with it. And Dan and I completely don't get it. Chris is being a troll right now. But I mean, particularly with games, if you're going to show off video of it, you're really just showing off your experience of the same thing that other people are most likely going to experience as well. It's kind of like bringing it back to… But it's no different than wanting to watch a replay of like a really good, you know, touchdown in a football game. Like there are epic moments in games that are, that have entertainment value. Like a good overtake in a heated fours a match. I'll watch that. Yeah, that is valid. That's valid. I'm not going to argue with that. I guess the thing is with games, most of the time you don't have these highlight things. So I guess if you're being selective and just uploading the particularly juicy bits, then I can get behind that. But also, since we're on this topic, very briefly, I would just like to point out this entire hoopla around the new consoles is completely premature. As far as I'm concerned, nobody should care until Titanfall shows up on the Xbox One and just kind of blows us all away. These consoles don't have that amazing game which is going to keep you locked in next to your TV throughout the holiday season, which I think is, you know, the hallmark of a good console launch. And if you want the absolute prettiest and best graphics, you still have to go to the PC and play Battlefield 4, which looks stunning. Get a good graphics card, play Battlefield 4 on ultra settings, it will make you forget about the consoles, seriously. But there's also the other provisional slash caveat that Battlefield 4, its gameplay is actually like stupid, horribly, horribly stupid. I haven't got into the multiplayer, but the single player missions are just lame. It's exactly like the stunning supermodel stereotype. Amazing to look at, completely dumb and hollow on the inside. I just need to get that on my chest. So kind of going back to this integration and consumer incentivizing thing really quick, Chris have you, could you watch your friends like DVR or live streamed footage on SmartGlass? On SmartGlass I don't think so, but there are, you know like third party apps can integrate with SmartGlass, I think. And the Xbox One ships with Twitch, so there might be some integration point there, I don't know, I don't use Twitch and I don't have Twitch installed on the Xbox, but it's possible. Okay, well I'm just trying to figure out which is, like who has the tighter app integration, because the PlayStation app just came out the other day and it will allow you to throw to Ustream, but aside from that, like aside from the SmartGlass app, I'm really at a loss to kind of understand who is integrating better, because Microsoft has the advantage I would think, because the design language between Windows Phone and the Xbox UI and the Windows 8 UI is very contiguous, it feels very cohesive, and Sony is kind of trying to deal with their own closed ecosystem, but also Android, but I mean the PlayStation app will let you see what your friends are playing and it will let you buy games right from the app. I agree with you that there's design synergy between the Xbox One and Windows 8 and Windows Phone, but I don't think that any human being on the planet with an Xbox One is saying, ooh, I like this UI, I'm going to go buy a Windows Phone now. That's not happening. I just need to call out Evan on his use of contiguous, it was misused. I apologize. You've been docked one point. So if you guys don't mind, let's move on. I've got a question. As I fall on my face through this transition. This is on topic. Let me just make sure this isn't an embargo. I got an email from Best Buy, they've got two special offers launching tomorrow. It's an embargo or whatever. It's not like anybody listens to this podcast. No, it's not. Okay, they've got a free Samsung Galaxy S4 deal with a two year activation of Best Buy and Best Buy mobile specials starting Wednesday through Saturday. Do you guys think the Galaxy S4 is worth buying at this point? I'm curious. What was the deal? I wasn't listening. It's a free Galaxy S4 with a two year contract. That's a better deal than pretty much any of the carriers are offering on the Galaxy S4. Which carrier is this? This is through Best Buy. So whatever carrier Best Buy offers. I think the Galaxy S4 is very much like the iPhone in that Samsung will release it in June or whatever. It's going to be a competitive device through to almost right up until the next June when the next model comes out. If you look at the actual specifications of it, it's got a powerful processor, really high res screen, a good camera and everything like that. So if you liked the Galaxy S4 six months ago, there's no reason not to like it now. You know what else it has? Removable storage. The Galaxy S5 is going to be curved, isn't it? No. Actually, on that topic, there has been a couple of stories coming out of Korea saying that the first generation of flexible screen devices are flopping. Now the reason we didn't cover that is because they seem to be very flaky in terms of sourcing. It's anonymous sources and nobody sounds particularly confident about the numbers. How long have they been out? Well, it's been a month, over a month. But they're being sold in really limited quantities, right? It's not like it's available all over the world. They're being sold just in Korea, I think, right? And they're being sold alongside their flat equivalents which are presumably much cheaper in store. It's possible. I'm just saying, again, with the providers I've mentioned, that at least the earliest feedback we've heard about them hasn't been that positive. Which, as far as you're concerned, Chris, is a positive because it would probably put them off. I mean, the Galaxy S5, there's no chance of it to curve because they just can't do that at mass production levels. Particularly the mass production levels you need. Evan, record the last 10 seconds of this podcast. I want to put that in Vlad's face when the Galaxy S5 is curved. No problem. We'll have a breakout. All right, thanks. Awesome. But actually, we can turn this into a pretty nice transition here, into a pretty nice segue, provided nobody interrupts me. Which is to say that the Google Play edition of the Galaxy S4 just started getting the 4.4 kick-add update, as has the HC1, which is a credit to everybody involved. Yeah, a whole bunch of phones. In the past week, a whole bunch of phones got it. The Nexus 4, finally, the rollout started for that. I've had it on my Nexus 4 for, I don't know, a week or so. The Moto Xs, right now, it's available from Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T Moto Xs. It's just leaving Sprint out of the equation for there. Then it just started yesterday, I believe, the Google Play edition, HC1 and Galaxy S4 started getting entered for 4.4. So, you know, it's good to see it's making its way around. I doubt we're gonna hear any more about Android 4.4 kick-add rollouts for a while, because at this point, it's the carrier or the manufacturer customized versions that are the majority of things left. So that's gonna be a while before those get it. Yeah. I still don't have it on my One, either, so I'm pissed. Here's the thing, my sincerest hope about Android 4.4 is that come CES in January, nobody comes out with a phone, with an Android phone that doesn't have it. Oh, my God, you are so high. They are gonna be all having Android 4.3 at the best. Yeah, that's definitely happening. Yeah. Dude, I bet you, we're at CES, we're gonna see some Chinese manufacturer release a phone with Android 4.1. I guarantee it. But no, there are not gonna be any major phone announcements at CES. There are, but the Chinese manufacturers do announce things. Ah, Chris, see, now, Evan, keep recording. Oh, yeah. Keep recording, because we're gonna need to throw this back in Chris' face. You know what's gonna happen is, like, Sony is going to announce a phone, like it did last year. Yes. And Sony is going to announce the phone with Android 4.2. Oh, God, I can't. If Chris were only to qualify his statement to say there will not be a new phone at CES that launches or is available to buy before April, then it would be fine. But wait, what does Sony have in the pipeline right now? They have a fresh megaphone and they have a fresh… Okay, so the freshest Sony rumors right now, the freshest Sony rumors out in the Sony beat is a refreshed Xperia Z1, either called the Xperia Z2 or possibly the Z1S that people thought was the Z1 Mini. I guess that's possible. People are kind of not sure because this is all rumory and shady and that sort of thing. And then there's also the international Xperia Z1 Mini, which, please, I need one so bad. So regardless of what the rumors say, Sony… Well, I mean, best phone in the world right now until they come out with one that's the size for a human hand. Well, it exists. They've announced it for Japan, the Mini version. Yeah, well, it's a Docomo exclusive. There's no guarantee that the international one will ever come out. So just man up and move to Japan. It's cool. Hey, so while we're deep into Sony, I'm just going to use this and steamroll this transition right into the Sony SmartWatch 2, which I reviewed and it went up today. And if you haven't read it, go read it. And I'm just going to sum this up by saying that it breaks my heart because the SmartWatch 2 is, in my opinion at least, the best looking smartwatch we've seen, the one that's the least embarrassing to wear. But its software is so clunky and so difficult to use that it is not worth it. And that's…it's sad. It's better than the SmartWatch 1 by leaps and bounds, but it is not…I don't even like it as much usability wise as a Pebble and certainly not where I would hope that a new smartwatch would be at this point. No one understands what a smartwatch should be except me. I'm literally the only human being on the planet. This is where smartwatches are. Smartwatches are the…we're in the 2005 smartphone world of smartwatches. We're in the 2001 tablet world of tablets. And we're still a couple years away until somebody really figures this out and there's always all this demand and all this interest and all this intrigue and nobody seems to get it right and then somebody's going to figure it out and there's going to be this iPhone moment and then it's going to be great and then everybody will want one. But we're not there yet and all of the things that have been tried are really not it. But I'm convinced that's not…I see where you're going with that. I'm not convinced it's a perfect analogy because I think what makes wearables shine is when they are…I mean there are things you're literally wearing like clothes and like jewelry. They need to be personalized to the person that's wearing them. That's why glass looks…well glass looks stupid on anybody but it isn't personalized to the person that's wearing it. There's been talk about integrating it with prescriptions. That's part of figuring it out. I mean maybe that's what needs to be figured out to make these things successful but they also need to figure out usability and functionality and features that aren't there yet. So I think…and battery life. Yeah and battery life. I was going to say with the SmartWatch 2, Sony did do a number of things right. In my test I easily got three to four days of battery life which is acceptable at this point for these things and it charges over micro USB which means it uses the same charging cable as my phone which is such a stupid thing that I have to bring it up. But no other smart watch does that so…or none other that I've used at least. So it's kind of a major convenience that I like that Sony did but I can't stand using the software. Here is my contribution and it particularly goes to the software side. The Sony SmartWatch 2 is probably the saddest out of the box experience that I've had with any gadget over the past however many years, two, three years, however long it's been. It's just I pulled it out first of all I got that metal strap on my review unit whereas