 You know, there's a lot of Verge going around. We've got On the Verge, we've got 90 Seconds on the Verge, we've got Verge Favorites, and now we've got Verge Apps. There's just so much Verge, we can't even hold it in. So we're bringing even more Verge. Get ready, stay tuned for the Verge mobile show. Hi I'm Dieter Bohn. I'm Chris Ziegler. I'm Vlad Sabov. And welcome, it's the Verge mobile show. I tried to figure, like I assumed Vlad would be very jaunty and like... I'm Vlad Sabov. But I can't quite relax and look that confident in myself. That's not bad. That wasn't bad at all actually. That's pretty good Vlad Sabov. Yeah, I'll take it. I'll allow it. I am in fact, Neil Ipatel. But I will be playing the role of Vlad Sabov for the rest of today. Who is still in Bulgaria flexing his muscles and jumping into pools and being otherwise. It looks like he's having just an incredible time doing whatever it is that he's doing out there. He's mostly being shirtless. As far as I can tell. He's examining his body and his relationship to the world around that body. Clothes are in the way. That time in every young Bulgarian's life where he explores his body. Well, what I think is interesting is that usually if you work with Vlad, if you've had the privilege and the pleasure of working with Vlad for so many years, you know that he can't help but show you his muscles like from time to time. He's just like every now and again, he responds like an email thread with a picture of a bicep. But because he's on vacation- They're scary, right? They're impressive muscles. I live in continual fear that Vlad is going to beat me up. Yeah, no, I've seen Vlad crack a walnut in his bicep before. I wish I'd seen that. That would be amazing. No, but I think he's been on vacation now for so long that he hasn't had the ability to electronically send a picture of a muscle to anyone. So he's doing it on Twitter instead. Which I don't know if I should like stop it or if I should subtly encourage it. Right. I think I would subtly encourage it. Although why be subtle? I mean, honestly. All right. I mean, you realize where this is heading. It's just a matter of time before Vlad shows up on the mobile show without his shirt and I'm not looking forward to that week. But anyway, we should get into it. We have a bunch of stuff to talk about. It is the eighth episode of The Verge Mobile Show. It is the week of July 16th, I should mention. And as I said earlier, the most important thing that has happened in all of mobility is The Verge now has apps on both iOS and Android. And I think they're quite good. I'm really happy. Commenting on it is great. Reading through comments. I actually enjoy it almost as much as doing it on the site. On the site, you can hit Z to go through new comments, but there's just a big next comment button, which is pretty cool. And speaking of comments, there's 500 comments on that post already. I think that from the day The Verge launched, mobile apps were probably the number one requested feature, wouldn't you guys say? Oh yeah, without question. And they've been in development for a really long time. And they came out really well, but like the site itself, they're not done by any stretch of the imagination. We have a lot, a lot of ideas for these apps. You personally coded these, right, Nilay? Yes. I have a big basement with just an emulator and me. I have a big second screen. No, no, I have no idea who did these. I think we hired all of those. One thing that I believe that I hold very dear to my heart is my belief that these apps are the next Instagram. I think it's just a matter of time. Which of us is going to hate on it? Which of us is going to love it? Yeah. That's true. The apps were developed with us in conjunction with the Willow Tree apps. So there you go. Yeah, no, I was going to say, I was joking that I don't know who did them. They're great. You should look at them. I mean, they're free for God's sake, man. Get a free app on your phone. You probably already have dozens of them, right? It's like you have what, a 32 or 64 gig iPhone? I mean, come on. What else are you doing with that space? Exactly. Load it up. Pictures of your family. Yeah. I mean, come on. You've seen your parents before. Delete a few photos. Put on the Birch app. Oh, wow. I have nothing else to say about these apps other than you must install them right now. But I do want to talk about, we've had iPhone rumors. It's been actually kind of a quiet couple of weeks, but now they're starting to come out again. And so the first one is a topic near and dear to Chris's heart. I know that he loves nothing better than talking about nano Sims. It is his favorite thing. If I believe that I could make a living as a full time nano Sim editor, uh, there's no question that I would. Yes. And, and in my spare time, Eli and I would be working on our appliance log that we've been planning for years. No. Uh, so yeah, that's your fast and furious podcasts. Oh, that's right. Cray, Cray and I are working on this, this fast cast that we have in the works. Dude, the other day in our, in our, let me tell the listeners a story. The other day in our, in our chat or work chatter, IRC, uh, I don't remember what it was. There's a picture of somebody, like a woman driving a car and Chris just drops. She's the next Letty. And there was just this dead silence of nobody getting his fast and furious reference. And I got it and I just, I didn't want to like ruin it. I didn't want to ruin this moment, this crushing moment for Chris. Creighton would have gotten it. Yeah. I mean, I watched, I watched fast five last night because it's always on now. The only movie, it is a triumph of movie making. Let me tell you something. Like it was, it was probably my, my second or third favorite movie of all time up until the end of the credits. And then like the teaser rolls after the credits. And I like, I exploded in the theater. I lost my, my beep. Have I confessed to you? I mean, by the way, we're only going to talk about the verge and verge staff and our own obsessions and not actually talk about mobile news today. Have I mentioned to you that I've only watched the first one and none of the rest? I hate you, Dieter. Wait, Chris, quickly rank them, rank them real fast. Okay. Tokyo drift. Number one. Yes. Fast five. Number two. Um, the original number three, uh, and, uh, fast and furious number four and two fast two furious number five. Yeah. I mean, I will definitely agree. I think that you might have fast and furious and the other one mixed up, but the second one Tokyo drift is amazing. Yeah. That's moving on. Okay. Let's move on. This is a T I don't feel right doing this without creating non. So yes, let's talk about nano Sims. So, uh, uh, financial times, which broke the original nano SIM controversy story. Uh, what was it? Four or five months ago now about, uh, Nokia and apple getting into the spat, uh, over the over control of the four FF standard. FT came out with this post, uh, yesterday, this article yesterday saying that, um, uh, European carriers are already stocking up on nano Sims, which are about 40% smaller than the micro Sims used today, uh, in preparation for the launch of the next iPhone. This is a crazy story on multiple levels because what it means is this, if it's true, if the next iPhone is really going to use a nano SIM, the only way that's possible is if apple had gone ahead and used its nano SIM, uh, proposal, uh, for designing the device well ahead of approval by, uh, by Etsy, which is the, the standards body that's responsible for ratifying these Sims. So app, I mean, don't get me wrong. If any company in the world can go ahead and ignore a standards body, it's apple, no question about it, but still that takes stones. Um, and I don't know what would have happened if apple had ultimately lost and, uh, the, the, uh, the Nokia rim Motorola standard had gone through. I don't know if apple would have re redesigned the iPhone or if they would have, um, gone rogue and gone with their own SIM. I wouldn't put it past them, but, uh, but at any rate it all worked out for them because Etsy ratified, uh, their SIM standard by a wide margin. So this is, this is possible. It's definitely conceivable that this is going to happen. I mean, I have to just, this whole controversy is, is funny cause it was ever a controversy, but if you're like the, if you're the carrier representatives and you've got apple saying we want this standard and you've got rim and Nokia kind of pushing for another one, don't you just instinctively side with apple who is selling the most devices for your instinctively, you do, but I have to admit rim, uh, I can't believe I'm saying this, but if you go through rims slide deck where they present their alternative standard, they make a pretty compelling argument for why they have the superior, uh, nano SIM. Like there are a few things. One is that it has a little, uh, slot for your fingernail so that you can grip it and pull it out. Yeah. Uh, which is nice. Um, also it's physically impossible to get jammed in the slot unlike a Apple's version, uh, a micro SIM slot that is third. It has a notch in it which allows it to use push push mechanisms like you, you'd expect with like a micro SD slot with, um, with an existing micro SIM and with this new nano SIM, it's not really possible to get it into a slot that holds the SIM in place, uh, with a spring mechanism. And to be honest with you, I have no idea how they're doing it on the galaxy S three. No clue. I've studied the mechanism on this SIM folder for like a day and I have no idea what they're using to hold the SIM in place because there's no notch on a micro SIM that a, uh, a latch could grab onto to keep it in place. But I tugged on that thing hard. Oh no, hang on. The Atrix HD does the same thing. It's a push push. What the heck is it grabbing onto on the SIM? I don't know. I don't know. It's true. You'll know. But anyway. Chris, I just, by the way, the idea of you spending a day just like staring at a galaxy S three SIM card slot being like, how, well he had to because the SIM card got stuck in there, right? Or you had a problem with it. Yeah. So, so when I, when I first got the review, uh, AT&T galaxy S three, um, it came with the review SIM in it and I wanted to put my SIM in it and, um, that there's like some label on the SIM or something that makes it really hard to get out. Uh, so when you, when you press on it to pop it out, it would just like pop right back into place. And I tried everything. I disassembled the entire phone, but the problem is that the SIM slot is like, um, um, it's like a single module. Like it's not possible to take apart the slot itself. It's just a metal sleeve. So, um, I ended up taking tweezers and, uh, like a, a magnifying glass and getting in there and like wiggling the SIM very slowly for like 15 minutes until finally it came out without releasing the actual mechanism. And then I was able to put the new SIM in, uh, push it, which like reset the mechanism into its original state and then push it one more time. And it stuck the new SIM in. So it was a nightmare. It was an unmitigated nightmare. And I tweeted about it. The only thing about this nano SIM controversy is, I mean, I know, uh, I don't know, I suspect carriers are looking at ways to sort of push back on Apple's power in the, in the ecosystem. But I just, I never, it never seemed like the, I said, I'd never seen reasonable that this would be the place where they would intervene. I mean, they, they, they sell well, the most phones next to the Samsung. And I mean, they're going to go with what Apple wanted to go with. I was never really, the outcome was never in doubt for me, despite, uh, Chris's deep desire for there to be a SIM controversy. Now, Chris built a SIM controversy. I mean, he was, he was out there. He was yelling at people. He was very hard. Everybody into a lather over this. I mean, I read your hard hitting editorial Nokia. This is your last chance. Make your stand now. Which I mean, I know is very well received in espoo. It was, um, look, I mean, Apple inside Etsy, Apple is still nouveau riche, right? Like they don't like the hillbilly who came into oil money, who shoves up in a Camaro cause he thinks it's, you know, hot and cool. Blue bloods like Nokia. We've been in this years and they're like, who are these chumps that are coming in and telling us what's then we're going to use? Yeah. I, I, I, is that going up to the buffet and he's like just eating caviar with a soup spoon because that's how he thinks it's done. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Uh, but yeah, I mean, what can you do? So the, uh, the other iPhone rumor is a wall street journal says that Apple is working on a new screen technology that's called in cell touch where they integrate the, uh, the touch sensor into the LCD itself so that they can remove yet another layer on the screen, which would make it, I suppose, look even closer to the surface, but also allow for thinner phones. And I mean, I have no reason to doubt it. I mean, Apple's always, you know, one on having the highest resolution screens up until, you know, on their cycle when they, when they decide to upgrade the screen resolution, they're way ahead and I mean, I see no reason to doubt this either. Well, I think what's interesting is, um, right now they have a couple touch screen suppliers, right? They have Wintec, they have somebody else. I don't remember who the other one is. And this is like if they move that production to the LCD, they're going to actually change kind of the balance of supply. Um, and you know, Apple's really famous for buying up tons of supply ahead of time. So that might actually free up capacity for other vendors to get better or better than what they're using touch technology. But it's like, it's such a marginal improvement. Um, and it, it kind of feels like the iPhone rumor mill is in such like fervent throws right now that they'll like the New York Times will take anything. They're like, yep, we're going to, we're going to run this, this piece in the New York Times about a slightly thinner touch sensor. And that's kind of where we're at in the rumor cycle where there's a, I think there's a lot of misinformation. You know, Tim Cook was at D and he was like, we're doubling down on secrecy. And I think there's, there's actually keeping secrets. And then I think there is pumping out misinformation, uh, to mask the truth. And I think there's a lot of that happening as well. Not necessarily with the touch sensor. I buy that, but I think there's a lot of other crap out there in the world right now. Absolutely. I would not be surprised if the face plates that we, that we kept seeing were deliberate misinformation on AmpleSpot. Oh, absolutely. I mean, I don't believe any single one of those and maybe I'm wrong, but I just don't believe it at all. Well, I'm seeing stuff again from accessory manufacturers, which we always see and like, you know, models and molds. And um, I mean, none of it looks all that realistic to me. I mean, the latest thing is like what there's a metal back or a glass back and then there's like two ridges on the top and the bottom. It just, I dunno. I mean, I guess the iPhone four seemed a little bit unbelievable when we started seeing it at first, but it just doesn't look, it doesn't look believable to me, uh, right now what we've seen from those molds. I think it's going to, I think it's going to look substantially different. That's I mean, I maybe, you know, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think they're going to keep the same design and just make it taller or whatever. Yeah. It's time for a new design, but, but I do completely believe the, uh, the smaller iPad rumors completely believe those a hundred percent. There's no question that app seeding information to trip up the Nexus seven zero question. Oh no, they're definitely doing that. Although it's funny cause I have an exos seven and it's kind of like, well I get why I'd want this smaller form factor, but I keep using my iPad at the end of the day. I browse the Nexus seven cause it's small and it's there and I go carried around the house and then it's, and I, and now have this like hierarchy of devices where like I have the Nexus seven, I'm on a site, I'm like, man, you know, I need to like get into this a little more and I go and browse it on the iPad and then I'm like, I need to open multiple windows and I go to the laptop. But it's funny cause the Nexus seven has taken over. It's like my in-house smartphone. Does that make any sense? That's how I feel. It makes perfect sense. Like I'm, I'm using it all the time. Like I honestly, my, my iPad is kind of collecting dust right now. Um, and you know, I do a lot of web browsing and I read pocket and, uh, and Amazon. That's like my main tablet activities and Twitter, I guess. Um, but like the Nexus seven is great for all that stuff. I love reading on it. Yeah. Here, here's why I use the Nexus seven over the iPad and I'm only half kidding when I say this because it hurts less when it falls on your face. It's a very real issue. I can't count the number of times I've dropped a tablet on my face and you know, having a lighter device fall on your face is definitely a to everyone's benefit. Yeah. That's really sad for you, Chris, by the way. Come on, we've all done it. There, there are two groups of people in the world. Those that are willing to admit that they've dropped a tablet on their face and those that aren't. I agree. Um, the, uh, the last thing, uh, iOS related iPhone related is a nine to five Mac at a screenshot from iOS six beta beta three. And uh, you know, we know that FaceTime over cell networks is coming, but apparently it popped up a message saying you needed to call AT&T in order to activate the feature, which seems to imply that it will be a contract add on and not something that's just free. The message is to enable FaceTime over cellular on this account, contact AT&T or visit ATV.com slash wireless. This is terrible. This is the worst thing I've ever seen in my life. And if this is true, I will not stop until AT&T is dismantled once again. Can I just say this? I really, I mean like this is terrible. I mean it, I'm trying not to swear. That's what's happening right now. I'm desperately trying not to swear at AT&T, which I want to do. I mean this is, you can, when they have, when the carriers opposed net neutrality for wireless, they said, well, we have to do it differently because wireless is different. We have to apportion data different data is so, uh, so valuable that, you know, the cost per byte is so high and now it's like, okay, well we're going to, it's so high that we're going to cut off a feature that is entirely data dependent, right? It runs over wifi just fine. Clearly just using raw data. We're going to cut off this feature, uh, and we're going to, maybe we'll charge extra for it. And if you mean they're not going to charge per minute of calling on FaceTime, right? That model, that ship has sailed. I don't think that you can bring back the per minute model. Uh, you know, when they're, they're moving the rest of all of their services are moving, um, to unlimited voice and text, right? So I don't think they can say, well, we're going to do minutes of video calling. That doesn't make any sense. So let's say they just tack on, you know, you can get my, my assumption is like 10 bucks for unlimited FaceTime calling. Why did that data get so cheap? Why is that suddenly so cheap? This is, I mean, it's not, I mean, to me it's just naked play to raise prices in some way on a feature that carriers know, uh, that AT&T probably undoubtedly knows people just aren't going to use that much of people don't use FaceTime that much. And they're definitely not going to use FaceTime over AT&T's crappy fake 4g network. They're going to use it when they need to, and they're going to pay the extra money in AT&T will book 10 extra dollars per customer without having to actually deliver any extra service because they are not forced by the government to regulate data. Like it's all the same bits and I can keep going and I can repeat myself in more and more angry ways, but that's the, that's the core of it. Meanwhile, any number of other video chat applications work over cellular and don't, you don't get charged extra for them. Right. You know, Skype, uh, I forget what the new dialing app from, uh, I'm saying Skype is next Skype, Skype is next. I mean, they, they are going to come after Skype, uh, as hard as possible. They're going to say Skype VoIP services, uh, use too much data, Skype video calling definitely uses, I mean, this is, this is inching open the door to basically the nightmare scenario. And you know, the fight with, with net neutrality when it was a big fight was always the opponents of it saying, we've never regulated these networks. There has never been a problem. Why do you need to regulate proactively? Uh, and this is why, because the profit motive, especially for wireless carriers who are driven entirely by boosting average revenue per user, uh, is it, it's too strong. The incentive for them to be assholes is too high. Um, well, that's just the end of the story. The other thing is, I mean, let's not forget that carriers have had a voice, uh, and video, uh, standard that they've been working on for like six years. The, uh, the IP multimedia system for VOLTE and video over LTE. God, that's such a better name than FaceTime. They trotted this out at mobile world Congress again, the IR 94 protocol. Right. You did a report on it there, right? Yeah. And, and you know, that's not ready. And so they just, they can't get their own stuff ready. And you know, we, we saw even at CTA, Dan Hesse was railing about, uh, over the top, uh, services, which is, you know, that he feels like that this is what's crazy. The carriers like they genuinely believe that it's not fair that they have to carry competitive services on their networks, like over the top stuff like Skype. Like they genuinely feel like those things are problems. And so this is basically AT&T and presumably the rest of the carriers taking what could be one of the more popular over the top services and just slapping a charge on it because they can and they still don't have their own competing video standard out there to like compete directly with it. Yeah. So we talked to, to 4G Americas and a few other guys at CTA about, uh, over the top services. And um, the only value proposition that, that carriers are really able to push with, uh, with Volte and things like that are the fact that, that quality of service is guaranteed. Um, and so that is what it's going to come down to is this is going to go one of two, two ways. And I think carriers are hedging their bets. If the net neutrality issues heat up to the point where they're doing things like charging extra face time is, is not a tenable business model, they'll just push that quality of service issue so hard and potentially intentionally degrade, uh, uh, the, the quality of service and other services in ways that, that nobody can necessarily detect that you're going to be forced into paying whether it's per minute or I don't know how they end up charging for things like video calling through their own standard that's interoperable with other carriers. That's one option. The other of course is, is they're able to manage the net neutrality issue long enough so that they can charge extra for things like face time over 3g and 4g. Um, my, my overly optimistic theory is that maybe, maybe this is just a feature they're putting in place so that like a parental control type thing so that you can't accidentally blow through your cap, uh, on face time alone, which would probably be pretty easy to do if you were an aggressive face time user and you had it enabled over 3g. So maybe they're just testing that, that block because if you read the dialogue, it doesn't mention anything about, you know, an extra server service or an extra charge. It's just, you know, a calls to enable it. No, there's no way Apple is ceding a parental control to AT&T for this. I mean, no, this is the dialogue you get like, um, when you want to turn on data on an iPad, right? I mean, it's the same thing. It doesn't have pricing information on it. And you know, actually we need to, uh, we need to throw some of the blame at Apple for this, right? Oh, definitely. Apple keeps rolling over for AT&T. They're making it possible. They're putting the hooks in for the carriers to see that FaceTime has been enabled. They're the ones that didn't, you know, they, they let it not work over 3g in the first place. And I mean, you know, I know that carriers can tell when you're streaming, uh, there's, you know, hardware and software built into phones so that they can, they can toggle that on and off. And I think AT&T and Verizon, whoever they're going to see when you're using FaceTime, like Apple has built the hooks into iOS for carriers to know how you're using your data. And as soon as the carriers know how you're using your data, they're gonna, they're gonna use that as leverage, uh, for their own advantage. And Apple's letting them do that. And I mean, Apple rolled over for the 4g branding on the 4g. Um, which, you know, I will go on record as saying is the lamest, stupidest lie in the world. And they ended up getting burned for it in Australia, which is great. But, but for a genuinely