Dan got the plastic one, the silicone one. The rubber one yeah. Rubber, okay. The metal strap I had no idea how to adjust it so it was way too big and it was cold and it was unpleasant. You know my gentle, gentle wrist just weren't ready for it. But aside from that, you turn it on, you start looking inside it for things to do and it's just so barren. It's like we have a wallpaper, we have a time app and a timer app and we have like four watch faces and that is it. You're on your own after that. And then you have to go and search and dig and enhance the functionality and getting notifications set up and all this other baloney and nonsense which I just wasn't even interested in doing because I don't find it that attractive. I don't like the fact that you have the free Android buttons on it. There's absolutely no reason for them to be on there. It needs to be clean like Chris says, it needs to be something you would want to just wear for the sake of keeping time. Like get that right first. Compete with the guys who are already doing that correctly. And then move on to trying to enhance things. Yes. I do not, Chris. Were you picking your nose Chris? What just happened? What you're not familiar with this gesture. That gesture means not it. This means not it. That's international nose goes territory. None of you guys have played charades. This means yes that's it. You have it right. Like if you're playing charades and somebody has a word right in a phrase, you go like that meaning spot on. I've always just seen people point and be like no. If you're listening to the show right now and you're on Twitter will somebody please back me up that this means spot on. Chris who plays charades? I trust Chris. I trust Chris and his Wikipedia sources. I'm down with that. Listen citation needed on charades, come on. And I'm very happy to just collect the endorsement from Chris. That makes my day. I'm basically – Vlad gets it. What can I say? Vlad gets it. Vlad you and I are going to kick start a proper smart watch. Yeah, because that's what we need. Another smart watch project. I was actually thinking about that today and it's kind of depressing to me when you think about the 90s. It's going to be like the 22nd century or whatever and I'm going to have artificial hearts and artificial everything else and I'm still going to be nostalgic about 1990s. That was my decade. But at that time – Vlad just mentioned that he's going to be alive in the 22nd century which is no less than 87 years away from now. Wait, why not? So Vlad plans to be a centurion at least. Dude, I am definitely eating the right diet for it. I'm eating enough cabbage to survive. Wait, isn't a centurion like a Roman warrior or something? Centenarian? Is that what I'm trying to say? Centenarian? Maybe. A centurion is so much cooler so I'm down with it. No, but seriously, in the 90s we had already figured out – and even before the 90s, that's my recollection – we had already figured out how to make a watch work without any extra power. You could just, with the movement of your hand, you could recharge a watch. That actually happened decades before that. I'm just talking about the freaking 90s man. Whatever happened before was born didn't happen. Yeah, they did. They figured it out decades before. Maybe it trickled down to actually accessible for normals by then. Okay, listen, if the 90s – Citizen has had kinetic watches since the 60s, I'm pretty sure. I didn't say we invented kinetic watches in the 1990s, so stop arguing with a point I'm not making. All I'm saying is if that's the last relatable decade for me, we have an even younger audience. Let's not push it too far back. My point is this, we had figured out how to have a watch keep going perpetually without needing to recharge it or do any extra special things. We had figured out how to have a contact book without requiring any power. Whereas the way we're moving now is every single one of these things that we could do mechanically or in some other automatic fashion now requires power. Now we need electricity to power off just for our watch, just to keep time, just to keep our contacts up to date. All of these things. It's like we lose the tactility of having an actual nice notebook in which you keep your contacts. We lose the ability to write because we no longer need to do it. Can any of you remember writing, physically writing, other than signing your signature on a bill? I take notes in a notebook all the time. Yeah, I take notes. Okay, well good. You're not that far beyond explanation. My handwriting is horrendous. I guess I'm just having one of those nostalgic anti-tech moments where you think, well why does everything need to have a freaking battery in it? Why does everything need to be powered? Whereas we figured out ways to do these things adequately already without power. That to me is the fundamental issue with smart watches is they start sucking down power. They start being yet another device that you need to keep recharged on a weekly basis or whatever else. Like you guys are saying, we need a really compelling feature, a real must have additional value or benefit that makes us want to do that extra charging and that extra fuss. I think that just is what makes it so hard right now because on the one hand you want a smart watch to have this great functionality right out of the box. You want it to look great. You want it to be a fantastic timepiece. You also want it to have a couple of staples of smartness. You want to receive notifications and you want to be able to accept and receive calls or deny calls from your wrist. But what makes it really challenging is that inevitably people will want to do so much more with it so you have to kind of… No not inevitably. Samsung has put it in your head that you need to be able to do so much more with your smart watch. You don't. No, I'm not saying you don't need to do more things with your smart watch. I don't want to add and remove contacts. I don't want to flick through it to change music. I just want the… I do. I mean, you know, to each their own. But you need to at least have the capability of extending the functionality to things like when I get in proximity of my computer, unlock it. Or if I'm in proximity of my door, automatically unlock that or start up my car or whatever. Well so Motorola kind of took a baby step in that direction with its trusted Bluetooth device concept, right? Which is pretty cool. I remember for a while Dieter had his Pebble set up as his trusted object. I must note that you do not need a Motorola to do that. There's apps for the Pebble and there's actually apps for the Sony smart watch that I mentioned in the review that let you do the same thing with your phone. But it doesn't open my house door and it doesn't sign me into my laptop and things like that that it could do. Best Buy is now selling… what is it called? Kemo or Keebo or Keego or something like that. It's the Bluetooth deadbolt. Yeah. So they're slowly moving in that direction but it's going to be just a complete nightmare because there will be no standards for it. Earlier today on Twitter I was saying that we need Harmony, iRobot, Nest and Dyson to just merge and take over the home because no one else is going to do this in a way that makes any sense. Nest obviously has a plan, a roadmap but they're moving very slowly so maybe with some additional horsepower they would be able to move a little quicker. But yeah, all these companies are coming up with their own solutions for it. It's a great idea, they just need to move faster and they need to do it in a way that is standardized. When you say Harmony, do you mean Logitech Harmony? Yeah. But Logitech said like six months ago that they want to spin off Harmony, right? So spin it right off into Nest. Yeah, just spin it off into Nest and then maybe James Dyson will air blade it into a, I don't know, come up with some. No dude, use a backless vacuum. Yes. Alright guys. Just before we do wrap up, I do think that there's the kernel of a utility here with using the smartwatch as a security device. I mean you guys remember a couple of podcasts ago Dieter was asking what is the smallest, tiniest Bluetooth transceiver that I can have in order to do that security and unlocking thing. And if you put it in the watch, that is the thing that is most secure among all your devices because it's literally strapped to you. Even Google Glass isn't strapped to you. I don't really have another way of saying that. So I personally, if you make a smartwatch that syncs up with the computer and just unlocks it, powers it up from sleep when you're next to it, etc. and just does these things really smoothly. Like I say, I don't want the Sony smartwatch 2 experience where everything is barren and then I have to go and hunt around and do things. I just need it to be out of the box working, beautiful and lovely and impressive to nearby ladies. I think that is where smartwatches can really start taking off. And on that note, Impressing the Ladies wraps up this episode of the Verge Mobile Show. So we thank you for listening and tuning in. If you want to follow us, you can of course follow us at Verge. I'm DC Seifert, Vlad is Vlad Savov, Evan is Evan Rogers, and Chris is ZPower and Dieter Bohn is at Baclon and hopefully he'll be joining us again next week. And if you're in the US, have a happy holiday, eat some turkey or tofurkey or whatever you like to eat and we'll see you guys next week. Deuces. Later.
 Hey, welcome to the Verge Mobile Show. This is episode 70 for the week of November 25th.
 It's Turkey week here in the US, so it is Thanksgiving and lots to be thankful for.
 I'm Dan Seifert.
 I'm Evan Rogers.
 Where was Vlad on that?
 Vlad just dropped out at the moment of truth.
 So pro.
 Well, I'm Chris Stigler and apparently Vlad has decided not to join us. There was something
 about Dan's mention of Thanksgiving that made him very, very angry.
 He just peed out.
 He dropped in a huff.
 To be fair, Commonwealth countries do Thanksgiving on different days. I don't know if it's Commonwealth
 countries or just Canada. I know that Canada had their Thanksgiving in October.
 Yeah, but that's because winter starts in Canada so much earlier.
 You're just in perpetual winter as far as I know. I don't think there is any other
 season.
 The great frozen north.
 That's right.
 Oh, podcasts. So.
 So this has been a smooth start.
 I guess we should probably talk about, we should at least acknowledge the fact that
 Evan Rogers, our producer, is joining us for I believe his third appearance, is that right?
 Yes, yes that is the case.
 That's very, very exciting and the reason, oh and we also have an infant joining us today.
 The podcasting star.
 I believe and we're not going to spoil the surprise. Actually we are going to spoil the
 surprise. I believe, I'm being told, it's being fed into my ear as we speak. No it's
 not. That Dieter may be joining us later. I still know why Dieter's not here, by the
 way. We're going to have to talk about this later.
 Yes, yes. So I am sitting in for Dieter for the time being and theoretically he will in
 fact join us.
 Good.
 And Vlad, he is a person that exists but not on the internet for the moment.
 He is a person that exists, this is true.
 So yeah, that's what's up. That's podcasting.
 So do you guys want to talk about mobile stuff?
 I guess.
 I'm just looking at our, I'm admittedly looking at our topic list for the very first time
 and the top of the list is apparently three high level BlackBerry executives have been
 given the old boot and shown the door. John Chen is the new CEO is starting to clean house
 and right the ship it seems.
 Well you know, as they say, rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic is always the way
 to go.
 So that's my first question I guess. Knowing not very much about BlackBerry, like BlackBerry's
 corporate structure, I don't know how much these three individuals influenced kind of
 the sinking, the Titanic if you will.
 Well I mean again, we've said this in past weeks.
 I mean these are C level executives right?
 Yeah, they are, but I don't think, I mean anything that happened in the period of time
 between the departure of Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis and BlackBerry today, I think
 it's very very difficult to attribute a lot of blame to anyone in the C suite up to and
 including Torsten Heinz because they just didn't, I mean their fate was kind of sealed
 by the time those guys were shown the door. And granted there are probably things that
 they could have done to soften the blow, maybe, but you have to second guess Heinz decision
 to push the launch of BlackBerry 10 out what, by three or four months, if not more.
 I can't remember how long he delayed it, but he delayed it for a while and that may
 have hurt them a bit, but at the end of the day, I mean it's six and one half dozen the
 other.
 But their fate was sealed I think, so that's my take.
 Did we talk about the Porsche design last week? I guess we did didn't we?
 Yeah because Vlad had one.
 For reasons that are so much.
 I should probably say hello.
 Oh he's here.
 Yeah he's here, nice.
 Vlad's here.
 I snuck in, I snuck in but since I am completely uninformed about what those three people who
 left BlackBerry did or what their value was or where they're going, so just keep quiet.
 The ones that left, at least one of them was a pretty public face. Frank Bulbin was the
 chief marketing officer. He was always out there talking about, as much as Heinz was
 at least talking about BlackBerry and its plans and things like that. And it's been
 a very important role in hiring Alicia Keys I guess.
 So it's a high level executive position. I honestly, if somebody is going to be brought
 in as a fixer, upper type of person as what this interim CEO John Chen is supposed to
 apparently be, then it only makes sense for him to get rid of the old guard and figure
 out something new. So I'm not terribly surprised by this move. But like Chris said, it's like
 rearranging the deck chairs in the Titanic.
 I remember talking to Frank Bulbin when he was first hired, which wasn't that long ago.
 He was hired by Heinz, if memory serves me correctly. And I can't remember where he
 came from. But yeah, he was a pretty, I think I talked to him literally within a couple
 weeks of him being hired. And I specifically remember asking a bunch of questions and him
 being like, look, I don't know. I just got here. So hopefully he was at least able to
 bring himself up to speed on the company before he was shown the door.
 Here's my question. Why wasn't Alicia Keys fired in a very public way? Why hasn't any
 BlackBerry executive said, you know what, we put a lot of faith and trust into Alicia
 to turn this company around. She wasn't able to pull it off. We're going to have
 to let her go.
 My question is, why wasn't she immediately promoted to B-level executive?
 Yeah, she should be the new chief executive.
 That would be incredible.
 Well, actually, there is something else.
 Especially if she's still tweeting from her iPhone.
 YOLO.
 The first thing that bugs me with all of these departures is that nobody seems to be willing
 to say the word fired anymore. We all know people are getting fired left, right, and
 right, but everybody is stepping aside or stepping down.
 Well, so this is how it goes with all of these companies. I just finished reading, I was
 saying this before we started, but I just finished reading Hatching Twitter, which is
 Nick Biltons of the New York Times. He wrote a book about how Twitter was started and all
 of the executive drama that happened for like three or four years there. And like on the
 public side of things, everything is done to save the face of the executive and save
 the face of the company by having them say, so and so is stepping aside and so and so
 is stepping down. But behind the scenes, it's like screaming in boardrooms and definite
 firings and things like that. But they always seem to give the up, unless in very rare circumstances
 where somebody legitimately gets fired for being violent, I don't know. But it's always
 made to seem like they stepped down or stepped aside or pursuing other interests or will
 be spending more time with their family or some other innocuous thing that lets them
 save their face for when they get hired on the next.
 And I think a lot of that is tied to the departure package.
 The Louis Vuitton golden parachute?
 Exactly. A good example is Sanofsky when he left Microsoft. I think this actually came
 out in some SEC filing that Microsoft had to make where they disclosed that he was under
 an NDA for some period of time and he couldn't disparage Microsoft publicly and in return
 he got some ridiculous amount of money. And me personally, if you give me $10 million
 to not say anything negative about an employer that I feel treated me poorly, I think that's
 an offer that I would probably take.
 You know, I actually have a really awesome troll idea right here, which is that each
 one of these executives as part of the golden parachute should get one of these Porsche
 design Blackberries.
 Nice.
 We're going to recompense you with loads and loads of money in the form of Porsche design
 Blackberries.
 Yeah, instead of giving $10 million they get 500 Porsche design Blackberries.
 I would also like to see how long we can last without acknowledging Dieter trolling us.
 Wait, is Dieter in the hangout?
 Dieter is present, but he's occupied right now. He's occupado. That doesn't mean he's
 not present and his heart's not with us. Yes.
 Isn't occupado like Spanish for the bathroom is in use?
 That's just occupied.
 You're saying that Dieter is going to the bathroom right now.
 Dieter is going to the bathroom right now.
 The bathroom is in use.
 Yes, this is the micro studio slash bathroom.
 It's a really weird place to broadcast video.
 What is he doing?
 If you're watching the video of this, I apologize. If you're listening to the audio of this,
 I also apologize.
 I now have two Vlads.
 I think we all have two Vlads.
 I am the real one.
 I've got two Vlads.
 I am the real one. There is probably a remnant one of me left over because this Google hangout
 hates me, but I'm not giving up. I'm just going to keep coming back and multiplying
 until it lets me stay.
 Yes.
 Awesome, guys.
 Okay, so I've had enough talking about Blackberry. So apparently the FCC has allowed, it's already
 allowed gadgets in the first 10,000 feet of a flight, and now it's considering allowing
 phone calls, which is apparently, well not apparently, this is actually my worst nightmare
 ever. But it's up to the airlines, right, if they want to allow passengers to make phone
 calls while they're on a plane.
 So here's my thought.
 Why is everybody so outraged about that?
 So here's my thought on this. The FCC, they gave us one. You can use your devices on planes
 now, but you're going to suffer through the phone calls of every other passenger. It's
 equivalent exchange.
 Vlad, if you've ever been trapped on a train with somebody who's like gabbing on the phone
 the entire time and you can't get away from it, that's what's wrong with it. Just magnify
 that on a plane.
 All right, fair enough. There's a problem, but that is entirely a social problem. That
 is not a technological problem whatsoever. That basically tells you you need to sort
 out your culture and your fellow man, right? So next time you're stuck with somebody on
 the train and they're gabbing on and on, what you want to apply is a very subtle, very proportionate
 bit of violence so that they know not to do that. And from there, you evolve your society,
 evolve your culture and things improve. Don't hold technology back just because you're
 kind of evil and weird and inconsiderate.
 Well, I mean, I don't think that's holding technology back. The technology is there to
 do it now. It's just not allowed by regulations and the FCC is considering allowing it and
 letting airlines decide whether they will allow it on their planes or not. So I mean,
 the technology is already moved on.
 The regulation is holding the technical thing back, which is, you know, saying don't do,
 I don't know, it's holding people back from doing the technical thing, I guess. But still,
 I feel like if we were just a bit more considerate, this is a bonus and a positive thing for people.
 Like if you're on a plane and there actually is some sort of real emergency, I mean, you
 know, listen, let's not get into like the terrorist situations or whatever, but when
 you look at documentaries, people try to leave messages for their loved ones and whatnot
 and I don't know, I mean, in those circumstances, it's kind of a useful thing and in more innocuous
 ones as well. I just think if we annoy one another, that's a social problem and we shouldn't
 be regulating that out of the way. We should be more considerate as society.
 Well the silver lining here is that while it may be, you know, permissible from a regulatory
 standpoint, the airlines do have the option to just tell you to please, please don't use
 your phone. It's like a movie theater. You can still use your phone in a movie theater.
 You just really shouldn't.
 No, no, they'll kick you out of the movie theater. They can't like open the door.
 Well they could. That would just be, that would be a really, I mean, that's like a
 pretty severe penalty for using your phone. So the point that's been made to me in the
 past, and this is a very fair point, is that until relatively recently, you could make
 calls on planes using Air, I think it was called Aircel, which was later purchased by
 Verizon and that spectrum that was used for that service, I believe, is what eventually
 became GoGo. So GoGo's data service is terrestrial based. They just use their own set of cell
 towers that are pointed upward instead of laterally, and that's how you get Wi-Fi in
 your plane right now. But this service effectively already existed, and no one ever used those
 phones, which is why the spectrum was sold off. And part of that was that it was just
 a very, very expensive service. I'm sure that lots of people would have liked to call
 their family and friends and say, hey, I'm calling you from 30,000 feet, but it was like
 $10 a minute or something. So I could see a situation where the airlines do allow it,
 but say we're going to put just a ridiculous price on it, and so if you need to make an
 emergency call, some business related thing that needs to happen right now, you can do
 it. It's just going to cost you an arm and a leg, and that's going to keep the riff-raff
 off their phones. Thinking back over my lifetime and all the plane rides I've been on back
 when AirCell existed, I never saw a single person use any of those phones. So they can
 just price it as poorly as they priced AirCell that'll keep people off their phones.
 But then there's another point, which is if I'm in one of those situations, my first
 port of call might actually be Skype using an internet connection.
 Boom.
 Right, so if you have Wi-Fi on the flight already, you can...
 But they block VoIP over...
 Yeah.
 Airline Wi-Fi has VoIP blocked almost universally.
 They block all streaming pretty much.
 And I mean, the bandwidth is so terrible that...
 Okay, so...
 They block streaming? I don't know about that. I see people constantly sucking down massive
 Netflix quantities of data.
 Who is watching Netflix on a plane? Like, what magical aircraft have you been on?
 Everyone is trying to use Netflix on a plane, okay?
 Not successfully. I guarantee you they're not doing it successfully. There are a lot
 of people who buy movies ahead of time on their iPad or iPhone or whatever and then
 watch it on the plane, but they're not streaming Netflix.