like 4g device, right? Like that device has LTE and it just doesn't work. Yeah. All these, I should just run all the carriers. Can I just do that? Can I just run AT&T? That would be great. You know what? Uh, if it was you versus Randall Stevenson, there's no question I'd take you. That's funny. You know, it's funny cause you keep talking to, you know, if they do what you're suggesting, which I have no doubt they will, they will say we have to, we can't have that strict net neutrality on our networks because we are moving voice to LTE. So we need to manage quality of service and the FCC will say yes because the FCC is completely captured by the industry. Uh, so the FCC will say yes while they roll around in piles of secret money. So they'll do that and then they'll, they'll adjust the quality of service, adjust, uh, to screw with other services in the name of protecting voice. But AT&T can't complete a call. Like I don't have any, you know, if AT&T was to say right now, like we will adjust the quality of our services to make our current 3g network work well. I don't know that people would complain, but it's not like they've demonstrated a good ability to actually manage that right now. What they've demonstrated is that they've built a gigantic network. They got the iPhone first and then they have, they have succeeded in basically screwing up ever since. Um, right. And it's like, why should I trust you? Like I would, at this point it's like, why wouldn't I just trust the government? Are they going to screw up more than you AT&T? Cause I don't, I don't know if that's possible. Um, and I'd rather be able to like vote those people out of office. I mean, I can't, let me put it this way and I'm not in some huge, in favor of some huge government regulation. I think that that's equally. Yes, you are. I am. I'm big over man. But just, just give me two, let me, let me present two examples to you. There is this FaceTime situation, which is bad and we're all going to complain about it and I'm going to write about it and my hair is going to light on fire. Uh, and I'm going to scream and yell about how it's a violation of what I believe should be a core principle of, uh, of the internet. Uh, and then AT&T and Apple, they're just going to do it anyway. And that's it. That's the end of it. And it's not like a huge exodus of customers going to Verizon, uh, is going to stop it. Uh, it's not like Sprint is going to make a dent in the world, even though they offer unlimited data right now. And that should theoretically, you know, subscribers should go to Sprint, but it's not going to happen. And you know, earlier this year there was a huge protest against SOPA and our elected officials like actually kind of heard it and they stopped, they stopped moving on it. And that's like at least responsive. Like we made enough noise so that some people were afraid for their jobs, uh, and they stopped doing something that we thought was bad. And like we need to, there has to be a hybrid in there somewhere where we can complain about the things that affect how our devices in our lives actually work, uh, and are organized. And then people are responsive to it because AT&T is not. Uh, AT&T is a monolithic company that is literally ruining the potential of mobile networks. Well I can be done on that. The, um, the typical model for this sort of thing is, oh, well let the market fix it. Right? Let's uh, there'll be some company that won't have crappy terms that, uh, won't screw with your data and it won't screw with net neutrality. And you can switch to them as a, you know, a moral stance or whatever. Um, but I wish that was spectrum is locked up right now. That's just not going to happen. Yeah. If that was true, then the market would work, right? Then there would be, you know, the market can only follow demand. It can only react to demand. Um, but the market right now is demanding iPhones and sprint just got an iPhone and its data is slower than everybody else's. Maybe when sprint is, uh, on LTE and it's the same iPhone with fast data on compatible LT networks or comparable, not compatible, comparable LT networks, maybe I'll switch to sprint. But right now it's a, it's a bad deal for the user, right? I mean, you just get slower data. Power dynamic, the power dynamic in the U S wireless industry is dictated by some very strange and unique things that don't apply to any other industry, right? You have like weird things like different spectrum isn't equal because 2,500 megahertz spectrum sucks compared to 700 megahertz spectrum. And of course there's a, there's like a, a total limitation on the amount of spectrum that's available that is unchanging basically. Uh, and you know, these are, and you have things like the iPhone and, um, and available building of the iPhone on different carriers. And these are, are very, uh, the, the, the depth of politicking that happens in this industry is hard to explain, I think. Like it, it, it goes so deep and it goes in so many different directions and it's so hard to crack, uh, that it's, it's actually, it's very depressing and I kind of want to cry about it. Can I, can I tell a story about corruption that I think I can tell now because the, the, it's been such a long time. Uh, and this, this is a scary story that I heard. So there were the AT&T T-Mobile hearings, the merger buyout hearings. And I have been told by a couple people who would know that Sprint was obviously protesting this merger, uh, and the hearings were public so people could go to them. And companies know that they're public so they get people to stand in line to either hold their places or go attend the meetings and, you know, be vocal and supportive. So AT&T had a bunch of people in line, uh, but to make it seem as though Sprint was packing the house and tipping the scales, uh, kind of unfairly, AT&T put its supporters in Sprint t-shirts, which I think is the most insane thing I've ever heard. I mean, that's like the depth of crazy corruption that's kind of like happening. And I mean, that's a, it's, you know, it's, that story is I've heard, you know, it could be, it could be a huge lie, but it's, it's not something that I heard from people who wouldn't know. Does that make any sense? That, uh, that is insane. Yeah. Uh, yeah, well we should, we should make a promise. I think it's very fair for us to make a promise to our listeners that we are going to proactively make it as difficult on AT&T as possible to implement this without being made to look like complete idiots. Uh, and, and if this does come to fruition, I think that we will all storm the castle. So I'm coming for you, Randall. Yeah, I'm coming for you and I'm going to try to make you, I'm going to demand that you make a phone call on my iPhone. Yeah. And that's your torture for the rest of your life. Completing. That's it. That's hell for Randall Stevenson. He has to make a 45 minute uninterrupted foot call on the iPhone on his own. In New York, in New York. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's the thing, right? Like, uh, AT&T's network, I've been screaming this from the highest hilltops for a year now. AT&T's HSPA network in Chicago, uh, during business hours isn't just slow or isn't just unreliable. It is literally a paperweight. Yeah, it is. It is. It is a, an airwave paperweight. It does nothing. Like you ready to have your mind blown in San Francisco. It's great. I have no problems. I, I hate you. It's it's insane. I was not expecting it, but the past like two, three months, you know, when I came up here and I moved up here, I have got zero problems on AT&T's HSPA and on LTE it's bonkers good. That would actually, if HSPA worked well here, that would actually make the Galaxy Nexus a lot more compelling for me. Uh, then we really want to get, go there. Yeah, that could be a whole. Um, well we should move on cause we could, we could literally just sit here and try not to swear for the next hour. Um, this next thing, actually, I think I need Neely to defend Samsung or defend patents, which is going to be great. So that's one of the other. Um, last week, um, Sprint and AT&T, the Galaxy S3 both had over the air updates pushed that, uh, I'm going to say broke how search work. They used the, the Google search bar is no longer able to search on device. It can only search Google. And so we reached out for comment or, you know, waiting and waiting. And finally, you know, Samsung let us know. And here's Samsung's statement on these over the air updates that they pushed out. By the way, they pushed out like really quietly and called them like technical updates. Didn't actually say to users what they were breaking. Um, Samsung has updated the software for the Galaxy S3 as a precautionary measure to ensure that US consumers may enjoy using our innovative products without interruption. And, you know, the context here of course, is that the Galaxy Nexus, also a Samsung device, got temporarily injuncted because of this, uh, this very search issue. So Samsung is actively breaking their phones because they are afraid that they're going to have an import ban on them and they can't have that in the middle of, you know, what is their most important cell phone launch of the year. Yeah. And I mean, Deelay, I've heard you say many a time that the patent system is good because it forces people to design around things and that makes them innovate. Um, I mean, do you think that, you know, longterm this, uh, this fight here is going to be good for mobile search on phones or are you going to agree that this is broken and sucks? This part is weird. I mean, this is like, um, well, how do I put this? This is bad, right? This is a bad result. I, I, this seems silly. Samsung's in a weird place cause it doesn't make the software, right? So I think Samsung and Google probably pushed out this patch just to make sure that this launch could continue, but ultimately it's on Google, right? This isn't, this is totally on Google because the fix for this is to take the Google search APK, the Google search app off of the old version and just reload it on there. I don't even think you have to jailbreak. Like it's not like some piece of software that Samsung, you know, intervened on or whatever. It's 100% you know, the straight up Google search, I think out of stock Android that, uh, that's on there that they took out. Right. So I mean, this is, this is kind of the nature of how these phones are designed and sold and coded, right? I mean, there's, there's just a split. So this is on Google to design around, right? I mean, and that's, that's the core of this is Google has to design around it and maybe they will and maybe they won't and maybe this patent is overbroad, but, um, the injunction is temporary, right? The, the judge says it's just likely you're infringing this patent. So Google has a lot of time to either prove the patent invalid, um, and or design around it. So that's happening on this level. The fact that they give the software to Samsung and Samsung loads it on phones is like another part of the problem. Um, I will say that this is like a tactics issue for Samsung, um, because the injunction is only on the Galaxy Nexus. The S3 is a colorably different product. Um, and what Apple has been doing, I mean, Apple's whole argument with the judge has been, look, we can fight out the process on one phone, on one product, but Samsung puts out so many products so fast that it doesn't do us any good. We're all wasting our time. So like, you know, the Galaxy tab 10.1, they got an injunction on that too, but like who cares? Samsung's 15 tablets deep into that line. Um, so it doesn't matter. And you know, Apple's like, I think done a good job of convincing the judge that there, everyone is wasting their time arguing about whether one specific Samsung product, uh, should be blocked or should be the subject of the suit when Samsung puts out so many products so fast. So that's like a tactical issue or a tactical strategy from Apple that's, that's working as far as I can tell. And I think Samsung has seen that it's working. Uh, and that's why they're, they're taking a preemptive measure with the S3. Now whether any of that is like how you want the system to work, I think is probably not. Um, well, let me ask you this. So I mean, Apple has to go after the person who ships the products. They have to go after Samsung and not Google. Um, because they have to go after the person that actually, what is, what's the word like implements the patent right in a shipping product. No, no, no. The patent covers make use or sell. Those are the three. Okay. So why is there a world where, uh, where Apple could actually go after Google directly and we could have the no holds barred, uh, wrestling smackdown that world exists or that world will kind of existed on Google about Motorola, right? But Posner threw the case away. So, uh, I don't know that where that world was going to exist. We were in, we were, we lived in that world for just one moment. Uh, and then a 73 73 year old man, Chicago, uh, said that world was stupid and literally threw it away. Um, actually we need, we need to talk about Posner. Can you cause he, he popped up in the news cause he said that the, there's some serious problems with the us patent system. Like we haven't really gotten into Posner much on the mobile show. Can you, can you give us the, the, the life history of this guy and why he's interesting and important for this conversation? Uh, the, the life history is a long and, and storied history. So Posner sits on the seventh circuit. Uh, he's a appellate court judge. So he hears mostly appeals. Uh, he teaches at the university of Chicago law school. He invented, invented, um, built and popularized, I would say the field of law and economics, which is applying economic style thinking to legal decision making. Uh, I mean, he's, he's a lion. He's the most cited judge. I think the most cited judge who's currently living and I think that might go back for decades. Um, Tim Wu, who is a professor at Columbia law school, who I think I'm a big fan of and we had on, on the verge, uh, runs an entire project that's dedicated to just cataloging Posner's decisions. Uh, and he says he's the most influential judge, influential, influential living judge in America today. So he's this, I mean, he's a, a master of the field. Um, and he's what, what's great about him is that not only is he unquestionably brilliant and like a master, he's also very like plain smoke, you know, he's like Midwestern, right? So he's like very plain spoken. He doesn't take a lot of crap. Uh, and he kind of gets right to the heart of the matter. Um, and that, this is him. He does, you know, you can just, it's funny to like look at him cause he's like, uh, um, you can, he, he looks like kind of like your cranky grandfather, right? Um, uh, and so what's great about him, uh, you know, in actually it's, it's amazing to see him on camera with you talking cause it looks like you're speaking through his mouth. Um, so actually, so just to wrap, wrap up the history part, the, one of the main reasons he was never nominated to the Supreme court was because he is so outspoken and so direct in his, in his decisions and his speaking that they, it was basically agreed upon by everybody that he would never get through the confirmation process because he, he says what he thinks too much, which I think is hilarious. Um, anyway, so as an appellate court judge, you get to basically slum it whenever you want and go and preside over trials, uh, to like keep yourself sharp to, you know, just participate in the game. Uh, because otherwise you'd only be hearing appeals. You wouldn't be participating at the trial at all. So he said, I'm interested in patents, uh, let the court in Wisconsin know where the, where this case had been filed and they, they transferred it to him so he could, he'd hear this case. Uh, and I would characterize his handling of Apple versus Motorola as a, as testy. Chris, you went to one of the trial dates, right? Yeah. It was, it was a hearing. It was a hearing. Um, and it was, I have to say I was, I didn't expect to be entertained, but it was extremely entertaining. It was theater. Yeah. I mean, he was pretty amazed. I mean, you've got, Apple has very good lawyers and he kept on saying you have really good lawyers, but why are their arguments so bad? Um, and that, and he said it to the Samsung too, although Samsung appeared to bumble a little bit more than Apple. Um, uh, and he basically was like annoyed with Apple and Samsung's lawyers the entire time. He was like, none of these arguments, sorry, not Samsung, Motorola. Uh, he was basically annoyed with Apple and Motorola's lawyers the whole time. He was, why are your arguments so bad? Why should I block sales based on one patent when you can't even prove what that patent is worth? Uh, and ultimately he threw away the case, right? He, he threw away the case and said, nobody here has shown me what the damages for patent infringement are. What the damages you mean, lost sales, lost profits, uh, what the royalties would have been had you actually paid them. You know, and Motorola said, well, we'd love to license these patents. Um, but they cost, you know, 2, 2.26%, 2.25% of every retail price of the iPhone, which is an insane number, right? Um, it's way out of the, what the industry norms says everything would be. So Bozner's like, look, neither one of you has adequately prepared a case to show me how much money would solve this problem. And because you can't show me how much money would solve this problem, that means you don't know, which means you can't quantify the amount of injury that you've suffered, which means you probably haven't suffered any injury out you go. Um, which is in terms of like legal reasoning, you only get to do that when you're judge Richard Bozner, right? Nobody else, nobody else gets to, gets to jump to the end and say, screw it. Like go to, go to the appellate court. Because if you think about it, trial court judges, and this is true, and I think this is probably a little known trial court judges are graded by how often they're overturned, right? Right. So they, they generally chart a safe course. They rule kind of black and white. They like referee, which is, I think, um, you know, for better or worse. And they say, well, you go to appeal and hopefully I'll be over, I'll be upheld because either there's, there's no issue to appeal because I did everything right. Or um, or the law is wrong, but I guessed right on a lot. But Posner doesn't have that problem. I mean, he's, he's hit the top of his field. There's nowhere else for him to go. So he gets to do whatever he wants. Um, so he, he basically said, this is stupid. I don't know why we're having a trial and threw it out. And he told Reuters, he said, I was really looking forward to holding a trial, but I didn't think I could hold one just cause I was interested in it, uh, which is wild. And so his critiques, the patent system boil down to you've got industries like pharmaceuticals, you've got, which have huge fixed costs for development, right? And you get, so, you know, drug company says, we're going to develop this drug and they file the patent on something on what the drug does or, or the chemistry of the drug. And then they have to sit and wait while the FDA does trials. So they can't make their money back from development until about halfway through the patent period. Um, and then they can, you know, drugs are easily cloned. So a competitor can come in and sell a generic for a much lower price and they don't get to recoup their money. Right? So Posner says, fine, we should give patent protections to drug companies because they need to recoup the cost of development. That makes sense, but it doesn't make sense to do it in software because the development costs are much lower. Uh, if you finish a product and begin selling it, you get to start getting your money back right away. There's no FDA trial period and competitors can steal your, the core idea, but they can't steal your product, right? Your product can be colorably better because of a feature, but that doesn't, in the end, you don't have a patent on the iPhone. You have a patent on video technology in the iPhone and nobody cares about that. Uh, so we should split up patents by industry, which I think is exactly right by the way. Um, and really like, how do you, who gets to decide where patents apply and how they apply per industry? Like, so I think the really, the simple, the simple one is just to define very simply what a software patent is, which doesn't exist like that definition of what is a software patent does not currently exist in the United States. Um, it exists in Europe and they said these things are software patents and they're not allowed. Uh, and they don't have software patents. We never even got that far, right? We have lumped together software patents with business method patents with all kinds of, we have a lot of ideas about patenting abstract things like math and ideas and process, but we've never actually just come out and said this box of things is a software patent, um, and you can't have it. And the fight we've been trying to have the fight in the courts, um, and that doesn't work. Right. And I think because courts aren't designed to make laws, right? And I, I wrote this huge, either is Congress apparently, right? Uh, but courts are like really not designed to make laws. Like they're bad at it. What they do is they, they draw narrow lines around existing laws and say either this, that your case fits into this law or it doesn't fit in the law. Uh, or we're going to make, you know, we say these facts fit into law. And so people try to, they design their products and their legal strategy around weird, like a weird, like old facts from old cases, not ideas and concepts that makes sense to have laws around. So for a while, for example, in the United States, um, the court said you can't patent software, uh, but you can patent a computer and softwares makes, uh, makes all compute, makes all computers into specific machines. So literally we had Ross is trolling me through this window right now. He's here to deny. I love you too, honey. Um, so literally we had a period in the United sense, uh, United sense. Uh, we had a period in the United States where our patent office believed that software turned computers from general purpose computers into specific types of machines. And that was our justification for software patents. Now that is insane. It's just generally that is an insane place to be. And we shouldn't be trying to monkey around monkey around logic that way because we're making laws to the courts. So I mean, I think this, the first step, and I think this pose and decision, all of the smart for litigation, all the money that's clearly being wasted in smart for litigation. It's the first step to somebody saying, let's legislate what a software patent actually is and decide what we want to do with them. And, you know, and I think what we want to do with them first is say, let's pull back term from 20 years to like three and have it be so, you know, great. You invented slide to unlock. That's a really good idea. And, you know, maybe it wasn't there before. Uh, you only get three years to say that's, that's ours. Um, you don't get 20 cause that's stupid. The end. Am I just going to keep ranting on the show by the way? No, I was, I was, I'm sorry, I was distracted because somebody in chat recommended that we, uh, we take a photo of the, the nexus queue for the site, uh, stopping a door open as a doorstop. And uh, one of our, one of our writers has, has come through with very image and it's pretty exciting. Um, American made, you know, here's the thing that like, that's a beautiful dream, Eli, but it's not going to happen. Right? I mean, we're not going to get to that place. One of the things that, that Posner said, uh, during the hearing that, uh, Posner, excuse me, Posner, Posner, how do you know? Uh, law school. I mean, really? I'm going to go with law school. Fair enough. Fair enough. You win this argument. Um, uh, one of the things that Posner said during the hearing, um, that, that I absolutely loved. So, so Apple's lawyers were extremely smooth talking. I mean, they were so, so eloquent with their arguments. Uh, they, they really sort of put you into this trance. Uh, everyone except Posner, of course. And, uh, and at some point Posner said, why don't you just license your effing patents to Motorola without that thing. And Apple's like, cause we don't have to and we don't want to. And Posner's like, well, that's not a good enough reason. Well, this gets into the Fram thing, right? I mean, this was Motorola's argument. They're like, well, yeah, we'd be happy to license to it at insanely expensive terms. And like, this has been a debate. It's going on in other industries too. Isn't Microsoft huffy about, uh, about Fram as well? Yeah. I mean, that's what Chris is saying. It's, there are some that are, you have two ways to make money, make monies. You have, well, three ways. You have three ways to make money with your patents, right? You can take kind of the guaranteed money. You can say, well, we invested into radio technology, so we're going to give that stuff to Etsy, uh, and say, build 4G with it. And then we'll get money because everybody has to use our patent to build 4G stuff. So that's great. That's Fram. Uh, you can say, we're