 Wait, I'm sorry. How do they do that? Do they use iTunes?
 Yeah.
 To purchase DRM-free music and MP4 files?
 No. Wait, what are you talking about? I don't know where Evan is going with this.
 I don't...
 Wait, I really want to know how Evan knows this much detail about the type of file being
 played back on somebody else's tablet.
 Yeah, what's going on here, Evan?
 Actually, this is an incredible segue to a thing that is not on our topic list, but that
 I am extremely passionate about and that I would love to talk about.
 Before you do it, I just have to clarify for my fellow European podcast participants, because
 we're all participants in this. My understanding of this is basically that America is land
 of the free, but heir of the regulated. Because all I've heard so far is, we don't do this,
 we don't allow that, we regulate the other. Guys, this doesn't really fit with your whole...
 In all honesty, the airline industry is probably one of, if not the most regulated industries
 in the US. It's like, when you compare that to the firearms industry, it's like a complete
 different world.
 Oh, also, complete irrelevant aside, but worth mentioning, I don't think you guys have...
 The Federal Agency for Food Safety doesn't have the right to shut down a particular production
 food. I think that's done at a state level, which kind of freaked me out.
 I don't know enough about our own government to say yes or no, that's true or false, but
 I wouldn't be surprised.
 Let's cast this using avocados as an example. There's an avocado plant in California that's
 producing rancid avocados. You're saying that the FDA can't be like, yo, stop doing...
 Or no, it wouldn't be the FDA, it would be the USDA. The USDA can definitely do that.
 They can definitely shut down a factory that's producing rancid avocados.
 The USDA has shut down entire tomato pipelines for salmonella before.
 I like the idea of an actual pipeline with tomatoes going through it. They screw down
 a valve and the tomato supply just cuts off.
 It's all routed through the USDA headquarters. They're just like, well, tomatoes, not today.
 To Chris' example about avocados, that would actually be a pretty major impact on the California
 economy, particularly if it happens sometime around the Super Bowl.
 It would be, yeah.
 Because guacamole consumption around the Super Bowl is a major deal for the US economy.
 I guess I might be spreading some misinformation, but all I know is it was part of my research.
 When the US was shut down, when the state things were running in skeletal mode, there
 was a salmonella outbreak, again, in California with some chicken.
 Well, when the government was shut down, that was the major problem, was because things
 like the FDA didn't have the resources available to do their job. They couldn't enforce their
 jobs and do the necessary food inspections and all that jazz because the government was
 shut down.
 While I was looking into that, somebody pointed out that they didn't have quite as much regulatory
 reach and power as they really should do, even when they're fully functional. Again,
 that was not today, so obviously it's not part of my memory. Evan, I would just like
 to point out, you've been to this podcast. It's just tradition to cut off a perfect segue,
 but now that I've taken care of that, please pick up the segue.
 I wanted to speak a little bit about a recent Anandtech article by Brian Kluge about removable
 storage and removable batteries on Android phones. One of them is very important to me.
 The other one I could not care less about. Removable batteries, I mean, we've talked
 about this before. It's really great. You get an extra Galaxy S4 battery and you just
 slap it in there when you're out of juice. But removable storage, this is something I'm
 very, very passionate about. In fact, it was one of the main motivating reasons for me
 to get an Xperia Z1, by the way. America, oh God, it's so great. The Z1 is the best
 cell phone I have ever owned in my life. For example, I'm going to come back to removable
 storage in just one moment, but anecdotally, yesterday I had this phone in the sauna for
 20 minutes, 25 minutes, totally fine. Asterisk, I'm not responsible if you take your phone
 in the sauna and it doesn't work. Then I took it in the shower, perfectly great. Listened
 to podcasts while I was in there. So good. There's no, there's no reason to be afraid
 of that. There's no, there's no... That is a lie. That is a lie. I have to dispute
 that, because if you're in the shower, the splashing of the water actually gets in the
 way of listening to the podcast. Well, you don't like bathe with the Z1 like as a bar
 of soap. Like you set it off to the side. Yeah, but still... This whole conversation
 is making me really uncomfortable, okay? Like don't take your phone into the Turkish bathhouse
 and you'll be fine. Okay, anyway. So, part of what Brian is saying is that there are
 a lot of trade-offs that you give up for removable storage and removable batteries. And one
 of his points, and that's very true, I mean it's really, really true. He makes a point
 about unibody kind of product design. And I mean, you can fit a 3000 milliamp battery
 in a space that would only allow you to get a 2200 milliamp battery from a few generations
 ago with a removable back. That's very true. And really, I don't miss removable batteries
 at all, because I'm not really road warrior-ing that hard. But on Android, there's kind of
 this thing that I wanted to talk about, and that is that Android is not set up to integrate
 very well with external storage. And this is something that I find to just be like malarkey.
 First and foremost... Watch your language, Evan. I know, I know. This is a family show,
 Evan. I'm really... Throwing around those... Taking us to a dark... Seven-letter words.
 Is that everyone had to build up the courage for like five minutes to call out Brian Kug.
 He's just kind of dodging around the issue, dodging around the issue. And now, let's get
 to the meat, Evan. What is your issue? So there's two things going on here, and that
 is a technological issue, like a technological and software issue. And then there's the kind
 of corporate strategy issue that I have with Google and its control over Android and its
 pleasure with external storage. And basically, what it comes down to is Google doesn't want
 you to have external storage, and Google doesn't really want you to have a very high-capacity
 phone. I don't want you to have external storage. That's a personal problem, and I take offense
 to that. Think about all the horrible things you could be doing with external storage.
 I think the world is just better if you don't have external storage. Yeah, well, it's such
 a pain in the you-know-what to have to think about where your media is going. It should
 just be one contiguous block, and the only effective way to do that is to have it all
 be... I mean, this has been the Windows Phone argument, too, right? That is not true. That
 is absolutely not true. If you remember the original Windows Phones, the Windows Phone
 7s... Yeah, but that was a nightmare. That was a nightmare, and Samsung got into a world
 of hurt because of it. What do you mean? Okay, why was it a nightmare? It seems like the
 actual opposite of a nightmare in that that was part... A dream. It was a dream. No, what
 you can do is you can absolutely format and contain your storage even on two different
 volumes. You can format it and either stripe it or just make two logical drives into one
 logical drive. It's very possible from a software front, and it could be integrated into Android
 very, very easily. That does prevent you from ever taking it out. If you ever take it out,
 all your stuff is gone. So what is the point of external storage? I think Evan is on the
 brink of suggesting RAID storage and multiple microSD cards. It can be done. It can totally
 be done. Now the problem that Chris just brought up with the Samsungs was that the... I can't
 remember the name of the phone right now, but the first Samsung Windows Phone had a
 microSD card slot and you put your card in and it would format it and then you could
 never use that card for anything else. It was like your card was just shot. Okay, so
 what you're talking about is one poor software implementation from Samsung. Who ever heard
 of that, A. And B, it can be done better. It can absolutely be done better. I feel like
 this is a conversation and argument you should have made in like 2009, man. Okay, yeah. And
 guys, I need to make a point here. Hold on. A physical point, which is quite aside from
 the really in-depth and techy stuff that everyone is talking about, microSD cards are just tiny.
 And I'm digging around for one right now and I can't find it. And the thing is, I can get
 behind the whole... Let's have removable storage. Let's have like, I have one card with all
 of my movies on it. I have another card with like my dubstep albums on it and such and
 such. And if we do a really good implementation... One whole card just for your dubstep?
 64 gigs of dubstep. At least. You can't... It's only like...
 I will find a microSD card. It's three songs on one card.
 Okay, nope. SIM card adapters. I have... Are you really struggling to find your SD card
 right now? I'm holding one up to the camera. Here we go. Here we go. See? Okay. There.
 Yeah. There we go. I mean, look at how freaking tiny these things are. I mean, the best...
 The most common thing people do with them is lose them when they're not in the phone.
 So this is my issue... That works out for SanDisk.
 Yeah, but we... I don't own any stock in SanDisk, so I can keep going.
 Well, listen. So basically the point I want to make...
 I was just trying to make my point, man. Let me just finish it quickly.
 Do it. It's very brief. It's...
 Removable media made sense back in the day when removable media was something you could
 graph. Like, you know, something you could handle. A cartridge.
 Like a CF. A mini disk. Or whatever. Right. A CF. Yeah. Perfect
 example. When it's this freaking tiny, it's just way too easy to lose. So the removable
 aspect actually just becomes a pain and a chore.
 I mean, that is true. That is very true. And really, like, once you put in your microSD
 card, it's kind of just, like, in there. And I don't know very many people that are, like,
 actively swapping, like, I take so many pictures, then I have to swap to the next card so I
 can blast through 3,000 more 8 megapixel cell phone pictures.
 If you know one of those people, I would like to know them too.
 Well, I mean, there's lots of people that fill up their phones with pictures all day
 long. You know, my wife does that all the time. But I think, you know, I understand
 what you're saying, Evan. But I think that external storage is really not going to come
 back outside of the world of Samsung any time soon. What I do wish would happen is I wish
 that manufacturers, especially manufacturers like Apple, would not charge such a huge premium
 to get a decent amount of storage built into the device.
 Well, so here's what I would… It doesn't cost $100 to put 16 gigs more
 storage in it. It costs, like, $3.12. So it's, like, the difference in price between a base
 level iPhone and an iPhone that's, like, got a usable amount of storage is, like, ridiculous.
 The same could be said for the iPads.
 I mean, it's very true. But here's my, like, real kind of larger problem with this,
 is that, you know, the first… When you talk about removable storage on Android, the first
 thing people come back with is, well, I mean, phones come with 32 gigs now. Phones come
 with 64 gigs, you know, storage. Or an option that you can get, it is super expensive.
 Oh, Evan froze. He can't make his point. Poor Evan.
 Well, he's been talking about Android phones on Google Hangout. What do you expect?
 Google shut down that conversation. So let's move on.
 Well, actually, before we do… It's really anti-communicative, that rant.
 Before we do, let me actually squeeze in an extra rant, which is on the SIM extractor
 tool. So, like, in looking for the micro Z card, I dug up all of mine, and like I said,
 I've got, like, a dozen of them. And the one on the Nexus 5…
 The one on the Nexus 5 is really, really tiny.
 Hello.
 Hey, Evan.
 Sorry about that.
 And it's really skinny. And actually, using the LG G2 SIM extraction tool on the Nexus
 5, it's too thick. I find quite a lot of them are actually too thick. Then there's
 this Nokia one, which is, like, really shallow and bent at this point, which doesn't get
 deep enough on some phones. And this is the thing I discovered, that there's actually
 fragmentation in SIM extraction tools.
 Yeah. I discovered this exact issue last year with the Nexus 4, because the Nexus 4 is a
 really tiny SIM slot hole, and I couldn't… I've always kept a Nokia pin on my keychain
 at all times for this exact reason, and I couldn't fit it into the Nexus 4.
 I carry around this bent paperclip, because I can never manage to hang on to SIM extracting
 tools, and this works for, like, 95% of phones, except for the stupid Nexus 5, and even sometimes
 the Nexus 4, because it's literally… this tiny little thing is too thick to fit in the
 Nexus 5's slot. So, yeah. Fragmentation, man.
 And weirdly enough, I'm with Christian on this one. I think Nokia and Apple make the
 best SIM extraction tools, if anybody cares. And Evan is so dismissive of this exact conversation,
 he left us again.
 What they really do…
 Do iPhones even come with a SIM extraction tool?
 Not anymore. They used to, right? At one time, maybe?
 I don't know.
 They must… what are you talking about? They must do.
 I don't think they do anymore.
 No, because the SIM is already in the phone when you buy it.
 Yeah.
 Well, for you guys, I get a lot of iPhones.
 Yeah, I was going to say, Apple is selling a SIM-free phone now. This just happened in,
 like, the past week. They started stocking the SIM-free phones in US stores. So, I mean,
 yeah, they must include a tool with those, I guess. But I'm 99% sure there wasn't
 one in my box.
 Yeah, I don't think there is in most retail boxes. I think that Apple just expects you
 to either have one, if you're looking for one, or their Apple store employees will handle
 the SIMs.
 Keep in mind, this is the company that's been trying for at least two and a half or
 three years now to move to embedded SIMs. So, it's little surprise that they would
 make the SIM as difficult to get to as possible.
 I have returned.
 We'll see how long this one lasts.
 Yes, yes. Wait, can someone catch me up? You're really talking about SIM extraction tools
 right now?
 Yes. Which I'm sure you have some strong thoughts on, Evan.
 I have no, I mean, it's whatever. I keep a Nokia and an Apple one on my keychain.
 Both?
 Yes.
 But aren't they interchangeable? The problem is the LG...
 No, the Nexus 5. You need to have a super thin one, like the Nokia one that comes with
 the Lumia 1020 to get into the phones like...
 My Nokia one is way too thick for LG phones.
 Sorry, man. That sounds like a personal problem.
 I still haven't bought a Nexus 5. Should I buy a Nexus 5?
 Absolutely not.
 No, because you missed your opportunity to spend $800 on it from Best Buy, and now you
 would have to buy it for a reasonable $350. So, I don't see why you would purchase one.
 I still like the Nexus 4. I don't know.
 That's not a bad phone.
 You can buy a Nexus 4.
 Good reason why you should buy a Nexus 4. But Evan, I intend to hook. Do you want to
 wrap up the micro SD point here?
 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I totally do. I totally do. So, in America, all of the flagship phones
 pretty much come with 32 and 64 gig options, minus the carrier Galaxy S4s. But if you want
 something cheaper and you're buying phones off contract, it's really hard to find storage
 options. The HTC One Mini is a good example. That only comes in 16 gigs. And a lot of lower
 end phones either have removable storage to keep the costs really low, and those are true
 low cost devices, or smaller phones that you would imagine to be a little bit lower cost.
 They really only come with 16 gig options. And if you're, like most people I would imagine,
 if you have constant access to LTE, then you're great. You can use all of Google services
 and you can contribute to their data sets, and that is super fine and peachy. But if
 you live internationally, and A, you don't have access to Google Music or some of the
 streaming options that are available in America, then you're screwed. You get 16 gigs and that's
 all you can get.
 Wow, so the rest of us outside of America are just completely off the web as far as
 you're concerned.
 As far as what's concerned?
 We need our storage because we have no web services whatsoever. Spotify just popped up
 in the States one day.
 Yeah, that's true. There's no wireless outside the US.
 Didn't Al Gore invent Spotify?
 Yes.
 Oh, for the Sunday.
 They're still communicating by carrier pigeon in the UK.
 I mean, ugh.
 When we can, because the other thing is we also don't have any food infrastructure, so
 we kind of tend to eat our pigeons, particularly here in the winter.
 There's a really good joke about terrible English food in there, but I'm going to leave
 it alone.
 Oh, man.
 You do know that actually one of the famous curries is invented in Birmingham in the UK,
 the Bounty Curry. So there you go.
 But what does that have to do with LTE?
 It has to do with food.
 It takes up so much longer to order it.
 Yeah, that's true. All right, so you guys want to talk about Windows Phone? Instagram?
 Yes.
 Let's do that.
 Let's do that.
 So last week, Instagram finally came to Windows Phone in an official capacity, and there was
 a bit of confusion initially about how the app actually worked, but it turns out you
 can indeed take photos with the Instagram app on Windows Phone, but you can't record
 videos, which is kind of a bummer and kind of a pretty big feature for Instagram these
 days.
 Yeah, it's a – the whole thing was just a train wreck from beginning to end. So they
 actually – Instagram was telling outlets, including us, that you could not take photos
 from within the app, and that's still like technically true.
 Isn't that technically true?
 Yeah, because you go to the – you go to the camera roll, and then you can take a photo
 from there, but like why would you mince words against your product? Like go ahead and just
 take the mulligan and say yes, you can take photos with the app, because in reality you
 can. It's just on a technicality you have to go outside the app to do it, but still
 from within the app. So it's really weird.
 Yeah, it's a different order of things than say like on Android or iOS where you get to
 like take your photo immediately, but it's – I mean at the end of the day you can still
 open up the app, hit a button, and take photos.
 It's just so funny that that was the kind of turn of events, because this is such an
 anticipated moment for Windows Phone, and then it just gets immediately so weird.
 Trashed. And even so though, you still can't do video recording with it. So they're not
 at feature parity, and it seems like there was some rush imposed, most likely by Microsoft,
 to get this product out of the door, probably in time for the holidays, because Instagram
 is such a big name and was the most important remaining hole in their app lineup, but it's
 kind of a hollow victory because they didn't close the gap completely. They wanted the
 name without regard for making sure that the app was every bit as good as it is on other
 platforms.
 And then of course there's the ongoing issue, and Tom Warren pointed this out in a report
 that he did on quote-unquote closing the app gap, that once the app is launched, be it
 Instagram, be it Vine, be it Twitter, whatever, none of these developers are as committed
 to keeping those apps updated on Windows Phone as they are on Android and iOS for good reason,
 because they have a tenth of the users. So there's not, you know, the impetus and the
 incentive to keep those users happy isn't as strong mathematically as it is on other
 platforms, and that is going to be an ongoing challenge for Microsoft.
 We even see this with Android. Android might have all of the same big name apps as iOS,
 but when new features come out, they come to iOS first and then maybe months later show
 up on Android. I think Instagram's been pretty good about keeping its Android app sort of
 concurrent with the iOS one, but there's still some things that it's missing, and other apps
 are much worse offenders where it'll be a long time between the feature parity. So you
 could just magnify that for Windows Phone.
 And you know, we've seen that with, just an example, is like the official Twitter app.
 The official Twitter apps on iOS and Android generally get updated the same day. They're
 the same day, they get the same new features, and then months and months later they'll come
 to Windows Phone. I think it was just recently updated to let you set, get alerts when somebody
 tweets. So now you can finally get like mobile alerts through the app when you set, say so
 when Barack Obama tweets or whatever, it'll alert you through the app, which the Android
 and iOS have had for a long, long time.
 Of course the other problem is that there's still, Microsoft is still chasing these big
 name apps that are already out, but when new like really buzz-worthy apps come out, and
 the example that I used on Twitter when I was talking about this last week is QuizUp,
 which is a really hot app for iOS right now. That won't come out for Windows Phone for
 months if ever. I don't know if QuizUp has plans to launch on Windows Phone, although
 you probably don't want to download it right now anyway with the privacy issues.
 Regardless, the point is, the developers that are trying to get these new apps off the ground
 naturally choose iOS and to some extent Android on day one. Rim Capsule is another example
 of a huge app.
 People run two. The biggest one that's the most amusing to me is Mirrors Edge, which
 is now available on Windows Phone. It came out I believe or less this past summer. I
 believe if I'm not mistaken that debuted with the iPhone 4 in 2010 on iOS, and it was
 either early 2013 or middle 2013 when it got to Windows Phone, which is like...
 Vlad what were you going to say about incentives?
 Well I'm about to say it.
 To Chris' point...
 Wait, wait.
 Okay, are we done here? To Chris' point, he was talking about incentives and why developers
 would keep the development part going. I think we all know, even though it hasn't been official,
 that Instagram coming to Windows Phone was incentivized by big piles of cash from Microsoft.
 That's pretty much a given. But that payment most likely related to just bring Instagram
 to Windows Phone. That sentence. From both perspectives, you can see the strategic advantage.