going to make great products. Um, and you are patented technology will be a differentiator and our products will be better noticeably better because of our stuff. Nobody else can have it. We'll make a bunch of money or you can be a patent troll. Um, and those are kind of your three options. Um, and Motorola has mostly picked the Fram route. And now the argument is whether what they're asking for is actually fair rates to use their technology. And that's one way, but Apple doesn't really participate in that stuff, uh, for any of the patents they're litigating with. So they get to just say, no, we're going to make better products than anybody else. And that's kind of a big, I mean, again, this, this comes down to like the term, like they should be able to do that. That's great. You know, that's, you invented something. You should be able to profit from it, uh, because you invested the time and the money into developing it, but not for 20 years, especially not in software and technology. That's, that's 15 generations of stuff. I mean, 20 years ago, there, there wasn't like the internet as we use it now, right? Like that makes no sense. You know, 20 years ago, there, there weren't smartphones in the way that we think of it now. Like that's a too much, that's too much time, especially in the technology field, I think. Right. Yeah. So basically we're going to have this conversation for the next 20 years, the length of the patent, because I don't see this changing. I think Apple and Google will settle. I think eventually it will cost them too much. I mean, you know, Apple and Microsoft did this, did this dance for years, right? Um, and eventually they just gave up. Well, they, they sold because like Apple was running out of money, right? Like they couldn't afford to keep going on. And I mean, do you see Apple or Google running out of money anytime soon? I mean, that's not going to happen. I think they'll run out of will. I think that's what's going to happen. Um, and I think now that Motorola is fully owned by Google, I think I can see, I can see a lot of this coming down to them just saying, screw it, we're cross licensing everything. Go at it. I mean, that's what should have happened months ago. It's, it's stupid that it's not happening quite frankly. I mean, we wouldn't be having conversations about whether or not the patent system is a mess if these companies, if Apple in particular Apple would stop saying, um, you're copying our stuff over and over again in the most like pedantic way. Um, because you know, and I, that, that's just how it's going to go. I mean, eventually I think Apple realized that, you know, like the Motorola case, they lost bad, right? They spent a ton of money, they sued Motorola. They got nowhere with it. Um, what did that gain them? I don't think it gained them anything. It's certainly not, look, they're going to sell a lot of Galaxy S3s. They're going to a lot of them around the world. Um, and because it's not going to hurt Samsung that it doesn't have a search feature for the phone. And I think Apple has to realize they're spending money and they're gaining nothing. So let me ask you, Nilay, this is more of a question for existing customers, but I've wondered, and I think Dieter was teasing this before too, uh, they, they've basically hoodwinked existing customers by saying there's a security update that you have to download. And by the way, at least on, on my AT&T model, it was forced. You couldn't not accept the update. Um, and they've nerfed the device. So what, what, um, what are the legal implications of that for existing users who purchase a device expecting a certain level of functionality and now over the air, magically they've had this functionality removed? Does anybody use this functionality? I've never once used on device search on my Android phone. It doesn't matter. It sucks on Android. No, no, but that's because it sucks on Android. On device search on other phones is great. And I use it all the time. Um, all right. When I, you know, I use those other phones. Um, so like, what other phones? You know, this is, it's not a core feature to, to Android using the Google search bar to search your phone. But okay. No PalmOS, windows, mobile, uh, webOS, like all that stuff. Being able to directly search the phone was amazing. That's besides the point though. You can, you can argue that it's not a good feature, but you're still missing functionality that you had when you purchased the device and you were forced to lose that functionality by an OTA that was pushed to you. So it seems to me like, like Samsung is on very shaky legal ground there. They're on shaky little ground, but keep in mind that, you know, by, by Apple's logic, they never had the right to sell that functionality to you in the first place. So yeah, but, but I mean, that's like saying like, dude, I, I sold these TVs and I sold them to you and you getting mad when the cops come and take the TVs back. I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't immunize the wrongful possession of the television, but the consumer is an innocent bystander in all this. Right. You're, you're, this is some real fast and furious. The consumer is a dirty criminal for buying a phone that broke Apple's patents. They're fully to blame for buying a Galaxy S3. They should have known that Apple had a patent on that, that search process. Well, I mean, maybe they look, what Chris is saying is right. Like from a consumer perspective, Samsung isn't doing itself any favors, right? They should be telling people what they're doing, but they're not going to get themselves in legal trouble by proactively complying with an order that affects their phone. Like I don't think that's going to be a problem for them. I guarantee you there'll be some crappy class action lawsuit filed against you. But that happens. I mean, if a phone looks at you funny, somebody files a class action lawsuit. I mean, every single device that comes to market. Yeah. I'm going to file a class action lawsuit against the Atrix HD, I think. Oh, changing the subject. For being ugly. Nice. Yeah. It is. Here's the thing. It's ugly, and the screen is good, but it's, we were talking about this before the show, it's good, but it's not the most beautiful looking screen because it sits kind of far back from the glass. But it's LTE, it's an S4 processor, it's Android 4.0. If you can get past looking at it, it's great. That's a great personality is what you're saying. Do you have the black one? I do. And the black one looks much, much better than the white one. Because the white one, just like the Droid Razor, which this is basically like a really bland, boring version of the Droid Razor, it has this Kevlar back, and so the white one still has the Kevlar black, and just the plastic is white. I mean, we have the white one in the office, and it looks terrible. It looks like the worst. It looks like Motorola made a Chinese clone of itself. Which is- Well, actually, this came out in China, in this form factor, I guess. But it's only 100 bucks, and it's like, like I said, there's nothing critically wrong with it. And the skin is great. It's 100 bucks if you buy a two-year contract. Well, right. Would you spend two years with that phone? No, well, I mean, I gave it a- Just think about yourself a year from now. Are you still using the Atrix HD? No. That's the only answer you need. What score did you give it? I gave it a 7.7, which, you know, so it's definitely not in the Galaxy S3 1X class. I think those are 8.6s on the site. I mean, not to get too deep into the score, but it's surprisingly good for a $99 phone. It's just disappointing that the only- It's a $100 differentiation over a two-year contract, right? For as good as it is, you'd like to, I don't know, feel like you're getting a little bit better value. If that makes sense. I'm just saying it right. It overachieves, but that doesn't mean that you should buy it, is basically what I'm saying. I mean, I really think phone manufacturers- Go ahead, Chris. Just to say, it occurs to me, I just now realized that Motorola has a similar problem to HTC in the US in that I think that Razer is exclusively licensed to Verizon. It is. And I'm sure that Motorola would love to use Razer on all four US nationals. Well, the Razer name and I'm assuming the Razer industrial design, I don't know if Verizon has an exclusive on that. I mean, they've released stuff in other markets that have looked pretty darn close to the Razer. No, but it's the name. So I think in Europe, it's called the Razer and there is a phone out in Europe called the Razer. I think Droid Razer, I think they probably have a deal to let Razer only be on Verizon while the Droid Razer exists. Yeah. I think that sucks. I mean, man, I don't know. I think phone manufacturers should prioritize the screen and the experience of touching the screen and looking at the screen over everything else. And I don't know why it's the first place where you cut costs. I would take a slower processor and a great screen. I mean, there's no point in having the S4 in there if I don't want to look at the screen. I have a theory that Motorola just isn't very good at sourcing components. I think that that is probably their greatest weakness internally is their ability to negotiate deals with the people they need to be talking to to get the best displays, the best processors and the best. I mean, this is the first theater. You and I were talking about this yesterday. I think this is the first Motorola in a long time to use a Qualcomm processor. Maybe ever. Yeah, it couldn't be ever. But you know, up until now, they've been using OMAT fours mostly and their displays have always kind of been a half notch or a full notch below the best on the market. So this is something that Google is going to have to massage and help them with a little bit, I think. I mean, I will never forget sitting in the Droid Razr introduction when they're like, this display is better than the iPhone's display and then getting the review in three days later and being like, what insane drugs are you talking about? Like no, it's not. It looks like a checkerboard. It looks like a checkerboard. Oh, man. And I will never forget the incredible hate mail I got from Android fanboys when I wrote the review of the Droid Razr and I said the screen looked bad. Well this is an LCD screen with color boost. Hey, can I ask you a question? I'm so tired of branded like I'm going to tweak the colors on the screen stuff. I forget what Sony's Bravia engine. And now this is color boost. No, it's the Bravia engine with reality display. That's Sony's reality display. Excuse me, like just, you know what? Be accurate, make a screen, don't have horrendous sub pixels and don't go trying to boost the vividness and the vibrancy of colors in like particular apps because you're wasting software development cycles that could be put towards making the rest of your OS not look like crap. Yeah. I mean, let me ask you a question. Nexus 7, do you think the screen looks washed out? Cause I think the screen looks really washed out on Nexus 7. Yeah, the blue. You notice it in the blue. Yeah. Like I look at like the, uh, the Chrome logo and I'm like, huh, it's just really not, not a lot of pop there. Look, it's an, it's an Asus. It's a $200 Asus, you know? I mean, Google can't work miracles. It's a $200 Asus that will only charge off of its own charger. Uh, oh my God. No, mine, you know what mine charges off of? I have the, that Motorola little plug with the two USB ports charges just fine off of that thing. Really? Yep. I've had it fail on, I mean, I managed to get it to charge off a Samsung wall wart, but it's failed on almost everything I try on it except for the one that came with and a couple others. Yeah. Don't worry. You're going to write some hard hitting editorial about this Chris. So let me, first of all, this is the answer. Isn't no, by the way. This is a great opportunity for me to spend 20 minutes talking about my X seven buying experience. Um, so on Friday I discovered that apt, which is a big local, uh, electronic shop had, um, a few, they, they got something like a hundred nexus sevens in the stock that day and they had nine left in the evening on Friday evening. So I, I drove out there and picked one up and, um, and I couldn't get it to charge off my computer. I'm like, oh, that's right. It doesn't charge off anything. So I pulled out the, the, the charger from the box, plug that in, wasn't charging off that. And I was starting to freak out. So finally I went to the, the nexus seven, the official, let me, let me emphasize this because it's going to be important later in the story. I went to the official nexus seven support page, google.com slash nexus slash support, I think is the address, uh, which is in the nexus seven manual. May I add, um, and they have an 800 number that you can call. So I called into the number and this, this guy answered after, but maybe 15, 20 minutes and uh, and I said, Hey, I can't charge my nexus seven. And he's like, Oh, your card was declined. Like no, no, you're not. That's not what I'm trying to, it's not what I'm trying to say. I have the next seven in my hands and I won't charge up any cable, any, any wall work, uh, worth that I've tried. I've tried three or four at this point, nothing works, including the official one. And he said, Oh, well you should have bought it from us, uh, because we'd be, we'd be able to help you, but because you didn't, you're going to have to go back to the store. Uh, and I said, well, that doesn't sound like the right answer to me. Don't I have a warranty? And he's like, no, you need to go back to the store. So at that point I flew off the handle, uh, and kind of flipped every, every object in my place. Um, and, uh, and you know, yeah, if you check my Twitter, uh, time, I'm not sure if I'm timeline, you'll see probably 20 tweets about this. I went off on Google plus too. And a long story short, I went back to app the next morning, exchange it, no problem. I was fine. But, but that's kind of besides the point. Like I never expected to have problems with that. What concerns me is that if Google wants to seriously get into the direct hardware business, which I believe it does, we, we still have that pending rumor about a bunch of Nexus phones coming later this year, which I'm assuming Google is going to be pretty heavily involved in. We have the queue, which they are literally making themselves. It's not ODM out to somebody else. Uh, and of course the Nexus seven is very heavily branded as a Google device. It was introduced at a Google event by Google, a Google employee. You go to a Google website to get support for it. If they want to seriously pursue this, they need to take ownership of these products. Uh, they need to take an Apple app. Apple's approach to customer support is legendary. I mean, I can't emphasize it enough. I I've had, uh, every iPhone model over the years and I've probably in three or four occasions I've had to take a model back. And literally every time I go to the genius bar, I handed my phone, they hand me a new one and I walk out of the store. I mean like it doesn't get any better than that. Um, and, and Google's going to have to step up to the plate if they want to keep going down this path, they can't be passing the buck. Uh, so that really bothered me. But the end of the story is that the new one works fine. I love it. It's a great tablet. Uh, my favorite tablet, I think, and I'm gonna have to spend more time with iPad, but, um, yeah, that, that really bothered me. Hmm. I don't know, man. Yeah. I'm sorry. I was just imagining what a Google store next to the Apple store or the Microsoft store would be. It'd just be like a guy at the front. He'd ask you what you want, you tell him and then 15 spammers would run up to you and offer you crap you don't want. No, it would be a great story. He would go into it and he would, people just Google it for you. Like that would be a service my parents would use. Yeah. They don't need, they don't need brick and mortar stores, right? Like I really don't think that they do. Um, they just need to coddle customers. Um, and, and I'm sure that's not cheap, but, um, but it's, it really is part of the total ownership experience and it makes a huge difference. You can't just sell these. I mean, I don't blame Google for, uh, being a newbie with this, a noob, if you will. Uh, but they're going to need to, uh, they're going to need to learn. I mean, they're not, they shouldn't be new with this. I mean, they've been running consumer facing products for, you know, who can call Google as advertisers because they spend the money. Um, and at the end of the day, nobody's spending them. Even with an XS7, Google gets no money from that purchase. Um, and I think until that starts happening, um, you're, we're all screwed. I mean, that's just the end of it. And you know, Google gets away with Android because theoretically you're supposed to call your carrier, not Samsung or HTC or anybody. Um, right. So your carrier can just lie to you. Yeah. God. Uh, okay. Uh, at Jellybean Android 4.1, it rolled out to the Galaxy Nexus, whatever. They started putting, they put the, um, Verizon Galaxy Nexus back in the open source project. That's, you know, whatever. Like it's rolling out to devices. That's great. I don't care. Uh, Android 4.1 has been hacked on the HTC HD2 and that's awesome. You know, it's funny cause when we were talking about the story, when he first heard about it, I laughed and I said, it's funny cause the HTC, HTC has better, better update support than most Android phones that get sold today. And then we all laughed for a while and then Chris was like, but it's true. Yeah. And then we realized that we like had to let people know. I feel really. I'm so in one of these and I'm really unhappy because I could have literally run every single mobile operating system since it was released on this phone. Yeah. I mean, it's a legendary phone for what it is. I remember, you know, they showed it off for the first time in the US on the Engadget show, um, when we were still hosting it. And I remember like holding it and I think I, I think it was, was it true? I don't remember who was on the show with us, but whoever it was, I remember asking, why did you work this hard for windows mobile? Like why? And they're like, we don't, I mean, it's a really nice phone there, right? And we're like, yeah, but why did you, why? And then they had no answer. And then like the next year, all they made was Android phones. Yeah. Yeah. But the sad thing is, is that they're, they're right back in the same. Oh, totally. You know, I mean, now they're just beholden to Google instead of Microsoft. Hey Chris, remember when we wrote that, that storming editorial about how HTC should buy Palm? Yes. It should have happened. Remember, remember how they just laughed at us and said that they were happy being a reseller of other people's operating systems. And you know what, it still can happen. I'm just saying, man, we, we had, we had the solution mapped out for them. We, we made probably a better business case for it than anybody at Palm at the time. And HTC just blew it. At this point they can get a far better deal for, for Palm than, than they could in what was it, 2009 or whatever. I bet Ruby was just like, look, what kind of tequila do you have? And HTC was like, that's not how we do business, sir. And Ruby was like, well, I'm going to HP because that Mark Hurd guy, you got me drunk. That's that's basically how it is. If you haven't seen the, the Onion report on HP is going to try that cloud thing. It's amazing. It's super good. We'll have it up on the site shortly. Yeah. I mean, so 4.1 it's rolling out, like the 4.1 rollout is weird. Like I've gotten the update notification like three times on my devices. Like I've already got 4.1 and I've got it again. And I think part of that's cause I have a developer device, but I know that other people have reported this on Twitter that like, I just got another update again and I keep on expecting the same part of break, but it doesn't. So that's good. Yeah. My next is seven has already gotten two updates and I just got it on Friday. So they're obviously still speaking 4.1. It felt like they were really chomping at the bit to get it out ASAP. And I think that maybe they cut a couple QA corners that they wouldn't necessarily cut under normal circumstances. I don't know what the rush was, but they wanted to get it out ASAP. I think that it hit our retail galaxy nexus is before most people expected it to buy a few days or a few weeks. So yeah, now they're, they had to, right? Cause they had to get around the injunction. That's why they rushed it out to get around the injunction. No, but the, the, the update still like on device search works on Jelly Bean. If you, if I type in INSTA in the search box, Instagram on the phone, the app is the first result. Do you get the, also, you know what I get, I get, there's also an emoji character of a middle finger and an Apple logo. You know, I was so excited about that. See, sure. I was like, what is wrong with you? It turns out that you need to enable the Japanese keyboard to get it working. Yeah. You also need to be a Japanese school girl, Chris. That's the other thing that you need to enable. Eli, find me another way to text message people, pictures of poop and we can talk. I can find you another way. I think that is actually not a difficult problem to solve. Emoji is the only way I know how to do it. I just, I, I want somebody to take the, the Eli telling Chris he needs to be a Japanese school girl out of context. Post that clip. I, you know, I've many, many times wished that. Let me say this about Jelly Bean. I mean, I've only used it on the Nexus 7 because did I tell you that Verizon deactivated my, I had a review unit, Galaxy Nexus, and they deactivated it on my wedding day, which was very nice of them. A very nice wedding present from Verizon. I mean, it's a review unit. I have to say, I should have sent it back forever ago, but it was just funny. Anyway, so I've only really used it on the Nexus 7 and I have to say, you know, there's like a level of polish and cleanup to it. I mean, it, it is, I will say much more beautiful to use as an operating system than anything else I've used, period. I mean, iOS included. I mean, iOS is great. I think it, it, there's two things about iOS that keep me coming back. One, I think the hardware is better all around and all those devices. And I can't get the combination of high end Android hardware with a beautiful screen and Jelly Bean right now because I'm stuck with the Galaxy Nexus. I don't like that screen. And second, pocket planes. And if I could somehow get those two things on Android, I would be very tempted to switch over because Jelly Bean is, is tremendously beautiful and I highly recommend it to all of you. Jelly Bean is, is great, but I don't think, I mean, this was basically all of last week's podcast, but I really don't think that the Delta between ICS and Jelly Bean is large enough to justify buying a Galaxy Nexus just because you want Jelly Bean. I know, I know, I know, I know this is your, that's your drunk belief, but it is. That's probably true. Like, I mean, we, we, we don't need to get deep into this, but I will say that the difference between 4.0 and 4.1 is not as obvious and clear as it could be. You know, it's faster is the main thing that's going to happen for other Android manufacturers. But I am pretty sure that Samsung and HTC and Motorola and everybody else and LG are going to say, well, 4.0 is good enough for now. We don't need to worry about pushing 4.1 out quickly. And we're going to just, you know, we never, we're never going to see 4.1 hit a bunch of phones that otherwise would have. Yeah. No, I mean, without question. Well, I mean, I don't know how it works, but in my mind it's they, all the engineers at Samsung worked really hard to get ICS on like 15 different variants of the S2. And now they're like literally on vacation and they're not going to work again until like six months from now. And then it's like another year to do whatever. I think it's, it's literally a mathematical equation for most of these companies. They need to calculate how much of a boost they're going to get by being able to say that they're running the latest version of Android versus where the product is in its lifecycle. Right. Because if it's, if it's cooling off, if it's about to be replaced, if it's about to be pulled off shelves by the carrier because it's aging, there's, there's no monetary benefit to rush an update out or to get it out at all. Whereas if a product is early in its life cycle and they can get it out in a reasonable amount of time, maybe that'll, it will light a fire under their ass. I don't know. Depends on the product. Maybe, you know, I, do you want me to start ranting about carriers again? Cause I can segue right into that. Uh, you know, let me just do it. Give me, give me 30 seconds, Peter. I promise. Look, I firmly believe that if a Samsung could sell an unlocked S3 with stock Android on it and have consumers like us buy it and put it on carriers without having to worry about approvals and all the other BS, they would do it because Samsung makes so many different products that it, it doesn't hurt them to make a stock Android variant of the S3. It doesn't hurt them at all. Uh, and I, I know