 It's about the conversation on the bus where two guys are talking trash about, well I've
 got my Windows Phone and I've got my iPhone, but mine has the apps. They start comparing
 which apps, which platform has, etc. Because that's actually happening now in real conversations
 between real people. You can say I've got Instagram on Windows Phone. Even if it doesn't
 have proper feature parity, it's there.
 So the strategic advantage for Microsoft is there. You can justify why Microsoft has pushed
 so hard to get the app onto its platform, but Chris identifies a really big issue, which
 is what happens after version 1.0. Because with the iPhone, what keeps happening is here's
 our iOS 7 update, and then two days later, here's our iOS 7 update with a few fixes.
 Now that we've seen a few errors and whatever. It's just really instant and there's responsiveness
 and people working to evolve and improve the app.
 And what I'm noticing happening is with Android becoming a stronger and more prevalent platform,
 a lot of the developers are also using Android phones. So they have that kind of unprompted
 stimulus to keep developing their app on a different platform than iOS. Everybody knows
 that iOS is the one that you make the most money on. It's the one that makes the most
 sense to develop for the developer, but if you yourself use Android, like me, for example,
 I can't use an iPhone anymore because I'm so addicted to the Android Gmail application.
 So if you're stuck with Android for whatever reason and you're a developer of a... I'm
 stuck with Android for a very positive and a happy reason. I'm not complaining here.
 I think it's, for me, for my uses, it's more useful than the iPhone because they also don't
 screw around with privacy-evading apps like QuizUp. Thank you for the challenge, by the
 way, Chris. But that being the case, that's a little advantage for people. If people are
 using your operating system, it encourages them to keep developing for it and developing
 promptly for it. So it kind of comes down to is Windows Phone an attractive operating
 system for people to use? It just comes back to the basics there.
 Yeah, I mean, really, this is the same old story that we've had since Windows Phone came
 out. It does seem like they are getting more and more of the apps that we've been looking
 for in addition to Instagram. Vine is now available. The same day that Instagram came
 out, Waze came out, which I'm not sure why you'd use Waze, but it's out. And there are
 other big-name apps that have come along. They now have Pandora and PayPal and all these
 other apps that we're missing for a long time.
 To be clear, Waze is like the Netflix of navigation apps. Their sole goal is to be on every platform
 imaginable. So it's like, to an extent, I'm like, when I hear that Waze comes to Windows
 Phone, I don't think that's actually indicative of any trend.
 Well the only thing that's really interesting about Waze coming to Windows Phone, to me
 at least, is the fact that Waze is now owned by Google, and Google has pretty much said
 that we're not really developing for Windows Phone until it gets more popular.
 Right.
 Well part of Waze's whole deal is just acquiring massive quantities of traffic data. So I mean,
 maybe that's Google's play, or Waze's play. It's like, well, you know, maybe nobody will
 use it, but we'll still be able to suck down a bunch of traffic and public transit data.
 Well, I talked to Tom a little bit about that, and his theory, and I think this is probably
 a reasonable one, is that they had Windows Phone on their roadmap prior to the Google
 acquisition. And Google, as we've seen from Motorola, has a habit of running some of its
 acquisitions as independent companies anyway. I don't know if that's the case with Waze
 or not, but they do still identify as Waze, not as Google, I think.
 Yeah.
 So here is one other question I actually have about Windows Phone. Now that the Xbox One
 has happened, first of all, any of you guys buying, have you obtained an Xbox One yet?
 Yes.
 Yes.
 Okay.
 Chris.
 Do you care about the synergies that things like Xbox Smart Glass and whatever other company
 apps Microsoft does, do you care about those things?
 I use Smart Glass quite a bit, but only because the Xbox One's control, like AV control environment
 slash ecosystem is just an enormous bag of hurt, as Neelai did a pretty good job of laying
 out in his report a few weeks ago. So having Smart Glass as a tool to help control that
 is a good thing.
 But what are you using it on, Chris?
 Oh, on my iPhone.
 Yeah, so the thing is like there's no reason for you to buy a Windows Phone in order to
 use your Xbox. Do you gain anything by having Microsoft's own phone platform talking to
 Microsoft's gaming system? And I think the answer is going to be no, because Microsoft
 was wise enough to realize that we need to release this app on Android and iOS because
 that's where the users are.
 Right, it's funny, going all the way back to Windows Phone 7, Microsoft had made such
 big, big promises about Xbox Live integration and none of that really materialized, right?
 One thing has. There's a Halo game on Windows Phone and you can't get that on Android or
 iOS. So if you really want to play Halo.
 Yeah, and you can see your avatar and your gamer points and all that nonsense, but it's
 nothing like, I mean if Microsoft had been really smart in that regard, they would have
 done something similar to what Sony is doing with Vita and Remote Play. And they never
 did that.
 What's really interesting to me is like this kind of goes to Microsoft's play on all of
 its platforms. They all look very similar now, even the Xbox dashboard looks very much
 like Windows 8, which looks very much like Windows Phone 8. But the Xbox dashboard doesn't
 really talk to Windows 8 and Windows 8 doesn't talk to Windows Phone 8. And it's like they
 have all of these products that look very similar and maybe function very similarly,
 but there's no benefit to you to have a Windows Phone 8 and a Windows 8 tablet at the same
 time. Like you can't share your apps, your data might be shared through the cloud, but
 if I'm storing stuff in SkyDrive, it can also access SkyDrive on my Mac and I can access
 SkyDrive on an iPad and etc. etc. So it's like, there seems like there's some sort of opportunities
 that are not being taken advantage of, at least not yet.
 Well, talking about incentives, like if Microsoft can't incentivize developers on a massive
 scale to develop apps for their platform, perhaps they can incentivize consumers with
 tighter integration between their three platforms.
 Exactly. I mean, if I'm playing, like if I'm doing something and I just want to like
 share data between my Windows 8 tablet and my Windows Phone 8 or you know, share an app
 across them or something like that, that kind of makes sense, but it's not happening. Not
 now at least.
 Well, let's just point out the fact that nobody is really doing that beautiful integration
 across devices.
 Well the iPad and the iPhone, I can buy an app on my iPad and I can use it on my iPhone
 if it's a universal app and vice versa.
 But it's incomplete. It's incomplete is what I'm saying. So yeah, there are some strengths,
 but for example, if you go and try to rely on iCloud, you quickly realize that Google
 services are so much superior. What are you talking about?
 Okay, and the other thing is, I work for iCloud, it's just a joke. It's like some kid trying
 to copy Google Docs. It's terrible. It's so far from being useful. But yeah, I mean, in
 my experience, again, I find the most useful implementation to be Google's. So I can mess
 around with some notes on my phone, on Google Drive and then jump onto my Chrome on my desktop
 and the notes are there and things like that. But it's still really rudimentary. It's still
 a sort of thing where you feel like you're just getting some basic sync between your
 devices and that's it. Whereas I think the vision that Chris had as well with the initial
 introduction of Windows Phone was something like, perfect example for me is the Xbox Live
 Arcade. So those are lighter games, simpler games, ones that don't require as much storage.
 If you could just bring that onto the phone and have games like Braid and whatever just
 accessible on your phone, it opens up so many more possibilities. And it frustrates me as
 well when guys at Microsoft promise things like, well, we now have DirectX compatibility
 in Windows Phone 8. And I keep waiting, okay, we have DirectX compatibility, where are the
 more advanced games? Where is this awesomeness that I can't get on the other platforms?
 And that's what keeps missing.
 I mean that's the story of every Build Conference for the last couple of years. I mean, you
 guys remember that demonstration where they showed a game being played on a Windows 8
 machine at the initial Windows 8 Build Conference and then kind of seamlessly transitioning
 over to continuing the game on the Subway. But those kind of features never really materialized
 and we're still waiting for them.
 Now Chris, let me ask you this. Have you tried using the Xbox One SkyDrive integration for
 game streaming?
 No.
 So from what I understand, you can use the five minute DVR feature of the Xbox One to
 record five minutes of gameplay. And then I think that you can have that automatically
 deposit that five minutes into SkyDrive and I think there's pretty tight integration
 with Facebook so you can very seamlessly post those gameplay footage directly onto Facebook.
 So these little integrations are starting to make their way, but I think what we're
 all realizing at this point is that it's really hard. And that's why no one is really doing
 it, but Microsoft is at least trying.
 Well I was just going to say I use, so the Xbox One is a built in video sharing service
 called Upload. And you can choose, like when you save a video clip, you can choose to save
 it to upload or to SkyDrive. And I don't think I've ever opened SkyDrive in my life, at least
 not intentionally. So I'm using the Upload service.
 SkyDrive is good. Don't hate SkyDrive.
 Yeah, SkyDrive is actually one of the better cloud backup services.
 So if you're listening to this podcast like two months from now, maybe in 2014 or some
 point, we'll probably be talking about a new service, whatever the new name is, right?
 Because they renamed it SkyDrive.
 Oh, right, right.
 But yeah, just to add to the point, Microsoft isn't alone in capturing these gameplay footage
 things. Sony did a whole extra hardware layout so we can do game recording in the PS4, which
 means...
 I am totally not a gamer, and I'm like a self-proclaimed not a gamer. But there's just like, I just
 cannot grasp the appeal of watching somebody else's recorded gameplay footage. Like I know
 it's huge and there's like millions of people that use this Twitch service and things like
 that. But I'm like, why would I want to watch some guy running around through whatever game
 it is?
 But there's reasons. There's reasons, particularly for like guides if you're struggling with
 overcoming a particular boss fight or whatever else.
 And like hyper competitive gaming. Like StarCraft is huge because people want to see other people's
 strategies and it's like a big deal.
 Well, I uploaded a sweet video of me doing donuts in a 1991 GMC Typhoon. Or Cyclone,
 excuse me. So I don't know what you guys are talking about. Like why people wouldn't
 want to see that, I don't know. That's 15 seconds of your life well spent.