they could just do it very quickly and very easily, but because they have to go through carriers, we will never see that phone, which is kind of the phone that I want. Uh, or actually what I want is the HTC One X with stock Android, but whatever. It doesn't matter. We're never going to see these phones, uh, because we are under the grip of a terrible carrier regime. The end, Deeter, was that 30 seconds? I think I made it. That's, I think that was, that was really good. Um, I let's, let's move on. There's just a couple more things I want to talk about. I mean, Sprint has lit up LTE in a bunch of like random cities like Dallas or Kansas city or something. It's just like two states, right? Two states. Yeah. It's LTE in giant air quotes though. Cause it's, it's mega slow. Is it? Right. How slow is it? It's not, I mean, let's put it this way. You're not, you're not seeing 45 megabits down on sprint LTE like you are occasionally on AT&T. Wow. And it just comes down to, I think we all knew that this is going to happen because of the very bizarre Rube Goldberg, uh, machine like implementation that, uh, that sprint needs to go through in order to roll this out. Right. It's, it's, it's crazy what they're having to go through. This is right now. They're only on 1900 I think. Is that right? I think that's right. Yeah, they're not using 2.5 at all yet and they haven't repurposed the ident spectrum yet. So they're, they're, um, ramping up LTE and 1900 and ramping down CDMA, um, and, and moving that, uh, moving that elsewhere. And then they lost the light squared, uh, deal obviously. So, um, yeah, I mean like my hats off to the, the, the tech guys inside sprint for planning this out and actually getting it rolled out. Um, there are many ways that it could have gone wrong. But I don't think that using the spectrum that they have available right now for this deployment, they could have really made it much faster. You might say it's in beta beta. Finally. I've been waiting, man. I've been ranting about policy this whole time. I apologize for being so late. Uh, uh, frequent listeners of the show will recognize that as a Vlad Sevov classic. Yeah, that's, that's amazing. Thank you for that. I do what I can. Oh, well, okay. And actually as long as we're, um, like T-Mobile still doesn't have any plan for LTE, like they're like cruising for death. Now they have some stupid plan, right? Yeah. They have a plan. It's just that it's going to be, yeah. Well, it's, I think that they're doing what they can with what they have. And actually we should talk about T-Mobile and Verizon and Spectrum co, which is one of our longest running story streams on the site right now. I think I was trying to get the podcast to not be three hours long, but okay. Go for it. We can, we can burn through this really fast. I just think it's hilarious and we need to point out that T-Mobile's tone changed real fast when, when Verizon said, I'm telling you what, if, if, uh, if we get the Spectrum co deal, we'll let you buy a slice of this AWS spectrum. We're planning on getting out of it. All of a sudden T-Mobile is like, Oh, this is, this is great. The government should, uh, should approve this ASAP. Uh, and, and it sounds like that's, he's basically behind it at this point. The problem they're having is that this entire deal is tied up with these co marketing deals that affect Fios and Comcast cable and time Warner. Um, and that's a DOJ issue, not an FCC one. And so as long as those deals are, are, are, uh, joined at the hip, they need both FCC and DOJ approval and DOJ isn't expecting rule until next month. And we don't know how that's going to go down yet, but it sounds like they still have some pretty big concerns, but it was just hilarious to me that T-Mobile, uh, sort of, uh, reneged on its entire belief system. The instant Verizon said, Oh, we'll give you some of this AWS spectrum, you know, and in here they are sitting in the RCA. It's just, I mean, it just goes to show you that even the most seemingly principled companies in the industry have no principles. They're still in it for, for, for what's, uh, what's best for the here and now for them. And, uh, and that can change on a dime sprint, for instance, which, uh, was the, I think the single most vocal, uh, opponent to the T-Mobile AT&T merger, which I think we can all agree would have been to the detriment of the industry if it had gone through is with Verizon and AT&T on the topic of net neutrality. And you can go and read their opinions on, I mean, like they are, they're, they're vocal proponents of, uh, of not allowing the FCC to rule on net neutrality on wireless networks. Yeah. I was spreading my rant. I'm done now. I mean, we've really taken it to carriers on this. This is, this is what happens just cause I, yeah, well, what else are you going to do? I mean, they deserve it. Yeah. I like it. I like this person in the chat by the way, just asked where did Sprint's name come from? Sprinting, which is good. I like sprint is an acronym. Um, no, no, no. It uh, it comes from, um, the, uh, the name of a railway. It, uh, sprint used to be owned by a railway on the West coast. Um, survive network telecommunications. This is a backronym guaranteed. Okay. So I was wrong. Um, but they, they were owned by a railway theater to find a better. But they were owned by Santa Fe or something. Wow. Anyway. Wow. Poor sprint. When SPC was only Wikipedia, man. I mean, Chris, you should be really proud of me that I'm depending on Wikipedia here. When MCI released Execunet SPC took the SCC to court to offer the right for the right to get a offer, switch services and succeeded. They needed a new name to differentiate the switched voice service from speed facts and they ran an internal contest to select one. The winning entry was an acronym for switch private network telecommunications citation loaded. In other words, the person who thinks they should have been credited for naming sprint is pissed and on Wikipedia. Yeah, that's, that's pretty awesome. Um, we, we can't end without talking about, well, Chris, do you want to talk about, uh, the Huawei stuff? Oh God. Uh, yeah. So, uh, Huawei, which is making a pretty big push into the US market right now, uh, decided that for phone you shouldn't buy, right? Uh, actually, so they came out with, I have to admit, it's a pretty clever video, uh, where they're going around Times Square asking people how, how they pronounce Huawei, um, because nobody knows how to pronounce it and rightfully so, cause it's a really weird word. Uh, and actually I take issue with the fact that they're continuing to use that word as they push into the US market. Cause I think it's going to end up being a pretty big barrier to entry for them. But that's another story for another time. They, they came out to taste of Chicago, which is pretty big festival, uh, annual festival in Chicago and set up this booth, this product booth where they're showing all their latest products. And actually they debuted three phones here last week. So I think is the first time in my entire history in this business that a phone company has shown new phones for the first time in Chicago is a very special moment for me. Just a shame is these phones. Yeah, they, they showed the my touch and the my touch Q, which are actually replacements for older models of the same name from LG. Uh, and of course they're for T-Mobile, which owns the my touch name. Uh, I'm really upset with where T-Mobile has taken the my touch brand because initially it was kind of a high end, uh, brand name for them, right? They had the my touch 4g, which, uh, which was an HTC device, pretty, pretty high end model at the time. Um, and they've sort of devolved since then, uh, since then into being this very entry level product that isn't priced appropriately. And I suspect that T-Mobile is still kind of trying to figure out how to price these products. The my touch and my touch Q are $49 on contract. Take your pick. One is a slab and the other looks exactly the same except it's thicker and has a slight out landscape QWERTY keyboard, but the displays are just terrible. Um, the skins are thick. Um, um, uh, they're, they're single speaker grills apparently, which is completely aggravating like that. That's the thing. Like my touch is, you know, reason for existing is they replaced the search button with like a custom T-Mobile search thing, which is the worst thing ever. It's so bad. Uh, but the other thing that is on has been on every my touch device is just this ridiculously ugly swoop on the earpiece and it's still there. Yep. Yeah. Um, still there. You know, let's not give T-Mobile too much credit for the my touch situation. Uh, cause you know, the whole, it exists because people call the iPod touch the eye touch and T-Mobile is like, we'll trick those idiots into buying crappy phones. Uh, and then that just sort of spiraled its way into HTC has a phone. They can rebrand as the my touch for G but like there was a line at crappy my touch phones before that there is now a line of crappy my touch phones after that. And low, there will ever be a line of crappy my touch phones that veer on trademark infringement and Oh, how the displays were terrible and Oh, how the skins were thick. It's a beer. Beer actually would have made a good my touch. But no, I mean like I think that Huawei is on the right trajectory, uh, to make an impact in the us market. Um, I just think they have a long, long way to go. Uh, they'll get there probably. Yeah. And as long as they're, they're always dogged by the implication that they're enabling the Chinese government to spy on our communications, they'll do really well in this market. I mean, which is true. I'm not just making that up by the way. Like they're not allowed to sell like routers to the government because there's the implication that the Chinese government has backdoors in all their year, which is probably true. All right. We have, we have, we're not going to go over an hour and a half. We have six minutes. We have two topics left and I, we have to talk about both of them. Uh, so first one, the Lumia 900 has been cut in half. It's now 50 bucks on contract on AT&T, which is not, is that the, the sat, the quickest price drop price drop for a flagship device ever? No. Not for a while, but it's still like the best phone that you can get running windows phone. Like it's, you know, it costs less than the, uh, atrix HD. It's a failure. The end. Go ahead. I guess that that was actually the impetus for the price cut at this time. It was the atrix HD because customers would go in and cross shop these two devices and say, this makes no sense. The atrix HD is way awesomer. Like you know, the specs are just. I mean the specs are better, but the Lumia is prettier still. Yeah, no it is. It's a very visually striking device, particularly when the store has the cyan one on display, which they don't always. One of the, the main AT&T stores in downtown Chicago still has their stupid black Lumia on display. And I'm like, guys, you're not going to draw any attention to this device. Well, it looks exactly the same as every other black slab in the store. You need to put the cyan one out. No, but the screen is full of colored boxes. It's a fail. You know, they blew it. They wasted all this hype on a device that clearly wasn't ready for the US market. And I think Nokia should have known better. I mean, they should have known that Windows Phone 7 was a stopgap for Microsoft until they recalibrated the entire operating system to Windows Phone 8. I don't know why they didn't know that. I don't know why they felt. No, they knew that. They still thought that they needed to sell phones now. That's what the Lumia 900 is. We need to start selling phones now. We need to start selling phones in the US market now. No, I agree. I mean, they definitely knew that. I don't know why they didn't know it in their hearts that this was a stupid idea, because not only were they going to put out a phone with an operating system that wasn't competitive at every level, not competitive in terms of hardware support, so they're limited in what they could sell, not competitive in terms of app selection, and just not competitive in terms of fit and finish, when the good one is around the corner, or presumably the good one, and they could have put out very competitive devices using an operating system that is very much the foundation of, or at least shares a foundation with Microsoft's future. And it's like, Nokia, what are you thinking? You need to rush to get a device into the US market? Has that ever worked for you? Ever? Like for the past 10 years, has putting devices in the US market been a really successful strategy for Nokia? Like, why? Why now? What is this half-baked idea? Well, the funniest thing about it is that they paired it to the smartphone beta test is over ad campaign, which is like a double whammy. Because it really wasn't over. Yeah. So, oh man. No, it has only just begun. Man. Yeah. Okay. I have nothing else to say about the 900. I have to bring up. A leaked image has appeared, I believe on Android police of the LG Optimus view with a Verizon logo. Wow. And it makes me so happy. This ridiculous four by three, five inch monstrosity is coming to Verizon. With a capacitive stylus. I just. Not a deductive stylus. Does Verizon have a Galaxy Note? No. No. Maybe. Well, I think I need that. T-Mobile is getting it there, right? T-Mobile is getting it. Yeah. That came out this week. They announced it on Twitter. Like their Twitter support announced it. And then they finally put out a press release. But still no price or specific release date on T-Mobile's version of the Galaxy Note. Which is insane. By the way, I don't know why I'm bringing this up. But I'm going to bring it up. I was watching an old program that I had Tivoed the other day. And you remember when the Galaxy Note first came out in the US, they had that commercial with like that sort of like calming music playing in the background. It was just a hand and, you know, playing with different apps on the phone. You guys remember that? Yeah. I think you dreamed that. No, this is a very real commercial. And it ran for a long time. And it's very Apple-esque. But the what I noticed about it, there are two things very disturbing that I noticed about it. One is that the phone is being held in a hand at an angle. And the phone stays perfectly dead still the entire time while the person is using it. Which doesn't make any sense. Because it's impossible to keep the phone that still in your hand. Two, it's like a little girl holding it. And her thumb is on the left side of the note. And her fingers are curling around the right side of the note. And so the shape of her hand, she would have to have a mutant hand. I've heard her to hold the device like this. So she's holding the phone perfectly still. And her hand is like a foot long. It's very disturbing. You know, Apple went through a really weird phase where when they were doing FaceTime commercials, they needed to have the phones held still. So they were using rubber hands in a lot of their photos, especially in the videos are using rubber hands. And it was like, once you began to notice that there were rubber hands, and they were perfectly still, you could never unsee the rubber FaceTime. I'm using rubber hands as mounts for my phones. Like a desk stand that's a rubber hand. Oh, it's awful. It was the worst. This LG view, like, I can't believe that Verizon is taking it. Like you would need a prosthetic hand just to hold it and like a handle in order to like use this thing. It is the most ridiculous phone. It was the most ridiculous phone of our world Congress by far. It was just there just so that they could, I don't know, you know, say that, well, we've got a big old phone too, Samsung. Like what, what could possibly have gotten into what's going on there? Like I don't know. We want the HTC One X? Nah, we'd rather have the Droid Incredible. Do we want the Galaxy S2? Nah, no, but you know what? This LG view, that's for us. That's what we want. Yeah. So I imagine these planning sessions where carriers decide what phones they're going to carry for the next quarter as being a little bit like Congress where, you know, like sometimes you'll turn on C-Span at a really weird hour and it's broadcasting live from the floor of the house and like 95% of the members are missing because it's like, you know, it's 11 PM or something, but there are three people there like talking and voting on God knows what. I, I, I imagine Verizon's boardroom a little bit like that where like everyone's gone home for the day. They're like two dudes left and LG shows up and they're like, Hey, you guys want to carry this? And they're like, well, we have a quorum. Sure. Let's carry it. That's, that's what's going on in my mind's eye. I don't think that's actually what happened. No, that's definitely what happens. That's exactly what happens. No, they just, they, they, they, they, they just started drinking at like seven o'clock cause they've been sitting looking at, you know, carriers walk through the boardroom all day or I'm sorry, phone manufacturers walk through the boardroom all day. And so at the end of the day they've, they've had a couple of drinks and LG was last and they're like, ah, sure. Let's just do it. Yeah. Get out of here. Yeah. Let's do it. Yeah. It's you know, I played with the view very briefly at MWC when it was introduced and I just couldn't, it was like you couldn't hold it. Yeah, my, my impression of it was that they, they caught wind of the note of the galaxy note and, and they were just like, let's copy this as quickly as possible without any regards for the nuances that make the note what it is. So, so they made it the wrong aspect ratio without really thinking about it. And they, they just put a stylus on it because they, they, they didn't consider the fact that there are things that make the notes stylus very unique. Um, and then they produced this, this complete piece of, uh, of garbage. I can't call it a piece of garbage cause I haven't used it. Well, you know, it's funny is that LG has been, I think the last LG phone that David reviewed, he actually liked a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like they've, they've, you know what it is. It's like, um, it's like students in an art museum. Allow me to lead you on this journey. Uh, if you've ever been to an art museum, I have and you go in there and there's a lot of kids in the ground staring at the paintings, desperately trying to copy them. And I imagine that those copies suck, but like half of them will like go on to learn something and start developing their own art and their early period might be rough. It might still carry a lot of influences. Uh, and you might be able to see the lines that they copied from in their own strain, but eventually they enter a mature period where they become, they blossom into artists of their own. And at each step of the way you weed out the people who can't do it. And LG sort of in that middle phase, right? Where it's like, they've stopped just directly copying Apple, which was in its own way, just directly copying or stopped directly copying Samsung, which was directly copying Apple. So they've stopped being this like second rate iPhone clone. Uh, they've gotten through the being. Now we just are doing whatever Samsung does. And now they're like in their regular phones are starting to like have an identity that might be good. And then there's the view and it's like, you gotta let that go. You have to let you just be yourself. LG be better than, be better than Samsung's bad ideas. Uh, but maybe, maybe that's not possible. Maybe this is a dream. Maybe I just spent too much time in college drinking in art museums. And I would like to point out that LG has now made both the four by three view and also the 21 by nine, whatever it was a couple of years ago. No, that was LG. I'm not talking about the Android phone. You're talking about the BL 90, the Intel thing. Oh, no, no, no, no. Or the blue 90. Cause I called it the chocolate. It was the chocolate two or the chocolate three or the chocolate for whatever is that really long. Someone in, in, in chat is going to know what I'm talking about. Uh, God, what was the model number of that thing? Vlad reviewed it. The BL 40. Oh, I'm sorry. The BL 40. Yeah. The BL 40. Yes. Oh my God. That's right. I remember this now. This thing is a, Wow. Longest phone ever. The BL 40 is actually long enough to hold the view. Ironically. Can we, can we end this thing? I can't. Let's be done. We, we need to get out of here before we start talking about Blackberry and it gets depressing. So this has been the verge mobile show. If you want to follow us on Twitter, you really should. We're all at verge. I'm at back lawn. Chris is at Z power. Neely is at reckless and we'll be back next week, possibly with Vlad Savov, which will be super exciting. So thanks. Thanks guys. Be data.
 You know, there's a lot of Verge going around.
 We've got On the Verge, we've got 90 Seconds on the Verge, we've got Verge Favorites, and
 now we've got Verge Apps.
 There's just so much Verge, we can't even hold it in.
 So we're bringing even more Verge.
 Get ready, stay tuned for the Verge mobile show.
 Hi I'm Dieter Bohn.
 I'm Chris Ziegler.
 I'm Vlad Sabov.
 And welcome, it's the Verge mobile show.
 I tried to figure, like I assumed Vlad would be very jaunty and like...
 I'm Vlad Sabov.
 But I can't quite relax and look that confident in myself.
 That's not bad.
 That wasn't bad at all actually.
 That's pretty good Vlad Sabov.
 Yeah, I'll take it.
 I'll allow it.
 I am in fact, Neil Ipatel.
 But I will be playing the role of Vlad Sabov for the rest of today.
 Who is still in Bulgaria flexing his muscles and jumping into pools and being otherwise.
 It looks like he's having just an incredible time doing whatever it is that he's doing
 out there.
 He's mostly being shirtless.
 As far as I can tell.
 He's examining his body and his relationship to the world around that body.
 Clothes are in the way.
 That time in every young Bulgarian's life where he explores his body.
 Well, what I think is interesting is that usually if you work with Vlad, if you've had
 the privilege and the pleasure of working with Vlad for so many years, you know that
 he can't help but show you his muscles like from time to time.
 He's just like every now and again, he responds like an email thread with a picture of a bicep.
 But because he's on vacation-
 They're scary, right?
 They're impressive muscles.
 I live in continual fear that Vlad is going to beat me up.
 Yeah, no, I've seen Vlad crack a walnut in his bicep before.
 I wish I'd seen that.
 That would be amazing.
 No, but I think he's been on vacation now for so long that he hasn't had the ability
 to electronically send a picture of a muscle to anyone.
 So he's doing it on Twitter instead.
 Which I don't know if I should like stop it or if I should subtly encourage it.
 Right.
 I think I would subtly encourage it.
 Although why be subtle?
 I mean, honestly.
 All right.
 I mean, you realize where this is heading.
 It's just a matter of time before Vlad shows up on the mobile show without his shirt and
 I'm not looking forward to that week.
 But anyway, we should get into it.
 We have a bunch of stuff to talk about.
 It is the eighth episode of The Verge Mobile Show.
 It is the week of July 16th, I should mention.
 And as I said earlier, the most important thing that has happened in all of mobility
 is The Verge now has apps on both iOS and Android.
 And I think they're quite good.
 I'm really happy.
 Commenting on it is great.
 Reading through comments.
 I actually enjoy it almost as much as doing it on the site.
 On the site, you can hit Z to go through new comments, but there's just a big next comment
 button, which is pretty cool.
 And speaking of comments, there's 500 comments on that post already.
 I think that from the day The Verge launched, mobile apps were probably the number one requested
 feature, wouldn't you guys say?
 Oh yeah, without question.
 And they've been in development for a really long time.
 And they came out really well, but like the site itself, they're not done by any stretch
 of the imagination.
 We have a lot, a lot of ideas for these apps.
 You personally coded these, right, Nilay?
 Yes.
 I have a big basement with just an emulator and me.
 I have a big second screen.
 No, no, I have no idea who did these.
 I think we hired all of those.
 One thing that I believe that I hold very dear to my heart is my belief that these apps
 are the next Instagram.
 I think it's just a matter of time.
 Which of us is going to hate on it?
 Which of us is going to love it?
 Yeah.
 That's true.
 The apps were developed with us in conjunction with the Willow Tree apps.
 So there you go.
 Yeah, no, I was going to say, I was joking that I don't know who did them.
 They're great.
 You should look at them.
 I mean, they're free for God's sake, man.
 Get a free app on your phone.
 You probably already have dozens of them, right?
 It's like you have what, a 32 or 64 gig iPhone?
 I mean, come on.
 What else are you doing with that space?
 Exactly.
 Load it up.
 Pictures of your family.
 Yeah.
 I mean, come on.
 You've seen your parents before.
 Delete a few photos.
 Put on the Birch app.
 Oh, wow.
 I have nothing else to say about these apps other than you must install them right now.