 But that's the thing. I think I'm totally involved with Dan. I am the opposite of Dan
 insofar as games have done more for my upbringing than proper education has. But I don't, I
 don't get the appeal of particularly like streaming your gaming session and like not
 doing something clearly focused such as a guide or such as Chris is showing off or whatever
 else.
 I've already watched Tom Warren successfully defend his goal in FIFA 14. So I mean, like
 I'm all about it. Every time I see one of my friends upload a video, I'm all up on it.
 I love it.
 It's just so wrong. But also to mention, on the PC, NVIDIA has this shadow play feature
 which a lot of people are quite enthusiastic about which pretty much does the same thing.
 I'm just trying to convey the idea that everybody seems to be getting on board with it. And
 Dan and I completely don't get it. Chris is being a troll right now. But I mean, particularly
 with games, if you're going to show off video of it, you're really just showing off your
 experience of the same thing that other people are most likely going to experience as well.
 It's kind of like bringing it back to…
 But it's no different than wanting to watch a replay of like a really good, you know,
 touchdown in a football game. Like there are epic moments in games that are, that have
 entertainment value. Like a good overtake in a heated fours a match. I'll watch that.
 Yeah, that is valid. That's valid. I'm not going to argue with that. I guess the
 thing is with games, most of the time you don't have these highlight things. So I
 guess if you're being selective and just uploading the particularly juicy bits, then
 I can get behind that. But also, since we're on this topic, very briefly, I would just
 like to point out this entire hoopla around the new consoles is completely premature.
 As far as I'm concerned, nobody should care until Titanfall shows up on the Xbox One and
 just kind of blows us all away. These consoles don't have that amazing game which is going
 to keep you locked in next to your TV throughout the holiday season, which I think is, you
 know, the hallmark of a good console launch. And if you want the absolute prettiest and
 best graphics, you still have to go to the PC and play Battlefield 4, which looks stunning.
 Get a good graphics card, play Battlefield 4 on ultra settings, it will make you forget
 about the consoles, seriously. But there's also the other provisional slash caveat that
 Battlefield 4, its gameplay is actually like stupid, horribly, horribly stupid. I haven't
 got into the multiplayer, but the single player missions are just lame. It's exactly like
 the stunning supermodel stereotype. Amazing to look at, completely dumb and hollow on
 the inside. I just need to get that on my chest.
 So kind of going back to this integration and consumer incentivizing thing really quick,
 Chris have you, could you watch your friends like DVR or live streamed footage on SmartGlass?
 On SmartGlass I don't think so, but there are, you know like third party apps can integrate
 with SmartGlass, I think. And the Xbox One ships with Twitch, so there might be some
 integration point there, I don't know, I don't use Twitch and I don't have Twitch installed
 on the Xbox, but it's possible.
 Okay, well I'm just trying to figure out which is, like who has the tighter app integration,
 because the PlayStation app just came out the other day and it will allow you to throw
 to Ustream, but aside from that, like aside from the SmartGlass app, I'm really at a
 loss to kind of understand who is integrating better, because Microsoft has the advantage
 I would think, because the design language between Windows Phone and the Xbox UI and
 the Windows 8 UI is very contiguous, it feels very cohesive, and Sony is kind of trying
 to deal with their own closed ecosystem, but also Android, but I mean the PlayStation app
 will let you see what your friends are playing and it will let you buy games right from the
 app.
 I agree with you that there's design synergy between the Xbox One and Windows 8 and Windows
 Phone, but I don't think that any human being on the planet with an Xbox One is saying,
 ooh, I like this UI, I'm going to go buy a Windows Phone now. That's not happening.
 I just need to call out Evan on his use of contiguous, it was misused.
 I apologize.
 You've been docked one point.
 So if you guys don't mind, let's move on.
 I've got a question.
 As I fall on my face through this transition.
 This is on topic. Let me just make sure this isn't an embargo. I got an email from Best Buy,
 they've got two special offers launching tomorrow. It's an embargo or whatever. It's not like
 anybody listens to this podcast. No, it's not. Okay, they've got a free Samsung Galaxy
 S4 deal with a two year activation of Best Buy and Best Buy mobile specials starting
 Wednesday through Saturday. Do you guys think the Galaxy S4 is worth buying at this point?
 I'm curious.
 What was the deal? I wasn't listening.
 It's a free Galaxy S4 with a two year contract.
 That's a better deal than pretty much any of the carriers are offering on the Galaxy
 S4.
 Which carrier is this?
 This is through Best Buy. So whatever carrier Best Buy offers. I think the Galaxy S4 is
 very much like the iPhone in that Samsung will release it in June or whatever. It's
 going to be a competitive device through to almost right up until the next June when the
 next model comes out. If you look at the actual specifications of it, it's got a powerful
 processor, really high res screen, a good camera and everything like that. So if you
 liked the Galaxy S4 six months ago, there's no reason not to like it now.
 You know what else it has? Removable storage.
 The Galaxy S5 is going to be curved, isn't it?
 No. Actually, on that topic, there has been a couple of stories coming out of Korea saying
 that the first generation of flexible screen devices are flopping. Now the reason we didn't
 cover that is because they seem to be very flaky in terms of sourcing. It's anonymous
 sources and nobody sounds particularly confident about the numbers.
 How long have they been out?
 Well, it's been a month, over a month.
 But they're being sold in really limited quantities, right? It's not like it's available all over
 the world. They're being sold just in Korea, I think, right? And they're being sold alongside
 their flat equivalents which are presumably much cheaper in store.
 It's possible. I'm just saying, again, with the providers I've mentioned, that at least
 the earliest feedback we've heard about them hasn't been that positive. Which, as far as
 you're concerned, Chris, is a positive because it would probably put them off. I mean, the
 Galaxy S5, there's no chance of it to curve because they just can't do that at mass production
 levels. Particularly the mass production levels you need.
 Evan, record the last 10 seconds of this podcast. I want to put that in Vlad's face
 when the Galaxy S5 is curved.
 No problem. We'll have a breakout.
 All right, thanks.
 Awesome. But actually, we can turn this into a pretty nice transition here, into a pretty
 nice segue, provided nobody interrupts me. Which is to say that the Google Play edition
 of the Galaxy S4 just started getting the 4.4 kick-add update, as has the HC1, which
 is a credit to everybody involved.
 Yeah, a whole bunch of phones. In the past week, a whole bunch of phones got it. The
 Nexus 4, finally, the rollout started for that. I've had it on my Nexus 4 for, I don't
 know, a week or so. The Moto Xs, right now, it's available from Verizon, T-Mobile, and
 AT&T Moto Xs. It's just leaving Sprint out of the equation for there. Then it just started
 yesterday, I believe, the Google Play edition, HC1 and Galaxy S4 started getting entered
 for 4.4. So, you know, it's good to see it's making its way around. I doubt we're gonna
 hear any more about Android 4.4 kick-add rollouts for a while, because at this point, it's the
 carrier or the manufacturer customized versions that are the majority of things left. So that's
 gonna be a while before those get it.
 Yeah.
 I still don't have it on my One, either, so I'm pissed.
 Here's the thing, my sincerest hope about Android 4.4 is that come CES in January, nobody
 comes out with a phone, with an Android phone that doesn't have it.
 Oh, my God, you are so high. They are gonna be all having Android 4.3 at the best.
 Yeah, that's definitely happening.
 Yeah. Dude, I bet you, we're at CES, we're gonna see some Chinese manufacturer release
 a phone with Android 4.1. I guarantee it. But no, there are not gonna be any major phone
 announcements at CES. There are, but the Chinese manufacturers do announce things.
 Ah, Chris, see, now, Evan, keep recording.
 Oh, yeah.
 Keep recording, because we're gonna need to throw this back in Chris' face.
 You know what's gonna happen is, like, Sony is going to announce a phone, like it did
 last year.
 Yes.
 And Sony is going to announce the phone with Android 4.2.
 Oh, God, I can't.
 If Chris were only to qualify his statement to say there will not be a new phone at CES
 that launches or is available to buy before April, then it would be fine.
 But wait, what does Sony have in the pipeline right now? They have a fresh megaphone and
 they have a fresh…
 Okay, so the freshest Sony rumors right now, the freshest Sony rumors out in the Sony beat
 is a refreshed Xperia Z1, either called the Xperia Z2 or possibly the Z1S that people
 thought was the Z1 Mini. I guess that's possible. People are kind of not sure because
 this is all rumory and shady and that sort of thing. And then there's also the international
 Xperia Z1 Mini, which, please, I need one so bad.
 So regardless of what the rumors say, Sony…
 Well, I mean, best phone in the world right now until they come out with one that's
 the size for a human hand.
 Well, it exists. They've announced it for Japan, the Mini version.
 Yeah, well, it's a Docomo exclusive. There's no guarantee that the international one will
 ever come out.
 So just man up and move to Japan. It's cool.
 Hey, so while we're deep into Sony, I'm just going to use this and steamroll this
 transition right into the Sony SmartWatch 2, which I reviewed and it went up today.
 And if you haven't read it, go read it. And I'm just going to sum this up by saying
 that it breaks my heart because the SmartWatch 2 is, in my opinion at least, the best looking
 smartwatch we've seen, the one that's the least embarrassing to wear. But its software
 is so clunky and so difficult to use that it is not worth it. And that's…it's sad.
 It's better than the SmartWatch 1 by leaps and bounds, but it is not…I don't even
 like it as much usability wise as a Pebble and certainly not where I would hope that
 a new smartwatch would be at this point.
 No one understands what a smartwatch should be except me. I'm literally the only human
 being on the planet.