 But I do want to talk about, we've had iPhone rumors.
 It's been actually kind of a quiet couple of weeks, but now they're starting to come
 out again.
 And so the first one is a topic near and dear to Chris's heart.
 I know that he loves nothing better than talking about nano Sims.
 It is his favorite thing.
 If I believe that I could make a living as a full time nano Sim editor, uh, there's no
 question that I would.
 Yes.
 And, and in my spare time, Eli and I would be working on our appliance log that we've
 been planning for years.
 No.
 Uh, so yeah, that's your fast and furious podcasts.
 Oh, that's right.
 Cray, Cray and I are working on this, this fast cast that we have in the works.
 Dude, the other day in our, in our, let me tell the listeners a story.
 The other day in our, in our chat or work chatter, IRC, uh, I don't remember what it
 was.
 There's a picture of somebody, like a woman driving a car and Chris just drops.
 She's the next Letty.
 And there was just this dead silence of nobody getting his fast and furious reference.
 And I got it and I just, I didn't want to like ruin it.
 I didn't want to ruin this moment, this crushing moment for Chris.
 Creighton would have gotten it.
 Yeah.
 I mean, I watched, I watched fast five last night because it's always on now.
 The only movie, it is a triumph of movie making.
 Let me tell you something.
 Like it was, it was probably my, my second or third favorite movie of all time up until
 the end of the credits.
 And then like the teaser rolls after the credits.
 And I like, I exploded in the theater.
 I lost my, my beep.
 Have I confessed to you?
 I mean, by the way, we're only going to talk about the verge and verge staff and our own
 obsessions and not actually talk about mobile news today.
 Have I mentioned to you that I've only watched the first one and none of the rest?
 I hate you, Dieter.
 Wait, Chris, quickly rank them, rank them real fast.
 Okay.
 Tokyo drift.
 Number one.
 Yes.
 Fast five.
 Number two.
 Um, the original number three, uh, and, uh, fast and furious number four and two fast
 two furious number five.
 Yeah.
 I mean, I will definitely agree.
 I think that you might have fast and furious and the other one mixed up, but the second
 one Tokyo drift is amazing.
 Yeah.
 That's moving on.
 Okay.
 Let's move on.
 This is a T I don't feel right doing this without creating non.
 So yes, let's talk about nano Sims.
 So, uh, uh, financial times, which broke the original nano SIM controversy story.
 Uh, what was it?
 Four or five months ago now about, uh, Nokia and apple getting into the spat, uh, over
 the over control of the four FF standard.
 FT came out with this post, uh, yesterday, this article yesterday saying that, um, uh,
 European carriers are already stocking up on nano Sims, which are about 40% smaller
 than the micro Sims used today, uh, in preparation for the launch of the next iPhone.
 This is a crazy story on multiple levels because what it means is this, if it's true, if the
 next iPhone is really going to use a nano SIM, the only way that's possible is if apple
 had gone ahead and used its nano SIM, uh, proposal, uh, for designing the device well
 ahead of approval by, uh, by Etsy, which is the, the standards body that's responsible
 for ratifying these Sims.
 So app, I mean, don't get me wrong.
 If any company in the world can go ahead and ignore a standards body, it's apple, no question
 about it, but still that takes stones.
 Um, and I don't know what would have happened if apple had ultimately lost and, uh, the,
 the, uh, the Nokia rim Motorola standard had gone through.
 I don't know if apple would have re redesigned the iPhone or if they would have, um, gone
 rogue and gone with their own SIM.
 I wouldn't put it past them, but, uh, but at any rate it all worked out for them because
 Etsy ratified, uh, their SIM standard by a wide margin.
 So this is, this is possible.
 It's definitely conceivable that this is going to happen.
 I mean, I have to just, this whole controversy is, is funny cause it was ever a controversy,
 but if you're like the, if you're the carrier representatives and you've got apple saying
 we want this standard and you've got rim and Nokia kind of pushing for another one, don't
 you just instinctively side with apple who is selling the most devices for your instinctively,
 you do, but I have to admit rim, uh, I can't believe I'm saying this, but if you go through
 rims slide deck where they present their alternative standard, they make a pretty compelling argument
 for why they have the superior, uh, nano SIM.
 Like there are a few things.
 One is that it has a little, uh, slot for your fingernail so that you can grip it and
 pull it out.
 Yeah.
 Uh, which is nice.
 Um, also it's physically impossible to get jammed in the slot unlike a Apple's version,
 uh, a micro SIM slot that is third.
 It has a notch in it which allows it to use push push mechanisms like you, you'd expect
 with like a micro SD slot with, um, with an existing micro SIM and with this new nano
 SIM, it's not really possible to get it into a slot that holds the SIM in place, uh, with
 a spring mechanism.
 And to be honest with you, I have no idea how they're doing it on the galaxy S three.
 No clue.
 I've studied the mechanism on this SIM folder for like a day and I have no idea what they're
 using to hold the SIM in place because there's no notch on a micro SIM that a, uh, a latch
 could grab onto to keep it in place.
 But I tugged on that thing hard.
 Oh no, hang on.
 The Atrix HD does the same thing.
 It's a push push.
 What the heck is it grabbing onto on the SIM?
 I don't know.
 I don't know.
 It's true.
 You'll know.
 But anyway.
 Chris, I just, by the way, the idea of you spending a day just like staring at a galaxy
 S three SIM card slot being like, how, well he had to because the SIM card got stuck in
 there, right?
 Or you had a problem with it.
 Yeah.
 So, so when I, when I first got the review, uh, AT&T galaxy S three, um, it came with
 the review SIM in it and I wanted to put my SIM in it and, um, that there's like some
 label on the SIM or something that makes it really hard to get out.
 Uh, so when you, when you press on it to pop it out, it would just like pop right back
 into place.
 And I tried everything.
 I disassembled the entire phone, but the problem is that the SIM slot is like, um, um, it's
 like a single module.
 Like it's not possible to take apart the slot itself.
 It's just a metal sleeve.
 So, um, I ended up taking tweezers and, uh, like a, a magnifying glass and getting in
 there and like wiggling the SIM very slowly for like 15 minutes until finally it came
 out without releasing the actual mechanism.
 And then I was able to put the new SIM in, uh, push it, which like reset the mechanism
 into its original state and then push it one more time.
 And it stuck the new SIM in.
 So it was a nightmare.
 It was an unmitigated nightmare.
 And I tweeted about it.
 The only thing about this nano SIM controversy is, I mean, I know, uh, I don't know, I suspect
 carriers are looking at ways to sort of push back on Apple's power in the, in the ecosystem.
 But I just, I never, it never seemed like the, I said, I'd never seen reasonable that
 this would be the place where they would intervene.
 I mean, they, they, they sell well, the most phones next to the Samsung.
 And I mean, they're going to go with what Apple wanted to go with.
 I was never really, the outcome was never in doubt for me, despite, uh, Chris's deep
 desire for there to be a SIM controversy.
 Now, Chris built a SIM controversy.
 I mean, he was, he was out there.
 He was yelling at people.
 He was very hard.
 Everybody into a lather over this.
 I mean, I read your hard hitting editorial Nokia.
 This is your last chance.
 Make your stand now.
 Which I mean, I know is very well received in espoo.
 It was, um, look, I mean, Apple inside Etsy, Apple is still nouveau riche, right?
 Like
 they don't
 like the hillbilly who came into oil money, who shoves up in a Camaro cause he thinks
 it's, you know, hot and cool.
 Blue bloods like Nokia.
 We've been in this years and they're like, who are these chumps that are coming in and
 telling us what's then we're going to use?
 Yeah.
 I, I, I, is that going up to the buffet and he's like just eating caviar with a soup spoon
 because that's how he thinks it's done.
 Yeah, exactly.
 Yeah.
 Uh, but yeah, I mean, what can you do?
 So the, uh, the other iPhone rumor is a wall street journal says that Apple is working
 on a new screen technology that's called in cell touch where they integrate the, uh, the
 touch sensor into the LCD itself so that they can remove yet another layer on the screen,
 which would make it, I suppose, look even closer to the surface, but also allow for
 thinner phones.
 And I mean, I have no reason to doubt it.
 I mean, Apple's always, you know, one on having the highest resolution screens up until, you
 know, on their cycle when they, when they decide to upgrade the screen resolution, they're
 way ahead and I mean, I see no reason to doubt this either.
 Well, I think what's interesting is, um, right now they have a couple touch screen suppliers,
 right?
 They have Wintec, they have somebody else.
 I don't remember who the other one is.
 And this is like if they move that production to the LCD, they're going to actually change
 kind of the balance of supply.
 Um, and you know, Apple's really famous for buying up tons of supply ahead of time.
 So that might actually free up capacity for other vendors to get better or better than
 what they're using touch technology.
 But it's like, it's such a marginal improvement.
 Um, and it, it kind of feels like the iPhone rumor mill is in such like fervent throws
 right now that they'll like the New York Times will take anything.
 They're like, yep, we're going to, we're going to run this, this piece in the New York Times
 about a slightly thinner touch sensor.
 And that's kind of where we're at in the rumor cycle where there's a, I think there's a lot
 of misinformation.
 You know, Tim Cook was at D and he was like, we're doubling down on secrecy.
 And I think there's, there's actually keeping secrets.
 And then I think there is pumping out misinformation, uh, to mask the truth.
 And I think there's a lot of that happening as well.
 Not necessarily with the touch sensor.
 I buy that, but I think there's a lot of other crap out there in the world right now.
 Absolutely.
 I would not be surprised if the face plates that we, that we kept seeing were deliberate
 misinformation on AmpleSpot.
 Oh, absolutely.
 I mean, I don't believe any single one of those and maybe I'm wrong, but I just don't
 believe it at all.
 Well, I'm seeing stuff again from accessory manufacturers, which we always see and like,
 you know, models and molds.
 And um, I mean, none of it looks all that realistic to me.
 I mean, the latest thing is like what there's a metal back or a glass back and then there's
 like two ridges on the top and the bottom.
 It just, I dunno.
 I mean, I guess the iPhone four seemed a little bit unbelievable when we started seeing it
 at first, but it just doesn't look, it doesn't look believable to me, uh, right now what
 we've seen from those molds.
 I think it's going to, I think it's going to look substantially different.
 That's I mean, I maybe, you know, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think they're going to
 keep the same design and just make it taller or whatever.
 Yeah.
 It's time for a new design, but, but I do completely believe the, uh, the smaller iPad
 rumors completely believe those a hundred percent.
 There's no question that app seeding information to trip up the Nexus seven zero question.
 Oh no, they're definitely doing that.
 Although it's funny cause I have an exos seven and it's kind of like, well I get why I'd
 want this smaller form factor, but I keep using my iPad at the end of the day.
 I browse the Nexus seven cause it's small and it's there and I go carried around the
 house and then it's, and I, and now have this like hierarchy of devices where like I have
 the Nexus seven, I'm on a site, I'm like, man, you know, I need to like get into this
 a little more and I go and browse it on the iPad and then I'm like, I need to open multiple
 windows and I go to the laptop.
 But it's funny cause the Nexus seven has taken over.
 It's like my in-house smartphone.
 Does that make any sense?
 That's how I feel.
 It makes perfect sense.
 Like I'm, I'm using it all the time.
 Like I honestly, my, my iPad is kind of collecting dust right now.
 Um, and you know, I do a lot of web browsing and I read pocket and, uh, and Amazon.
 That's like my main tablet activities and Twitter, I guess.
 Um, but like the Nexus seven is great for all that stuff.
 I love reading on it.
 Yeah.
 Here, here's why I use the Nexus seven over the iPad and I'm only half kidding when I
 say this because it hurts less when it falls on your face.
 It's a very real issue.
 I can't count the number of times I've dropped a tablet on my face and you know, having a
 lighter device fall on your face is definitely a to everyone's benefit.
 Yeah.
 That's really sad for you, Chris, by the way.
 Come on, we've all done it.
 There, there are two groups of people in the world.
 Those that are willing to admit that they've dropped a tablet on their face and those that
 aren't.
 I agree.
 Um, the, uh, the last thing, uh, iOS related iPhone related is a nine to five Mac at a
 screenshot from iOS six beta beta three.
 And uh, you know, we know that FaceTime over cell networks is coming, but apparently it
 popped up a message saying you needed to call AT&T in order to activate the feature, which
 seems to imply that it will be a contract add on and not something that's just free.
 The message is to enable FaceTime over cellular on this account, contact AT&T or visit ATV.com
 slash wireless.
 This is terrible.
 This is the worst thing I've ever seen in my life.
 And if this is true, I will not stop until AT&T is dismantled once again.
 Can I just say this?
 I really, I mean like this is terrible.
 I mean it, I'm trying not to swear.
 That's what's happening right now.
 I'm desperately trying not to swear at AT&T, which I want to do.
 I mean this is, you can, when they have, when the carriers opposed net neutrality for wireless,
 they said, well, we have to do it differently because wireless is different.
 We have to apportion data different data is so, uh, so valuable that, you know, the cost
 per byte is so high and now it's like, okay, well we're going to, it's so high that we're
 going to cut off a feature that is entirely data dependent, right?
 It runs over wifi just fine.
 Clearly just using raw data.
 We're going to cut off this feature, uh, and we're going to, maybe we'll charge extra for
 it.
 And if you mean they're not going to charge per minute of calling on FaceTime, right?
 That model, that ship has sailed.
 I don't think that you can bring back the per minute model.
 Uh, you know, when they're, they're moving the rest of all of their services are moving,
 um, to unlimited voice and text, right?
 So I don't think they can say, well, we're going to do minutes of video calling.
 That doesn't make any sense.
 So let's say they just tack on, you know, you can get my, my assumption is like 10 bucks
 for unlimited FaceTime calling.
 Why did that data get so cheap?
 Why is that suddenly so cheap?
 This is, I mean, it's not, I mean, to me it's just naked play to raise prices in some way
 on a feature that carriers know, uh, that AT&T probably undoubtedly knows people just
 aren't going to use that much of people don't use FaceTime that much.
 And they're definitely not going to use FaceTime over AT&T's crappy fake 4g network.
 They're going to use it when they need to, and they're going to pay the extra money in
 AT&T will book 10 extra dollars per customer without having to actually deliver any extra
 service because they are not forced by the government to regulate data.
 Like it's all the same bits and I can keep going and I can repeat myself in more and
 more angry ways, but that's the, that's the core of it.
 Meanwhile, any number of other video chat applications work over cellular and don't,
 you don't get charged extra for them.
 Right.
 You know, Skype, uh, I forget what the new dialing app from, uh, I'm saying Skype is
 next Skype, Skype is next.
 I mean, they, they are going to come after Skype, uh, as hard as possible.
 They're going to say Skype VoIP services, uh, use too much data, Skype video calling
 definitely uses, I mean, this is, this is inching open the door to basically the nightmare
 scenario.
 And you know, the fight with, with net neutrality when it was a big fight was always the opponents
 of it saying, we've never regulated these networks.
 There has never been a problem.
 Why do you need to regulate proactively?
 Uh, and this is why, because the profit motive, especially for wireless carriers who are driven
 entirely by boosting average revenue per user, uh, is it, it's too strong.
 The incentive for them to be assholes is too high.
 Um, well, that's just the end of the story.
 The other thing is, I mean, let's not forget that carriers have had a voice, uh, and video,
 uh, standard that they've been working on for like six years.
 The, uh, the IP multimedia system for VOLTE and video over LTE.
 God, that's such a better name than FaceTime.
 They trotted this out at mobile world Congress again, the IR 94 protocol.
 Right.
 You did a report on it there, right?
 Yeah.
 And, and you know, that's not ready.
 And so they just, they can't get their own stuff ready.
 And you know, we, we saw even at CTA, Dan Hesse was railing about, uh, over the top,
 uh, services, which is, you know, that he feels like that this is what's crazy.
 The carriers like they genuinely believe that it's not fair that they have to carry competitive
 services on their networks, like over the top stuff like Skype.
 Like they genuinely feel like those things are problems.
 And so this is basically AT&T and presumably the rest of the carriers taking what could
 be one of the more popular over the top services and just slapping a charge on it because they
 can and they still don't have their own competing video standard out there to like compete directly
 with it.
 Yeah.
 So we talked to, to 4G Americas and a few other guys at CTA about, uh, over the top
 services.
 And um, the only value proposition that, that carriers are really able to push with, uh,
 with Volte and things like that are the fact that, that quality of service is guaranteed.
 Um, and so that is what it's going to come down to is this is going to go one of two,
 two ways.
 And I think carriers are hedging their bets.
 If the net neutrality issues heat up to the point where they're doing things like charging
 extra face time is, is not a tenable business model, they'll just push that quality of service
 issue so hard and potentially intentionally degrade, uh, uh, the, the quality of service
 and other services in ways that, that nobody can necessarily detect that you're going to
 be forced into paying whether it's per minute or I don't know how they end up charging for
 things like video calling through their own standard that's interoperable with other carriers.
 That's one option.
 The other of course is, is they're able to manage the net neutrality issue long enough
 so that they can charge extra for things like face time over 3g and 4g.
 Um, my, my overly optimistic theory is that maybe, maybe this is just a feature they're
 putting in place so that like a parental control type thing so that you can't accidentally
 blow through your cap, uh, on face time alone, which would probably be pretty easy to do
 if you were an aggressive face time user and you had it enabled over 3g.
 So maybe they're just testing that, that block because if you read the dialogue, it doesn't
 mention anything about, you know, an extra server service or an extra charge.
 It's just, you know, a calls to enable it.
 No, there's no way Apple is ceding a parental control to AT&T for this.
 I mean, no, this is the dialogue you get like, um, when you want to turn on data on an iPad,
 right?
 I mean, it's the same thing.
 It doesn't have pricing information on it.
 And you know, actually we need to, uh, we need to throw some of the blame at Apple for
 this, right?
 Oh, definitely.
 Apple keeps rolling over for AT&T.
 They're making it possible.
 They're putting the hooks in for the carriers to see that FaceTime has been enabled.
 They're the ones that didn't, you know, they, they let it not work over 3g in the first
 place.
 And I mean, you know, I know that carriers can tell when you're streaming, uh, there's,
 you know, hardware and software built into phones so that they can, they can toggle that
 on and off.
 And I think AT&T and Verizon, whoever they're going to see when you're using FaceTime, like
 Apple has built the hooks into iOS for carriers to know how you're using your data.
 And as soon as the carriers know how you're using your data, they're gonna, they're gonna
 use that as leverage, uh, for their own advantage.
 And Apple's letting them do that.
 And I mean, Apple rolled over for the 4g branding on the 4g.
 Um, which, you know, I will go on record as saying is the lamest, stupidest lie in the
 world.
 And they ended up getting burned for it in Australia, which is great.
 But, but for a genuinely like 4g device, right?
 Like that device has LTE and it just doesn't work.
 Yeah.
 All these, I should just run all the carriers.
 Can I just do that?
 Can I just run AT&T?
 That would be great.
 You know what?
 Uh, if it was you versus Randall Stevenson, there's no question I'd take you.
 That's funny.
 You know, it's funny cause you keep talking to, you know, if they do what you're suggesting,
 which I have no doubt they will, they will say we have to, we can't have that strict
 net neutrality on our networks because we are moving voice to LTE.
 So we need to manage quality of service and the FCC will say yes because the FCC is completely
 captured by the industry.
 Uh, so the FCC will say yes while they roll around in piles of secret money.
 So they'll do that and then they'll, they'll adjust the quality of service, adjust, uh,
 to screw with other services in the name of protecting voice.
 But AT&T can't complete a call.
 Like I don't have any, you know, if AT&T was to say right now,
 like we will adjust the quality of our services to make our current 3g network work well.
 I don't know that people would complain, but it's not like they've demonstrated a good
 ability to actually manage that right now.
 What they've demonstrated is that they've built a gigantic network.
 They got the iPhone first and then they have, they have succeeded in basically screwing
 up ever since.
 Um, right.
 And it's like, why should I trust you?
 Like I would, at this point it's like, why wouldn't I just trust the government?
 Are they going to screw up more than you AT&T?
 Cause I don't, I don't know if that's possible.
 Um, and I'd rather be able to like vote those people out of office.
 I mean, I can't, let me put it this way and I'm not in some huge, in favor of some huge
 government regulation.
 I think that that's equally.
 Yes, you are.
 I am.
 I'm big over man.
 But just, just give me two, let me, let me present two examples to you.
 There is this FaceTime situation, which is bad and we're all going to complain about
 it and I'm going to write about it and my hair is going to light on fire.
 Uh, and I'm going to scream and yell about how it's a violation of what I believe should
 be a core principle of, uh, of the internet.
 Uh, and then AT&T and Apple, they're just going to do it anyway.
 And that's it.
 That's the end of it.
 And it's not like a huge exodus of customers going to Verizon, uh, is going to stop it.
 Uh, it's not like Sprint is going to make a dent in the world, even though they offer
 unlimited data right now.
 And that should theoretically, you know, subscribers should go to Sprint, but it's not going to
 happen.
 And you know, earlier this year there was a huge protest against SOPA and our elected
 officials like actually kind of heard it and they stopped, they stopped moving on it.
 And that's like at least responsive.
 Like we made enough noise so that some people were afraid for their jobs, uh, and they stopped
 doing something that we thought was bad.
 And like we need to, there has to be a hybrid in there somewhere where we can complain about
 the things that affect how our devices in our lives actually work, uh, and are organized.
 And then people are responsive to it because AT&T is not.
 Uh, AT&T is a monolithic company that is literally ruining the potential of mobile networks.
 Well I can be done on that.
 The, um, the typical model for this sort of thing is, oh, well let the market fix it.
 Right?
 Let's uh, there'll be some company that won't have crappy terms that, uh, won't screw with
 your data and it won't screw with net neutrality.
 And you can switch to them as a, you know, a moral stance or whatever.
 Um, but I wish that was spectrum is locked up right now.
 That's just not going to happen.
 Yeah.
 If that was true, then the market would work, right?
 Then there would be, you know, the market can only follow demand.
 It can only react to demand.
 Um, but the market right now is demanding iPhones and sprint just got an iPhone and
 its data is slower than everybody else's.
 Maybe when sprint is, uh, on LTE and it's the same iPhone with fast data on compatible
 LT networks or comparable, not compatible, comparable LT networks, maybe I'll switch
 to sprint.
 But right now it's a, it's a bad deal for the user, right?
 I mean, you just get slower data.
 Power dynamic, the power dynamic in the U S wireless industry is dictated by some very
 strange and unique things that don't apply to any other industry, right?
 You have like weird things like different spectrum isn't equal because 2,500 megahertz
 spectrum sucks compared to 700 megahertz spectrum.
 And of course there's a, there's like a, a total limitation on the amount of spectrum
 that's available that is unchanging basically.
 Uh, and you know, these are, and you have things like the iPhone and, um, and available
 building of the iPhone on different carriers.
 And these are, are very, uh, the, the, the depth of politicking that happens in this
 industry is hard to explain, I think.
 Like it, it, it goes so deep and it goes in so many different directions and it's so hard
 to crack, uh, that it's, it's actually, it's very depressing and I kind of want to cry
 about it.
 Can I, can I tell a story about corruption that I think I can tell now because the, the,
 it's been such a long time.
 Uh, and this, this is a scary story that I heard.
 So there were the AT&T T-Mobile hearings, the merger buyout hearings.
 And I have been told by a couple people who would know that Sprint was obviously protesting
 this merger, uh, and the hearings were public so people could go to them.
 And companies know that they're public so they get people to stand in line to either
 hold their places or go attend the meetings and, you know, be vocal and supportive.
 So AT&T had a bunch of people in line, uh, but to make it seem as though Sprint was packing
 the house and tipping the scales, uh, kind of unfairly, AT&T put its supporters in Sprint
 t-shirts, which I think is the most insane thing I've ever heard.
 I mean, that's like the depth of crazy corruption that's kind of like happening.
 And I mean, that's a, it's, you know, it's, that story is I've heard, you know, it could
 be, it could be a huge lie, but it's, it's not something that I heard from people who
 wouldn't know.
 Does that make any sense?
 That, uh, that is insane.
 Yeah.
 Uh, yeah, well we should, we should make a promise.
 I think it's very fair for us to make a promise to our listeners that we are going to proactively
 make it as difficult on AT&T as possible to implement this without being made to look
 like complete idiots.
 Uh, and, and if this does come to fruition, I think that we will all storm the castle.
 So I'm coming for you, Randall.
 Yeah, I'm coming for you and I'm going to try to make you, I'm going to demand that
 you make a phone call on my iPhone.
 Yeah.
 And that's your torture for the rest of your life.
 Completing.
 That's it.
 That's hell for Randall Stevenson.
 He has to make a 45 minute uninterrupted foot call on the iPhone on his own.
 In New York, in New York.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 Well, that's the thing, right?
 Like, uh, AT&T's network, I've been screaming this from the highest hilltops for a year
 now.
 AT&T's HSPA network in Chicago, uh, during business hours isn't just slow or isn't just
 unreliable.
 It is literally a paperweight.
 Yeah, it is.
 It is.
 It is a, an airwave paperweight.
 It does nothing.
 Like you ready to have your mind blown in San Francisco.
 It's great.
 I have no problems.
 I, I hate you.
 It's it's insane.
 I was not expecting it, but the past like two, three months, you know, when I came up
 here and I moved up here, I have got zero problems on AT&T's HSPA and on LTE it's bonkers
 good.
 That would actually, if HSPA worked well here, that would actually make the Galaxy Nexus
 a lot more compelling for me.
 Uh, then we really want to get, go there.
 Yeah, that could be a whole.
 Um, well we should move on cause we could, we could literally just sit here and try not
 to swear for the next hour.
 Um, this next thing, actually, I think I need Neely to defend Samsung or defend patents,
 which is going to be great.
 So that's one of the other.
 Um, last week, um, Sprint and AT&T, the Galaxy S3 both had over the air updates pushed that,
 uh, I'm going to say broke how search work.
 They used the, the Google search bar is no longer able to search on device.
 It can only search Google.
 And so we reached out for comment or, you know, waiting and waiting.
 And finally, you know, Samsung let us know.
 And here's Samsung's statement on these over the air updates that they pushed out.
 By the way, they pushed out like really quietly and called them like technical updates.
 Didn't actually say to users what they were breaking.
 Um, Samsung has updated the software for the Galaxy S3 as a precautionary measure to ensure
 that US consumers may enjoy using our innovative products without interruption.
 And, you know, the context here of course, is that the Galaxy Nexus, also a Samsung device,
 got temporarily injuncted because of this, uh, this very search issue.
 So Samsung is actively breaking their phones because they are afraid that they're going
 to have an import ban on them and they can't have that in the middle of, you know, what
 is their most important cell phone launch of the year.
 Yeah.
 And I mean, Deelay, I've heard you say many a time that the patent system is good because
 it forces people to design around things and that makes them innovate.
 Um, I mean, do you think that, you know, longterm this, uh, this fight here is going to be good
 for mobile search on phones or are you going to agree that this is broken and sucks?
 This part is weird.
 I mean, this is like, um, well, how do I put this?
 This is bad, right?
 This is a bad result.
 I, I, this seems silly.
 Samsung's in a weird place cause it doesn't make the software, right?
 So I think Samsung and Google probably pushed out this patch just to make sure that this
 launch could continue, but ultimately it's on Google, right?
 This isn't, this is totally on Google because the fix for this is to take the Google search
 APK, the Google search app off of the old version and just reload it on there.
 I don't even think you have to jailbreak.
 Like it's not like some piece of software that Samsung, you know, intervened on or whatever.
 It's 100% you know, the straight up Google search, I think out of stock Android that,
 uh, that's on there that they took out.
 Right.
 So I mean, this is, this is kind of the nature of how these phones are designed and sold
 and coded, right?
 I mean, there's, there's just a split.
 So this is on Google to design around, right?
 I mean, and that's, that's the core of this is Google has to design around it and maybe
 they will and maybe they won't and maybe this patent is overbroad, but, um, the injunction
 is temporary, right?
 The, the judge says it's just likely you're infringing this patent.
 So Google has a lot of time to either prove the patent invalid, um, and or design around
 it.
 So that's happening on this level.
 The fact that they give the software to Samsung and Samsung loads it on phones is like another
 part of the problem.
 Um, I will say that this is like a tactics issue for Samsung, um, because the injunction
 is only on the Galaxy Nexus.
 The S3 is a colorably different product.
 Um, and what Apple has been doing, I mean, Apple's whole argument with the judge has
 been, look, we can fight out the process on one phone, on one product, but Samsung puts
 out so many products so fast that it doesn't do us any good.
 We're all wasting our time.
 So like, you know, the Galaxy tab 10.1, they got an injunction on that too, but like who
 cares?
 Samsung's 15 tablets deep into that line.
 Um, so it doesn't matter.
 And you know, Apple's like, I think done a good job of convincing the judge that there,
 everyone is wasting their time arguing about whether one specific Samsung product, uh,
 should be blocked or should be the subject of the suit when Samsung puts out so many
 products so fast.
 So that's like a tactical issue or a tactical strategy from Apple that's, that's working
 as far as I can tell.
 And I think Samsung has seen that it's working.
 Uh, and that's why they're, they're taking a preemptive measure with the S3.
 Now whether any of that is like how you want the system to work, I think is probably not.
 Um, well, let me ask you this.
 So I mean, Apple has to go after the person who ships the products.
 They have to go after Samsung and not Google.
 Um, because they have to go after the person that actually, what is, what's the word like
 implements the patent right in a shipping product.
 No, no, no.
 The patent covers make use or sell.
 Those are the three.
 Okay.
 So why is there a world where, uh, where Apple could actually go after Google directly and
 we could have the no holds barred, uh, wrestling smackdown that world exists or that world
 will kind of existed on Google about Motorola, right?
 But Posner threw the case away.
 So, uh, I don't know that where that world was going to exist.
 We were in, we were, we lived in that world for just one moment.
 Uh, and then a 73 73 year old man, Chicago, uh, said that world was stupid and literally
 threw it away.
 Um, actually we need, we need to talk about Posner.
 Can you cause he, he popped up in the news cause he said that the, there's some serious
 problems with the us patent system.
 Like we haven't really gotten into Posner much on the mobile show.
 Can you, can you give us the, the, the life history of this guy and why he's interesting
 and important for this conversation?
 Uh, the, the life history is a long and, and storied history.
 So Posner sits on the seventh circuit.
 Uh, he's a appellate court judge.
 So he hears mostly appeals.
 Uh, he teaches at the university of Chicago law school.
 He invented, invented, um, built and popularized, I would say the field of law and economics,
 which is applying economic style thinking to legal decision making.
 Uh, I mean, he's, he's a lion.
 He's the most cited judge.
 I think the most cited judge who's currently living and I think that might go back for
 decades.
 Um, Tim Wu, who is a professor at Columbia law school, who I think I'm a big fan of and
 we had on, on the verge, uh, runs an entire project that's dedicated to just cataloging
 Posner's decisions.
 Uh, and he says he's the most influential judge, influential, influential living judge
 in America today.
 So he's this, I mean, he's a, a master of the field.
 Um, and he's what, what's great about him is that not only is he unquestionably brilliant
 and like a master, he's also very like plain smoke, you know, he's like Midwestern, right?
 So he's like very plain spoken.
 He doesn't take a lot of crap.
 Uh, and he kind of gets right to the heart of the matter.
 Um, and that, this is him.
 He does, you know, you can just, it's funny to like look at him cause he's like, uh, um,
 you can, he, he looks like kind of like your cranky grandfather, right?
 Um, uh, and so what's great about him, uh, you know, in actually it's, it's amazing to
 see him on camera with you talking cause it looks like you're speaking through his mouth.
 Um, so actually, so just to wrap, wrap up the history part, the, one of the main reasons
 he was never nominated to the Supreme court was because he is so outspoken and so direct
 in his, in his decisions and his speaking that they, it was basically agreed upon by
 everybody that he would never get through the confirmation process because he, he says
 what he thinks too much, which I think is hilarious.
 Um, anyway, so as an appellate court judge, you get to basically slum it whenever you
 want and go and preside over trials, uh, to like keep yourself sharp to, you know, just
 participate in the game.
 Uh, because otherwise you'd only be hearing appeals.
 You wouldn't be participating at the trial at all.
 So he said, I'm interested in patents, uh, let the court in Wisconsin know where the,
 where this case had been filed and they, they transferred it to him so he could, he'd hear
 this case.
 Uh, and I would characterize his handling of Apple versus Motorola as a, as testy.
 Chris, you went to one of the trial dates, right?
 Yeah.
 It was, it was a hearing.
 It was a hearing.
 Um, and it was, I have to say I was, I didn't expect to be entertained, but it was extremely
 entertaining.
 It was theater.
 Yeah.
 I mean, he was pretty amazed.
 I mean, you've got, Apple has very good lawyers and he kept on saying you have really good
 lawyers, but why are their arguments so bad?
 Um, and that, and he said it to the Samsung too, although Samsung appeared to bumble a
 little bit more than Apple.
 Um, uh, and he basically was like annoyed with Apple and Samsung's lawyers the entire
 time.
 He was like, none of these arguments, sorry, not Samsung, Motorola.
 Uh, he was basically annoyed with Apple and Motorola's lawyers the whole time.
 He was, why are your arguments so bad?
 Why should I block sales based on one patent when you can't even prove what that patent
 is worth?
 Uh, and ultimately he threw away the case, right?
 He, he threw away the case and said, nobody here has shown me what the damages for patent
 infringement are.
 What the damages you mean, lost sales, lost profits, uh, what the royalties would have
 been had you actually paid them.
 You know, and Motorola said, well, we'd love to license these patents.
 Um, but they cost, you know, 2, 2.26%, 2.25% of every retail price of the iPhone, which
 is an insane number, right?
 Um, it's way out of the, what the industry norms says everything would be.
 So Bozner's like, look, neither one of you has adequately prepared a case to show me
 how much money would solve this problem.
 And because you can't show me how much money would solve this problem, that means you don't
 know, which means you can't quantify the amount of injury that you've suffered, which means
 you probably haven't suffered any injury out you go.
 Um, which is in terms of like legal reasoning, you only get to do that when you're judge
 Richard Bozner, right?
 Nobody else, nobody else gets to, gets to jump to the end and say, screw it.
 Like go to, go to the appellate court.
 Because if you think about it, trial court judges, and this is true, and I think this
 is probably a little known trial court judges are graded by how often they're overturned,
 right?
 Right.
 So they, they generally chart a safe course.
 They rule kind of black and white.
 They like referee, which is, I think, um, you know, for better or worse.
 And they say, well, you go to appeal and hopefully I'll be over, I'll be upheld because either
 there's, there's no issue to appeal because I did everything right.
 Or um, or the law is wrong, but I guessed right on a lot.
 But Posner doesn't have that problem.
 I mean, he's, he's hit the top of his field.
 There's nowhere else for him to go.
 So he gets to do whatever he wants.
 Um, so he, he basically said, this is stupid.
 I don't know why we're having a trial and threw it out.
 And he told Reuters, he said, I was really looking forward to holding a trial, but I
 didn't think I could hold one just cause I was interested in it, uh, which is wild.
 And so his critiques, the patent system boil down to you've got industries like pharmaceuticals,
 you've got, which have huge fixed costs for development, right?
 And you get, so, you know, drug company says, we're going to develop this drug and they
 file the patent on something on what the drug does or, or the chemistry of the drug.
 And then they have to sit and wait while the FDA does trials.
 So they can't make their money back from development until about halfway through the patent period.
 Um, and then they can, you know, drugs are easily cloned.
 So a competitor can come in and sell a generic for a much lower price and they don't get
 to recoup their money.
 Right?
 So Posner says, fine, we should give patent protections to drug companies because they
 need to recoup the cost of development.
 That makes sense, but it doesn't make sense to do it in software because the development
 costs are much lower.
 Uh, if you finish a product and begin selling it, you get to start getting your money back
 right away.
 There's no FDA trial period and competitors can steal your, the core idea, but they can't
 steal your product, right?
 Your product can be colorably better because of a feature, but that doesn't, in the end,
 you don't have a patent on the iPhone.
 You have a patent on video technology in the iPhone and nobody cares about that.
 Uh, so we should split up patents by industry, which I think is exactly right by the way.
 Um, and really like, how do you, who gets to decide where patents apply and how they
 apply per industry?
 Like, so I think the really, the simple, the simple one is just to define very simply what
 a software patent is, which doesn't exist like that definition of what is a software
 patent does not currently exist in the United States.
 Um, it exists in Europe and they said these things are software patents and they're not
 allowed.
 Uh, and they don't have software patents.
 We never even got that far, right?
 We have lumped together software patents with business method patents with all kinds of,
 we have a lot of ideas about patenting abstract things like math and ideas and process, but
 we've never actually just come out and said this box of things is a software patent, um,
 and you can't have it.
 And the fight we've been trying to have the fight in the courts, um, and that doesn't
 work.
 Right.
 And I think because courts aren't designed to make laws, right?
 And I, I wrote this huge, either is Congress apparently, right?
 Uh, but courts are like really not designed to make laws.
 Like they're bad at it.
 What they do is they, they draw narrow lines around existing laws and say either this,
 that your case fits into this law or it doesn't fit in the law.
 Uh, or we're going to make, you know, we say these facts fit into law.
 And so people try to, they design their products and their legal strategy around weird, like
 a weird, like old facts from old cases, not ideas and concepts that makes sense to have
 laws around.
 So for a while, for example, in the United States, um, the court said you can't patent
 software, uh, but you can patent a computer and softwares makes, uh, makes all compute,
 makes all computers into specific machines.
 So literally we had Ross is trolling me through this window right now.
 He's here to deny.
 I love you too, honey.
 Um, so literally we had a period in the United sense, uh, United sense.
 Uh, we had a period in the United States where our patent office believed that software turned
 computers from general purpose computers into specific types of machines.
 And that was our justification for software patents.
 Now that is insane.
 It's just generally that is an insane place to be.
 And we shouldn't be trying to monkey around monkey around logic that way because we're
 making laws to the courts.
 So I mean, I think this, the first step, and I think this pose and decision, all of the
 smart for litigation, all the money that's clearly being wasted in smart for litigation.
 It's the first step to somebody saying, let's legislate what a software patent actually
 is and decide what we want to do with them.
 And, you know, and I think what we want to do with them first is say, let's pull back
 term from 20 years to like three and have it be so, you know, great.
 You invented slide to unlock.
 That's a really good idea.
 And, you know, maybe it wasn't there before.
 Uh, you only get three years to say that's, that's ours.
 Um, you don't get 20 cause that's stupid.
 The end.
 Am I just going to keep ranting on the show by the way?
 No, I was, I was, I'm sorry, I was distracted because somebody in chat recommended that
 we, uh, we take a photo of the, the nexus queue for the site, uh, stopping a door open
 as a doorstop.
 And uh, one of our, one of our writers has, has come through with very image and it's
 pretty exciting.
 Um, American made, you know, here's the thing that like, that's a beautiful dream, Eli,
 but it's not going to happen.
 Right?
 I mean, we're not going to get to that place.
 One of the things that, that Posner said, uh, during the hearing that, uh, Posner, excuse
 me, Posner, Posner, how do you know?
 Uh, law school.
 I mean, really?
 I'm going to go with law school.
 Fair enough.
 Fair enough.
 You win this argument.
 Um, uh, one of the things that Posner said during the hearing, um, that, that I absolutely
 loved.
 So, so Apple's lawyers were extremely smooth talking.
 I mean, they were so, so eloquent with their arguments.
 Uh, they, they really sort of put you into this trance.
 Uh, everyone except Posner, of course.
 And, uh, and at some point Posner said, why don't you just license your effing patents
 to Motorola without that thing.
 And Apple's like, cause we don't have to and we don't want to.
 And Posner's like, well, that's not a good enough reason.
 Well, this gets into the Fram thing, right?
 I mean, this was Motorola's argument.
 They're like, well, yeah, we'd be happy to license to it at insanely expensive terms.
 And like, this has been a debate.
 It's going on in other industries too.
 Isn't Microsoft huffy about, uh, about Fram as well?
 Yeah.
 I mean, that's what Chris is saying.
 It's, there are some that are, you have two ways to make money, make monies.
 You have, well, three ways.
 You have three ways to make money with your patents, right?
 You can take kind of the guaranteed money.
 You can say, well, we invested into radio technology, so we're going to give that stuff
 to Etsy, uh, and say, build 4G with it.
 And then we'll get money because everybody has to use our patent to build 4G stuff.
 So that's great.
 That's Fram.