 This is where smartwatches are. Smartwatches are the…we're in the 2005 smartphone world
 of smartwatches. We're in the 2001 tablet world of tablets. And we're still a couple
 years away until somebody really figures this out and there's always all this demand and
 all this interest and all this intrigue and nobody seems to get it right and then somebody's
 going to figure it out and there's going to be this iPhone moment and then it's going
 to be great and then everybody will want one. But we're not there yet and all of the things
 that have been tried are really not it.
 But I'm convinced that's not…I see where you're going with that. I'm not convinced
 it's a perfect analogy because I think what makes wearables shine is when they are…I
 mean there are things you're literally wearing like clothes and like jewelry. They need to
 be personalized to the person that's wearing them. That's why glass looks…well glass
 looks stupid on anybody but it isn't personalized to the person that's wearing it. There's
 been talk about integrating it with prescriptions.
 That's part of figuring it out. I mean maybe that's what needs to be figured out to make
 these things successful but they also need to figure out usability and functionality
 and features that aren't there yet.
 So I think…and battery life.
 Yeah and battery life. I was going to say with the SmartWatch 2, Sony did do a number
 of things right. In my test I easily got three to four days of battery life which is acceptable
 at this point for these things and it charges over micro USB which means it uses the same
 charging cable as my phone which is such a stupid thing that I have to bring it up. But
 no other smart watch does that so…or none other that I've used at least. So it's
 kind of a major convenience that I like that Sony did but I can't stand using the software.
 Here is my contribution and it particularly goes to the software side. The Sony SmartWatch
 2 is probably the saddest out of the box experience that I've had with any gadget over the past
 however many years, two, three years, however long it's been. It's just I pulled it
 out first of all I got that metal strap on my review unit whereas Dan got the plastic
 one, the silicone one.
 The rubber one yeah.
 Rubber, okay. The metal strap I had no idea how to adjust it so it was way too big and
 it was cold and it was unpleasant. You know my gentle, gentle wrist just weren't ready
 for it. But aside from that, you turn it on, you start looking inside it for things to
 do and it's just so barren. It's like we have a wallpaper, we have a time app and
 a timer app and we have like four watch faces and that is it. You're on your own after that.
 And then you have to go and search and dig and enhance the functionality and getting
 notifications set up and all this other baloney and nonsense which I just wasn't even interested
 in doing because I don't find it that attractive. I don't like the fact that you have the free
 Android buttons on it. There's absolutely no reason for them to be on there. It needs
 to be clean like Chris says, it needs to be something you would want to just wear for
 the sake of keeping time. Like get that right first. Compete with the guys who are already
 doing that correctly.
 And then move on to trying to enhance things.
 Yes.
 I do not, Chris.
 Were you picking your nose Chris?
 What just happened?
 What you're not familiar with this gesture.
 That gesture means not it.
 This means not it.
 That's international nose goes territory.
 None of you guys have played charades. This means yes that's it. You have it right. Like
 if you're playing charades and somebody has a word right in a phrase, you go like that
 meaning spot on. I've always just seen people point and be like no. If you're listening
 to the show right now and you're on Twitter will somebody please back me up that this
 means spot on.
 Chris who plays charades?
 I trust Chris. I trust Chris and his Wikipedia sources. I'm down with that.
 Listen citation needed on charades, come on.
 And I'm very happy to just collect the endorsement from Chris. That makes my day. I'm basically
 –
 Vlad gets it. What can I say? Vlad gets it. Vlad you and I are going to kick start a proper
 smart watch.
 Yeah, because that's what we need. Another smart watch project.
 I was actually thinking about that today and it's kind of depressing to me when you think
 about the 90s. It's going to be like the 22nd century or whatever and I'm going to
 have artificial hearts and artificial everything else and I'm still going to be nostalgic
 about 1990s. That was my decade.
 But at that time –
 Vlad just mentioned that he's going to be alive in the 22nd century which is no less than
 87 years away from now.
 Wait, why not?
 So Vlad plans to be a centurion at least.
 Dude, I am definitely eating the right diet for it. I'm eating enough cabbage to survive.
 Wait, isn't a centurion like a Roman warrior or something?
 Centenarian? Is that what I'm trying to say? Centenarian?
 Maybe.
 A centurion is so much cooler so I'm down with it. No, but seriously, in the 90s we
 had already figured out – and even before the 90s, that's my recollection – we had
 already figured out how to make a watch work without any extra power. You could just, with
 the movement of your hand, you could recharge a watch.
 That actually happened decades before that.
 I'm just talking about the freaking 90s man. Whatever happened before was born didn't
 happen.
 Yeah, they did. They figured it out decades before. Maybe it trickled down to actually
 accessible for normals by then.
 Okay, listen, if the 90s –
 Citizen has had kinetic watches since the 60s, I'm pretty sure.
 I didn't say we invented kinetic watches in the 1990s, so stop arguing with a point
 I'm not making. All I'm saying is if that's the last relatable decade for me, we have
 an even younger audience. Let's not push it too far back. My point is this, we had
 figured out how to have a watch keep going perpetually without needing to recharge it
 or do any extra special things. We had figured out how to have a contact book without requiring
 any power.
 Whereas the way we're moving now is every single one of these things that we could do
 mechanically or in some other automatic fashion now requires power. Now we need electricity
 to power off just for our watch, just to keep time, just to keep our contacts up to date.
 All of these things. It's like we lose the tactility of having an actual nice notebook
 in which you keep your contacts. We lose the ability to write because we no longer need
 to do it. Can any of you remember writing, physically writing, other than signing your
 signature on a bill?
 I take notes in a notebook all the time.
 Yeah, I take notes.
 Okay, well good. You're not that far beyond explanation.
 My handwriting is horrendous.
 I guess I'm just having one of those nostalgic anti-tech moments where you think, well why
 does everything need to have a freaking battery in it? Why does everything need to be powered?
 Whereas we figured out ways to do these things adequately already without power. That to
 me is the fundamental issue with smart watches is they start sucking down power. They start
 being yet another device that you need to keep recharged on a weekly basis or whatever
 else. Like you guys are saying, we need a really compelling feature, a real must have
 additional value or benefit that makes us want to do that extra charging and that extra
 fuss.
 I think that just is what makes it so hard right now because on the one hand you want
 a smart watch to have this great functionality right out of the box. You want it to look
 great. You want it to be a fantastic timepiece. You also want it to have a couple of staples
 of smartness. You want to receive notifications and you want to be able to accept and receive
 calls or deny calls from your wrist. But what makes it really challenging is that inevitably
 people will want to do so much more with it so you have to kind of…
 No not inevitably. Samsung has put it in your head that you need to be able to do so much
 more with your smart watch. You don't.
 No, I'm not saying you don't need to do more things with your smart watch. I don't
 want to add and remove contacts. I don't want to flick through it to change music.
 I just want the…
 I do.
 I mean, you know, to each their own. But you need to at least have the capability of extending
 the functionality to things like when I get in proximity of my computer, unlock it. Or
 if I'm in proximity of my door, automatically unlock that or start up my car or whatever.
 Well so Motorola kind of took a baby step in that direction with its trusted Bluetooth
 device concept, right? Which is pretty cool. I remember for a while Dieter had his Pebble
 set up as his trusted object.
 I must note that you do not need a Motorola to do that. There's apps for the Pebble
 and there's actually apps for the Sony smart watch that I mentioned in the review that
 let you do the same thing with your phone. But it doesn't open my house door and it
 doesn't sign me into my laptop and things like that that it could do.
 Best Buy is now selling… what is it called? Kemo or Keebo or Keego or something like that.
 It's the Bluetooth deadbolt.
 Yeah.
 So they're slowly moving in that direction but it's going to be just a complete nightmare
 because there will be no standards for it. Earlier today on Twitter I was saying that
 we need Harmony, iRobot, Nest and Dyson to just merge and take over the home because
 no one else is going to do this in a way that makes any sense. Nest obviously has a plan,
 a roadmap but they're moving very slowly so maybe with some additional horsepower they
 would be able to move a little quicker. But yeah, all these companies are coming up with
 their own solutions for it. It's a great idea, they just need to move faster and they
 need to do it in a way that is standardized.
 When you say Harmony, do you mean Logitech Harmony?
 Yeah. But Logitech said like six months ago that they want to spin off Harmony, right?
 So spin it right off into Nest.
 Yeah, just spin it off into Nest and then maybe James Dyson will air blade it into a,
 I don't know, come up with some.
 No dude, use a backless vacuum.
 Yes.
 Alright guys.
 Just before we do wrap up, I do think that there's the kernel of a utility here with
 using the smartwatch as a security device. I mean you guys remember a couple of podcasts
 ago Dieter was asking what is the smallest, tiniest Bluetooth transceiver that I can have
 in order to do that security and unlocking thing. And if you put it in the watch, that
 is the thing that is most secure among all your devices because it's literally strapped
 to you. Even Google Glass isn't strapped to you. I don't really have another way of saying
 that.
 So I personally, if you make a smartwatch that syncs up with the computer and just unlocks
 it, powers it up from sleep when you're next to it, etc. and just does these things really
 smoothly. Like I say, I don't want the Sony smartwatch 2 experience where everything is
 barren and then I have to go and hunt around and do things. I just need it to be out of
 the box working, beautiful and lovely and impressive to nearby ladies. I think that
 is where smartwatches can really start taking off.
 And on that note, Impressing the Ladies wraps up this episode of the Verge Mobile Show.
 So we thank you for listening and tuning in. If you want to follow us, you can of course
 follow us at Verge. I'm DC Seifert, Vlad is Vlad Savov, Evan is Evan Rogers, and Chris
 is ZPower and Dieter Bohn is at Baclon and hopefully he'll be joining us again next
 week. And if you're in the US, have a happy holiday, eat some turkey or tofurkey or whatever
 you like to eat and we'll see you guys next week. Deuces. Later.