 Uh, you can say, we're going to make great products.
 Um, and you are patented technology will be a differentiator and our products will be
 better noticeably better because of our stuff.
 Nobody else can have it.
 We'll make a bunch of money or you can be a patent troll.
 Um, and those are kind of your three options.
 Um, and Motorola has mostly picked the Fram route.
 And now the argument is whether what they're asking for is actually fair rates to use their
 technology.
 And that's one way, but Apple doesn't really participate in that stuff, uh, for any of
 the patents they're litigating with.
 So they get to just say, no, we're going to make better products than anybody else.
 And that's kind of a big, I mean, again, this, this comes down to like the term, like they
 should be able to do that.
 That's great.
 You know, that's, you invented something.
 You should be able to profit from it, uh, because you invested the time and the money
 into developing it, but not for 20 years, especially not in software and technology.
 That's, that's 15 generations of stuff.
 I mean, 20 years ago, there, there wasn't like the internet as we use it now, right?
 Like that makes no sense.
 You know, 20 years ago, there, there weren't smartphones in the way that we think of it
 now.
 Like that's a too much, that's too much time, especially in the technology field, I think.
 Right.
 Yeah.
 So basically we're going to have this conversation for the next 20 years, the length of the patent,
 because I don't see this changing.
 I think Apple and Google will settle.
 I think eventually it will cost them too much.
 I mean, you know, Apple and Microsoft did this, did this dance for years, right?
 Um, and eventually they just gave up.
 Well, they, they sold because like Apple was running out of money, right?
 Like they couldn't afford to keep going on.
 And I mean, do you see Apple or Google running out of money anytime soon?
 I mean, that's not going to happen.
 I think they'll run out of will.
 I think that's what's going to happen.
 Um, and I think now that Motorola is fully owned by Google, I think I can see, I can
 see a lot of this coming down to them just saying, screw it, we're cross licensing everything.
 Go at it.
 I mean, that's what should have happened months ago.
 It's, it's stupid that it's not happening quite frankly.
 I mean, we wouldn't be having conversations about whether or not the patent system is
 a mess if these companies, if Apple in particular Apple would stop saying, um, you're copying
 our stuff over and over again in the most like pedantic way.
 Um, because you know, and I, that, that's just how it's going to go.
 I mean, eventually I think Apple realized that, you know, like the Motorola case, they
 lost bad, right?
 They spent a ton of money, they sued Motorola.
 They got nowhere with it.
 Um, what did that gain them?
 I don't think it gained them anything.
 It's certainly not, look, they're going to sell a lot of Galaxy S3s.
 They're going to a lot of them around the world.
 Um, and because it's not going to hurt Samsung that it doesn't have a search feature for
 the phone.
 And I think Apple has to realize they're spending money and they're gaining nothing.
 So let me ask you, Nilay, this is more of a question for existing customers, but I've
 wondered, and I think Dieter was teasing this before too, uh, they, they've basically hoodwinked
 existing customers by saying there's a security update that you have to download.
 And by the way, at least on, on my AT&T model, it was forced.
 You couldn't not accept the update.
 Um, and they've nerfed the device.
 So what, what, um, what are the legal implications of that for existing users who purchase a
 device expecting a certain level of functionality and now over the air, magically they've had
 this functionality removed?
 Does anybody use this functionality?
 I've never once used on device search on my Android phone.
 It doesn't matter.
 It sucks on Android.
 No, no, but that's because it sucks on Android.
 On device search on other phones is great.
 And I use it all the time.
 Um, all right.
 When I, you know, I use those other phones.
 Um, so like, what other phones?
 You know, this is, it's not a core feature to, to Android using the Google search bar
 to search your phone.
 But okay.
 No PalmOS, windows, mobile, uh, webOS, like all that stuff.
 Being able to directly search the phone was amazing.
 That's besides the point though.
 You can, you can argue that it's not a good feature, but you're still missing functionality
 that you had when you purchased the device and you were forced to lose that functionality
 by an OTA that was pushed to you.
 So it seems to me like, like Samsung is on very shaky legal ground there.
 They're on shaky little ground, but keep in mind that, you know, by, by Apple's logic,
 they never had the right to sell that functionality to you in the first place.
 So yeah, but, but I mean, that's like saying like, dude, I, I sold these TVs and I sold
 them to you and you getting mad when the cops come and take the TVs back.
 I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't immunize the wrongful possession of the television, but
 the consumer is an innocent bystander in all this.
 Right.
 You're, you're, this is some real fast and furious.
 The consumer is a dirty criminal for buying a phone that broke Apple's patents.
 They're fully to blame for buying a Galaxy S3.
 They should have known that Apple had a patent on that, that search process.
 Well, I mean, maybe they look, what Chris is saying is right.
 Like from a consumer perspective, Samsung isn't doing itself any favors, right?
 They should be telling people what they're doing, but they're not going to get themselves
 in legal trouble by proactively complying with an order that affects their phone.
 Like I don't think that's going to be a problem for them.
 I guarantee you there'll be some crappy class action lawsuit filed against you.
 But that happens.
 I mean, if a phone looks at you funny, somebody files a class action lawsuit.
 I mean, every single device that comes to market.
 Yeah.
 I'm going to file a class action lawsuit against the Atrix HD, I think.
 Oh, changing the subject.
 For being ugly.
 Nice.
 Yeah.
 It is.
 Here's the thing.
 It's ugly, and the screen is good, but it's, we were talking about this before the show,
 it's good, but it's not the most beautiful looking screen because it sits kind of far
 back from the glass.
 But it's LTE, it's an S4 processor, it's Android 4.0.
 If you can get past looking at it, it's great.
 That's a great personality is what you're saying.
 Do you have the black one?
 I do.
 And the black one looks much, much better than the white one.
 Because the white one, just like the Droid Razor, which this is basically like a really
 bland, boring version of the Droid Razor, it has this Kevlar back, and so the white
 one still has the Kevlar black, and just the plastic is white.
 I mean, we have the white one in the office, and it looks terrible.
 It looks like the worst.
 It looks like Motorola made a Chinese clone of itself.
 Which is- Well, actually, this came out in China, in
 this form factor, I guess.
 But it's only 100 bucks, and it's like, like I said, there's nothing critically wrong with
 it.
 And the skin is great.
 It's 100 bucks if you buy a two-year contract.
 Well, right.
 Would you spend two years with that phone?
 No, well, I mean, I gave it a- Just think about yourself a year from now.
 Are you still using the Atrix HD?
 No.
 That's the only answer you need.
 What score did you give it?
 I gave it a 7.7, which, you know, so it's definitely not in the Galaxy S3 1X class.
 I think those are 8.6s on the site.
 I mean, not to get too deep into the score, but it's surprisingly good for a $99 phone.
 It's just disappointing that the only- It's a $100 differentiation over a two-year contract,
 right?
 For as good as it is, you'd like to, I don't know, feel like you're getting a little bit
 better value.
 If that makes sense.
 I'm just saying it right.
 It overachieves, but that doesn't mean that you should buy it, is basically what I'm saying.
 I mean, I really think phone manufacturers- Go ahead, Chris.
 Just to say, it occurs to me, I just now realized that Motorola has a similar problem to HTC
 in the US in that I think that Razer is exclusively licensed to Verizon.
 It is.
 And I'm sure that Motorola would love to use Razer on all four US nationals.
 Well, the Razer name and I'm assuming the Razer industrial design, I don't know if Verizon
 has an exclusive on that.
 I mean, they've released stuff in other markets that have looked pretty darn close to the
 Razer.
 No, but it's the name.
 So I think in Europe, it's called the Razer and there is a phone out in Europe called
 the Razer.
 I think Droid Razer, I think they probably have a deal to let Razer only be on Verizon
 while the Droid Razer exists.
 Yeah.
 I think that sucks.
 I mean, man, I don't know.
 I think phone manufacturers should prioritize the screen and the experience of touching
 the screen and looking at the screen over everything else.
 And I don't know why it's the first place where you cut costs.
 I would take a slower processor and a great screen.
 I mean, there's no point in having the S4 in there if I don't want to look at the screen.
 I have a theory that Motorola just isn't very good at sourcing components.
 I think that that is probably their greatest weakness internally is their ability to negotiate
 deals with the people they need to be talking to to get the best displays, the best processors
 and the best.
 I mean, this is the first theater.
 You and I were talking about this yesterday.
 I think this is the first Motorola in a long time to use a Qualcomm processor.
 Maybe ever.
 Yeah, it couldn't be ever.
 But you know, up until now, they've been using OMAT fours mostly and their displays have
 always kind of been a half notch or a full notch below the best on the market.
 So this is something that Google is going to have to massage and help them with a little
 bit, I think.
 I mean, I will never forget sitting in the Droid Razr introduction when they're like,
 this display is better than the iPhone's display and then getting the review in three days
 later and being like, what insane drugs are you talking about?
 Like no, it's not.
 It looks like a checkerboard.
 It looks like a checkerboard.
 Oh, man.
 And I will never forget the incredible hate mail I got from Android fanboys when I wrote
 the review of the Droid Razr and I said the screen looked bad.
 Well this is an LCD screen with color boost.
 Hey, can I ask you a question?
 I'm so tired of branded like I'm going to tweak the colors on the screen stuff.
 I forget what Sony's Bravia engine.
 And now this is color boost.
 No, it's the Bravia engine with reality display.
 That's Sony's reality display.
 Excuse me, like just, you know what?
 Be accurate, make a screen, don't have horrendous sub pixels and don't go trying to boost the
 vividness and the vibrancy of colors in like particular apps because you're wasting software
 development cycles that could be put towards making the rest of your OS not look like crap.
 Yeah.
 I mean, let me ask you a question.
 Nexus 7, do you think the screen looks washed out?
 Cause I think the screen looks really washed out on Nexus 7.
 Yeah, the blue.
 You notice it in the blue.
 Yeah.
 Like I look at like the, uh, the Chrome logo and I'm like, huh, it's just really not, not
 a lot of pop there.
 Look, it's an, it's an Asus.
 It's a $200 Asus, you know?
 I mean, Google can't work miracles.
 It's a $200 Asus that will only charge off of its own charger.
 Uh, oh my God.
 No, mine, you know what mine charges off of?
 I have the, that Motorola little plug with the two USB ports charges just fine off of
 that thing.
 Really?
 Yep.
 I've had it fail on, I mean, I managed to get it to charge off a Samsung wall wart,
 but it's failed on almost everything I try on it except for the one that came with and
 a couple others.
 Yeah.
 Don't worry.
 You're going to write some hard hitting editorial about this Chris.
 So let me, first of all, this is the answer.
 Isn't no, by the way.
 This is a great opportunity for me to spend 20 minutes talking about my X seven buying
 experience.
 Um, so on Friday I discovered that apt, which is a big local, uh, electronic shop had, um,
 a few, they, they got something like a hundred nexus sevens in the stock that day and they
 had nine left in the evening on Friday evening.
 So I, I drove out there and picked one up and, um, and I couldn't get it to charge off
 my computer.
 I'm like, oh, that's right.
 It doesn't charge off anything.
 So I pulled out the, the, the charger from the box, plug that in, wasn't charging off
 that.
 And I was starting to freak out.
 So finally I went to the, the nexus seven, the official, let me, let me emphasize this
 because it's going to be important later in the story.
 I went to the official nexus seven support page, google.com slash nexus slash support,
 I think is the address, uh, which is in the nexus seven manual.
 May I add, um, and they have an 800 number that you can call.
 So I called into the number and this, this guy answered after, but maybe 15, 20 minutes
 and uh, and I said, Hey, I can't charge my nexus seven.
 And he's like, Oh, your card was declined.
 Like no, no, you're not.
 That's not what I'm trying to, it's not what I'm trying to say.
 I have the next seven in my hands and I won't charge up any cable, any, any wall work, uh,
 worth that I've tried.
 I've tried three or four at this point, nothing works, including the official one.
 And he said, Oh, well you should have bought it from us, uh, because we'd be, we'd be able
 to help you, but because you didn't, you're going to have to go back to the store.
 Uh, and I said, well, that doesn't sound like the right answer to me.
 Don't I have a warranty?
 And he's like, no, you need to go back to the store.
 So at that point I flew off the handle, uh, and kind of flipped every, every object in
 my place.
 Um, and, uh, and you know, yeah, if you check my Twitter, uh, time, I'm not sure if I'm
 timeline, you'll see probably 20 tweets about this.
 I went off on Google plus too.
 And a long story short, I went back to app the next morning, exchange it, no problem.
 I was fine.
 But, but that's kind of besides the point.
 Like I never expected to have problems with that.
 What concerns me is that if Google wants to seriously get into the direct hardware business,
 which I believe it does, we, we still have that pending rumor about a bunch of Nexus
 phones coming later this year, which I'm assuming Google is going to be pretty heavily involved
 in.
 We have the queue, which they are literally making themselves.
 It's not ODM out to somebody else.
 Uh, and of course the Nexus seven is very heavily branded as a Google device.
 It was introduced at a Google event by Google, a Google employee.
 You go to a Google website to get support for it.
 If they want to seriously pursue this, they need to take ownership of these products.
 Uh, they need to take an Apple app.
 Apple's approach to customer support is legendary.
 I mean, I can't emphasize it enough.
 I I've had, uh, every iPhone model over the years and I've probably in three or four occasions
 I've had to take a model back.
 And literally every time I go to the genius bar, I handed my phone, they hand me a new
 one and I walk out of the store.
 I mean like it doesn't get any better than that.
 Um, and, and Google's going to have to step up to the plate if they want to keep going
 down this path, they can't be passing the buck.
 Uh, so that really bothered me.
 But the end of the story is that the new one works fine.
 I love it.
 It's a great tablet.
 Uh, my favorite tablet, I think, and I'm gonna have to spend more time with iPad, but, um,
 yeah, that, that really bothered me.
 Hmm.
 I don't know, man.
 Yeah.
 I'm sorry.
 I was just imagining what a Google store next to the Apple store or the Microsoft store
 would be.
 It'd just be like a guy at the front.
 He'd ask you what you want, you tell him and then 15 spammers would run up to you and offer
 you crap you don't want.
 No, it would be a great story.
 He would go into it and he would, people just Google it for you.
 Like that would be a service my parents would use.
 Yeah.
 They don't need, they don't need brick and mortar stores, right?
 Like I really don't think that they do.
 Um, they just need to coddle customers.
 Um, and, and I'm sure that's not cheap, but, um, but it's, it really is part of the total
 ownership experience and it makes a huge difference.
 You can't just sell these.
 I mean, I don't blame Google for, uh, being a newbie with this, a noob, if you will.
 Uh, but they're going to need to, uh, they're going to need to learn.
 I mean, they're not, they shouldn't be new with this.
 I mean, they've been running consumer facing products for, you know, who can call Google
 as advertisers because they spend the money.
 Um, and at the end of the day, nobody's spending them.
 Even with an XS7, Google gets no money from that purchase.
 Um, and I think until that starts happening, um, you're, we're all screwed.
 I mean, that's just the end of it.
 And you know, Google gets away with Android because theoretically you're supposed to call
 your carrier, not Samsung or HTC or anybody.
 Um, right.
 So your carrier can just lie to you.
 Yeah.
 God.
 Uh, okay.
 Uh, at Jellybean Android 4.1, it rolled out to the Galaxy Nexus, whatever.
 They started putting, they put the, um, Verizon Galaxy Nexus back in the open source project.
 That's, you know, whatever.
 Like it's rolling out to devices.
 That's great.
 I don't care.
 Uh, Android 4.1 has been hacked on the HTC HD2 and that's awesome.
 You know, it's funny cause when we were talking about the story, when he first heard about
 it, I laughed and I said, it's funny cause the HTC, HTC has better, better update support
 than most Android phones that get sold today.
 And then we all laughed for a while and then Chris was like, but it's true.
 Yeah.
 And then we realized that we like had to let people know.
 I feel really.
 I'm so in one of these and I'm really unhappy because I could have literally run every single
 mobile operating system since it was released on this phone.
 Yeah.
 I mean, it's a legendary phone for what it is.
 I remember, you know, they showed it off for the first time in the US on the Engadget show,
 um, when we were still hosting it.
 And I remember like holding it and I think I, I think it was, was it true?
 I don't remember who was on the show with us, but whoever it was, I remember asking,
 why did you work this hard for windows mobile?
 Like why?
 And they're like, we don't, I mean, it's a really nice phone there, right?
 And we're like, yeah, but why did you, why?
 And then they had no answer.
 And then like the next year, all they made was Android phones.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 But the sad thing is, is that they're, they're right back in the same.
 Oh, totally.
 You know, I mean, now they're just beholden to Google instead of Microsoft.
 Hey Chris, remember when we wrote that, that storming editorial about how HTC should buy
 Palm?
 Yes.
 It should have happened.
 Remember, remember how they just laughed at us and said that they were happy being a reseller
 of other people's operating systems.
 And you know what, it still can happen.
 I'm just saying, man, we, we had, we had the solution mapped out for them.
 We, we made probably a better business case for it than anybody at Palm at the time.
 And HTC just blew it.
 At this point they can get a far better deal for, for Palm than, than they could in what
 was it, 2009 or whatever.
 I bet Ruby was just like, look, what kind of tequila do you have?
 And HTC was like, that's not how we do business, sir.
 And Ruby was like, well, I'm going to HP because that Mark Hurd guy, you got me drunk.
 That's that's basically how it is.
 If you haven't seen the, the Onion report on HP is going to try that cloud thing.
 It's amazing.
 It's super good.
 We'll have it up on the site shortly.
 Yeah.
 I mean, so 4.1 it's rolling out, like the 4.1 rollout is weird.
 Like I've gotten the update notification like three times on my devices.
 Like I've already got 4.1 and I've got it again.
 And I think part of that's cause I have a developer device, but I know that other people
 have reported this on Twitter that like, I just got another update again and I keep on
 expecting the same part of break, but it doesn't.
 So that's good.
 Yeah.
 My next is seven has already gotten two updates and I just got it on Friday.
 So they're obviously still speaking 4.1.
 It felt like they were really chomping at the bit to get it out ASAP.
 And I think that maybe they cut a couple QA corners that they wouldn't necessarily cut
 under normal circumstances.
 I don't know what the rush was, but they wanted to get it out ASAP.
 I think that it hit our retail galaxy nexus is before most people expected it to buy a
 few days or a few weeks.
 So yeah, now they're, they had to, right?
 Cause they had to get around the injunction.
 That's why they rushed it out to get around the injunction.
 No, but the, the, the update still like on device search works on Jelly Bean.
 If you, if I type in INSTA in the search box, Instagram on the phone, the app is the first
 result.
 Do you get the, also, you know what I get, I get, there's also an emoji character of
 a middle finger and an Apple logo.
 You know, I was so excited about that.
 See, sure.
 I was like, what is wrong with you?
 It turns out that you need to enable the Japanese keyboard to get it working.
 Yeah.
 You also need to be a Japanese school girl, Chris.
 That's the other thing that you need to enable.
 Eli, find me another way to text message people, pictures of poop and we can talk.
 I can find you another way.
 I think that is actually not a difficult problem to solve.
 Emoji is the only way I know how to do it.
 I just, I, I want somebody to take the, the Eli telling Chris he needs to be a Japanese
 school girl out of context.
 Post that clip.
 I, you know, I've many, many times wished that.
 Let me say this about Jelly Bean.
 I mean, I've only used it on the Nexus 7 because did I tell you that Verizon deactivated my,
 I had a review unit, Galaxy Nexus, and they deactivated it on my wedding day, which was
 very nice of them.
 A very nice wedding present from Verizon.
 I mean, it's a review unit.
 I have to say, I should have sent it back forever ago, but it was just funny.
 Anyway, so I've only really used it on the Nexus 7 and I have to say, you know, there's
 like a level of polish and cleanup to it.
 I mean, it, it is, I will say much more beautiful to use as an operating system than anything
 else I've used, period.
 I mean, iOS included.
 I mean, iOS is great.
 I think it, it, there's two things about iOS that keep me coming back.
 One, I think the hardware is better all around and all those devices.
 And I can't get the combination of high end Android hardware with a beautiful screen and
 Jelly Bean right now because I'm stuck with the Galaxy Nexus.
 I don't like that screen.
 And second, pocket planes.
 And if I could somehow get those two things on Android, I would be very tempted to switch
 over because Jelly Bean is, is tremendously beautiful and I highly recommend it to all
 of you.
 Jelly Bean is, is great, but I don't think, I mean, this was basically all of last week's
 podcast, but I really don't think that the Delta between ICS and Jelly Bean is large
 enough to justify buying a Galaxy Nexus just because you want Jelly Bean.
 I know, I know, I know, I know this is your, that's your drunk belief, but it is.
 That's probably true.
 Like, I mean, we, we, we don't need to get deep into this, but I will say that the difference
 between 4.0 and 4.1 is not as obvious and clear as it could be.
 You know, it's faster is the main thing that's going to happen for other Android manufacturers.
 But I am pretty sure that Samsung and HTC and Motorola and everybody else and LG are
 going to say, well, 4.0 is good enough for now.
 We don't need to worry about pushing 4.1 out quickly.
 And we're going to just, you know, we never, we're never going to see 4.1 hit a bunch of
 phones that otherwise would have.
 Yeah.
 No, I mean, without question.
 Well, I mean, I don't know how it works, but in my mind it's they, all the engineers at
 Samsung worked really hard to get ICS on like 15 different variants of the S2.
 And now they're like literally on vacation and they're not going to work again until
 like six months from now.
 And then it's like another year to do whatever.
 I think it's, it's literally a mathematical equation for most of these companies.
 They need to calculate how much of a boost they're going to get by being able to say
 that they're running the latest version of Android versus where the product is in its
 lifecycle.
 Right.
 Because if it's, if it's cooling off, if it's about to be replaced, if it's about to be
 pulled off shelves by the carrier because it's aging, there's, there's no monetary benefit
 to rush an update out or to get it out at all.
 Whereas if a product is early in its life cycle and they can get it out in a reasonable
 amount of time, maybe that'll, it will light a fire under their ass.
 I don't know.
 Depends on the product.
 Maybe, you know, I, do you want me to start ranting about carriers again?
 Cause I can segue right into that.
 Uh, you know, let me just do it.
 Give me, give me 30 seconds, Peter.
 I promise.
 Look, I firmly believe that if a Samsung could sell an unlocked S3 with stock Android on
 it and have consumers like us buy it and put it on carriers without having to worry about
 approvals and all the other BS, they would do it because Samsung makes so many different
 products that it, it doesn't hurt them to make a stock Android variant of the S3.
 It doesn't hurt them at all.
 Uh, and I, I know they could just do it very quickly and very easily, but because they
 have to go through carriers, we will never see that phone, which is kind of the phone
 that I want.
 Uh, or actually what I want is the HTC One X with stock Android, but whatever.
 It doesn't matter.
 We're never going to see these phones, uh, because we are under the grip of a terrible
 carrier regime.
 The end, Deeter, was that 30 seconds?
 I think I made it.
 That's, I think that was, that was really good.
 Um, I let's, let's move on.
 There's just a couple more things I want to talk about.
 I mean, Sprint has lit up LTE in a bunch of like random cities like Dallas or Kansas city
 or something.
 It's just like two states, right?
 Two states.
 Yeah.
 It's LTE in giant air quotes though.
 Cause it's, it's mega slow.
 Is it?
 Right.
 How slow is it?
 It's not, I mean, let's put it this way.
 You're not, you're not seeing 45 megabits down on sprint LTE like you are occasionally
 on AT&T.
 Wow.
 And it just comes down to, I think we all knew that this is going to happen because
 of the very bizarre Rube Goldberg, uh, machine like implementation that, uh, that sprint
 needs to go through in order to roll this out.
 Right.
 It's, it's, it's crazy what they're having to go through.
 This is right now.
 They're only on 1900 I think.
 Is that right?
 I think that's right.
 Yeah, they're not using 2.5 at all yet and they haven't repurposed the ident spectrum
 yet.
 So they're, they're, um, ramping up LTE and 1900 and ramping down CDMA, um, and, and moving
 that, uh, moving that elsewhere.
 And then they lost the light squared, uh, deal obviously.
 So, um, yeah, I mean like my hats off to the, the, the tech guys inside sprint for planning
 this out and actually getting it rolled out.
 Um, there are many ways that it could have gone wrong.
 But I don't think that using the spectrum that they have available right now for this
 deployment, they could have really made it much faster.
 You might say it's in beta beta.
 Finally.
 I've been waiting, man.
 I've been ranting about policy this whole time.
 I apologize for being so late.
 Uh, uh, frequent listeners of the show will recognize that as a Vlad Sevov classic.
 Yeah, that's, that's amazing.
 Thank you for that.
 I do what I can.
 Oh, well, okay.
 And actually as long as we're, um, like T-Mobile still doesn't have any plan for LTE, like
 they're like cruising for death.
 Now they have some stupid plan, right?
 Yeah.
 They have a plan.
 It's just that it's going to be, yeah.
 Well, it's, I think that they're doing what they can with what they have.
 And actually we should talk about T-Mobile and Verizon and Spectrum co, which is one
 of our longest running story streams on the site right now.
 I think I was trying to get the podcast to not be three hours long, but okay.
 Go for it.
 We can, we can burn through this really fast.
 I just think it's hilarious and we need to point out that T-Mobile's tone changed real
 fast when, when Verizon said, I'm telling you what, if, if, uh, if we get the Spectrum
 co deal, we'll let you buy a slice of this AWS spectrum.
 We're planning on getting out of it.
 All of a sudden T-Mobile is like, Oh, this is, this is great.
 The government should, uh, should approve this ASAP.
 Uh, and, and it sounds like that's, he's basically behind it at this point.
 The problem they're having is that this entire deal is tied up with these co marketing deals
 that affect Fios and Comcast cable and time Warner.
 Um, and that's a DOJ issue, not an FCC one.
 And so as long as those deals are, are, are, uh, joined at the hip, they need both FCC
 and DOJ approval and DOJ isn't expecting rule until next month.
 And we don't know how that's going to go down yet, but it sounds like they still have some
 pretty big concerns, but it was just hilarious to me that T-Mobile, uh, sort of, uh, reneged
 on its entire belief system.
 The instant Verizon said, Oh, we'll give you some of this AWS spectrum, you know, and in
 here they are sitting in the RCA.
 It's just, I mean, it just goes to show you that even the most seemingly principled companies
 in the industry have no principles.
 They're still in it for, for, for what's, uh, what's best for the here and now for them.
 And, uh, and that can change on a dime sprint, for instance, which, uh, was the, I think
 the single most vocal, uh, opponent to the T-Mobile AT&T merger, which I think we can
 all agree would have been to the detriment of the industry if it had gone through is
 with Verizon and AT&T on the topic of net neutrality.
 And you can go and read their opinions on, I mean, like they are, they're, they're vocal
 proponents of, uh, of not allowing the FCC to rule on net neutrality on wireless networks.
 Yeah.
 I was spreading my rant.
 I'm done now.
 I mean, we've really taken it to carriers on this.
 This is, this is what happens just cause I, yeah, well, what else are you going to do?
 I mean, they deserve it.
 Yeah.
 I like it.
 I like this person in the chat by the way, just asked where did Sprint's name come from?
 Sprinting, which is good.
 I like sprint is an acronym.
 Um, no, no, no.
 It uh, it comes from, um, the, uh, the name of a railway.
 It, uh, sprint used to be owned by a railway on the West coast.
 Um, survive network telecommunications.
 This is a backronym guaranteed.
 Okay.
 So I was wrong.
 Um, but they, they were owned by a railway theater to find a better.
 But they were owned by Santa Fe or something.
 Wow.
 Anyway.
 Wow.
 Poor sprint.
 When SPC was only Wikipedia, man.
 I mean, Chris, you should be really proud of me that I'm depending on Wikipedia here.
 When MCI released Execunet SPC took the SCC to court to offer the right for the right
 to get a offer, switch services and succeeded.
 They needed a new name to differentiate the switched voice service from speed facts and
 they ran an internal contest to select one.
 The winning entry was an acronym for switch private network telecommunications citation
 loaded.
 In other words, the person who thinks they should have been credited for naming sprint
 is pissed and on Wikipedia.
 Yeah, that's, that's pretty awesome.
 Um, we, we can't end without talking about, well, Chris, do you want to talk about, uh,
 the Huawei stuff?
 Oh God.
 Uh, yeah.
 So, uh, Huawei, which is making a pretty big push into the US market right now, uh, decided
 that for phone you shouldn't buy, right?
 Uh, actually, so they came out with, I have to admit, it's a pretty clever video, uh,
 where they're going around Times Square asking people how, how they pronounce Huawei, um,
 because nobody knows how to pronounce it and rightfully so, cause it's a really weird word.
 Uh, and actually I take issue with the fact that they're continuing to use that word as
 they push into the US market.
 Cause I think it's going to end up being a pretty big barrier to entry for them.
 But that's another story for another time.
 They, they came out to taste of Chicago, which is pretty big festival, uh, annual festival
 in Chicago and set up this booth, this product booth where they're showing all their latest
 products.
 And actually they debuted three phones here last week.
 So I think is the first time in my entire history in this business that a phone company
 has shown new phones for the first time in Chicago is a very special moment for me.
 Just a shame is these phones.
 Yeah, they, they showed the my touch and the my touch Q, which are actually replacements
 for older models of the same name from LG.
 Uh, and of course they're for T-Mobile, which owns the my touch name.
 Uh, I'm really upset with where T-Mobile has taken the my touch brand because initially
 it was kind of a high end, uh, brand name for them, right?
 They had the my touch 4g, which, uh, which was an HTC device, pretty, pretty high end
 model at the time.
 Um, and they've sort of devolved since then, uh, since then into being this very entry
 level product that isn't priced appropriately.
 And I suspect that T-Mobile is still kind of trying to figure out how to price these
 products.
 The my touch and my touch Q are $49 on contract.
 Take your pick.
 One is a slab and the other looks exactly the same except it's thicker and has a slight
 out landscape QWERTY keyboard, but the displays are just terrible.
 Um, the skins are thick.
 Um, um, uh, they're, they're single speaker grills apparently, which is completely aggravating
 like that.
 That's the thing.
 Like my touch is, you know, reason for existing is they replaced the search button with like
 a custom T-Mobile search thing, which is the worst thing ever.
 It's so bad.
 Uh, but the other thing that is on has been on every my touch device is just this ridiculously
 ugly swoop on the earpiece and it's still there.
 Yep.
 Yeah.
 Um, still there.
 You know, let's not give T-Mobile too much credit for the my touch situation.
 Uh, cause you know, the whole, it exists because people call the iPod touch the eye touch and
 T-Mobile is like, we'll trick those idiots into buying crappy phones.
 Uh, and then that just sort of spiraled its way into HTC has a phone.
 They can rebrand as the my touch for G but like there was a line at crappy my touch phones
 before that there is now a line of crappy my touch phones after that.
 And low, there will ever be a line of crappy my touch phones that veer on trademark infringement
 and Oh, how the displays were terrible and Oh, how the skins were thick.
 It's a beer.
 Beer actually would have made a good my touch.
 But no, I mean like I think that Huawei is on the right trajectory, uh, to make an impact
 in the us market.
 Um, I just think they have a long, long way to go.
 Uh, they'll get there probably.
 Yeah.
 And as long as they're, they're always dogged by the implication that they're enabling the
 Chinese government to spy on our communications, they'll do really well in this market.
 I mean, which is true.
 I'm not just making that up by the way.
 Like they're not allowed to sell like routers to the government because there's the implication
 that the Chinese government has backdoors in all their year, which is probably true.
 All right.
 We have, we have, we're not going to go over an hour and a half.
 We have six minutes.
 We have two topics left and I, we have to talk about both of them.
 Uh, so first one, the Lumia 900 has been cut in half.
 It's now 50 bucks on contract on AT&T, which is not, is that the, the sat, the quickest
 price drop price drop for a flagship device ever?
 No.
 Not for a while, but it's still like the best phone that you can get running windows phone.
 Like it's, you know, it costs less than the, uh, atrix HD.
 It's a failure.
 The end.
 Go ahead.
 I guess that that was actually the impetus for the price cut at this time.
 It was the atrix HD because customers would go in and cross shop these two devices and
 say, this makes no sense.
 The atrix HD is way awesomer.
 Like you know, the specs are just.
 I mean the specs are better, but the Lumia is prettier still.
 Yeah, no it is.
 It's a very visually striking device, particularly when the store has the cyan one on display,
 which they don't always.
 One of the, the main AT&T stores in downtown Chicago still has their stupid black Lumia
 on display.
 And I'm like, guys, you're not going to draw any attention to this device.
 Well, it looks exactly the same as every other black slab in the store.
 You need to put the cyan one out.
 No, but the screen is full of colored boxes.
 It's a fail.
 You know, they blew it.
 They wasted all this hype on a device that clearly wasn't ready for the US market.
 And I think Nokia should have known better.
 I mean, they should have known that Windows Phone 7 was a stopgap for Microsoft until
 they recalibrated the entire operating system to Windows Phone 8.
 I don't know why they didn't know that.
 I don't know why they felt.
 No, they knew that.
 They still thought that they needed to sell phones now.
 That's what the Lumia 900 is.
 We need to start selling phones now.
 We need to start selling phones in the US market now.
 No, I agree.
 I mean, they definitely knew that.
 I don't know why they didn't know it in their hearts that this was a stupid idea, because
 not only were they going to put out a phone with an operating system that wasn't competitive
 at every level, not competitive in terms of hardware support, so they're limited in what
 they could sell, not competitive in terms of app selection, and just not competitive
 in terms of fit and finish, when the good one is around the corner, or presumably the
 good one, and they could have put out very competitive devices using an operating system
 that is very much the foundation of, or at least shares a foundation with Microsoft's
 future.
 And it's like, Nokia, what are you thinking?
 You need to rush to get a device into the US market?
 Has that ever worked for you?
 Ever?
 Like for the past 10 years, has putting devices in the US market been a really successful
 strategy for Nokia?
 Like, why?
 Why now?
 What is this half-baked idea?
 Well, the funniest thing about it is that they paired it to the smartphone beta test
 is over ad campaign, which is like a double whammy.
 Because it really wasn't over.
 Yeah.
 So, oh man.
 No, it has only just begun.
 Man.
 Yeah.
 Okay.
 I have nothing else to say about the 900.
 I have to bring up.
 A leaked image has appeared, I believe on Android police of the LG Optimus view with
 a Verizon logo.
 Wow.
 And it makes me so happy.
 This ridiculous four by three, five inch monstrosity is coming to Verizon.
 With a capacitive stylus.
 I just.
 Not a deductive stylus.
 Does Verizon have a Galaxy Note?
 No.
 No.
 Maybe.
 Well, I think I need that.
 T-Mobile is getting it there, right?
 T-Mobile is getting it.
 Yeah.
 That came out this week.
 They announced it on Twitter.
 Like their Twitter support announced it.
 And then they finally put out a press release.
 But still no price or specific release date on T-Mobile's version of the Galaxy Note.
 Which is insane.
 By the way, I don't know why I'm bringing this up.
 But I'm going to bring it up.
 I was watching an old program that I had Tivoed the other day.
 And you remember when the Galaxy Note first came out in the US, they had that commercial
 with like that sort of like calming music playing in the background.
 It was just a hand and, you know, playing with different apps on the phone.
 You guys remember that?
 Yeah.
 I think you dreamed that.
 No, this is a very real commercial.
 And it ran for a long time.
 And it's very Apple-esque.
 But the what I noticed about it, there are two things very disturbing that I noticed
 about it.
 One is that the phone is being held in a hand at an angle.
 And the phone stays perfectly dead still the entire time while the person is using it.
 Which doesn't make any sense.
 Because it's impossible to keep the phone that still in your hand.
 Two, it's like a little girl holding it.
 And her thumb is on the left side of the note.
 And her fingers are curling around the right side of the note.
 And so the shape of her hand, she would have to have a mutant hand.
 I've heard her to hold the device like this.
 So she's holding the phone perfectly still.
 And her hand is like a foot long.
 It's very disturbing.
 You know, Apple went through a really weird phase where when they were doing FaceTime
 commercials, they needed to have the phones held still.
 So they were using rubber hands in a lot of their photos, especially in the videos are
 using rubber hands.
 And it was like, once you began to notice that there were rubber hands, and they were
 perfectly still, you could never unsee the rubber FaceTime.
 I'm using rubber hands as mounts for my phones.
 Like a desk stand that's a rubber hand.
 Oh, it's awful.
 It was the worst.
 This LG view, like, I can't believe that Verizon is taking it.
 Like you would need a prosthetic hand just to hold it and like a handle in order to like
 use this thing.
 It is the most ridiculous phone.
 It was the most ridiculous phone of our world Congress by far.
 It was just there just so that they could, I don't know, you know, say that, well, we've
 got a big old phone too, Samsung.
 Like what, what could possibly have gotten into what's going on there?
 Like I don't know.
 We want the HTC One X?
 Nah, we'd rather have the Droid Incredible.
 Do we want the Galaxy S2?
 Nah, no, but you know what?
 This LG view, that's for us.
 That's what we want.
 Yeah.
 So I imagine these planning sessions where carriers decide what phones they're going
 to carry for the next quarter as being a little bit like Congress where, you know, like sometimes
 you'll turn on C-Span at a really weird hour and it's broadcasting live from the floor
 of the house and like 95% of the members are missing because it's like, you know, it's
 11 PM or something, but there are three people there like talking and voting on God knows
 what.
 I, I, I imagine Verizon's boardroom a little bit like that where like everyone's gone home
 for the day.
 They're like two dudes left and LG shows up and they're like, Hey, you guys want to carry
 this?
 And they're like, well, we have a quorum.
 Sure.
 Let's carry it.
 That's, that's what's going on in my mind's eye.
 I don't think that's actually what happened.
 No, that's definitely what happens.
 That's exactly what happens.
 No, they just, they, they, they, they, they just started drinking at like seven o'clock
 cause they've been sitting looking at, you know, carriers walk through the boardroom
 all day or I'm sorry, phone manufacturers walk through the boardroom all day.
 And so at the end of the day they've, they've had a couple of drinks and LG was last and
 they're like, ah, sure.
 Let's just do it.
 Yeah.
 Get out of here.
 Yeah.
 Let's do it.
 Yeah.
 It's you know, I played with the view very briefly at MWC when it was introduced and
 I just couldn't, it was like you couldn't hold it.
 Yeah, my, my impression of it was that they, they caught wind of the note of the galaxy
 note and, and they were just like, let's copy this as quickly as possible without any regards
 for the nuances that make the note what it is.
 So, so they made it the wrong aspect ratio without really thinking about it.
 And they, they just put a stylus on it because they, they, they didn't consider the fact
 that there are things that make the notes stylus very unique.
 Um, and then they produced this, this complete piece of, uh, of garbage.
 I can't call it a piece of garbage cause I haven't used it.
 Well, you know, it's funny is that LG has been, I think the last LG phone that David
 reviewed, he actually liked a little bit.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 And it's like they've, they've, you know what it is.
 It's like, um, it's like students in an art museum.
 Allow me to lead you on this journey.
 Uh, if you've ever been to an art museum, I have and you go in there and there's a lot
 of kids in the ground staring at the paintings, desperately trying to copy them.
 And I imagine that those copies suck, but like half of them will like go on to learn
 something and start developing their own art and their early period might be rough.
 It might still carry a lot of influences.
 Uh, and you might be able to see the lines that they copied from in their own strain,
 but eventually they enter a mature period where they become, they blossom into artists
 of their own.
 And at each step of the way you weed out the people who can't do it.
 And LG sort of in that middle phase, right?
 Where it's like, they've stopped just directly copying Apple, which was in its own way, just
 directly copying or stopped directly copying Samsung, which was directly copying Apple.
 So they've stopped being this like second rate iPhone clone.
 Uh, they've gotten through the being.
 Now we just are doing whatever Samsung does.
 And now they're like in their regular phones are starting to like have an identity that
 might be good.
 And then there's the view and it's like, you gotta let that go.
 You have to let you just be yourself.
 LG be better than, be better than Samsung's bad ideas.
 Uh, but maybe, maybe that's not possible.
 Maybe this is a dream.
 Maybe I just spent too much time in college drinking in art museums.
 And I would like to point out that LG has now made both the four by three view and also
 the 21 by nine, whatever it was a couple of years ago.
 No, that was LG.
 I'm not talking about the Android phone.
 You're talking about the BL 90, the Intel thing.
 Oh, no, no, no, no.
 Or the blue 90.
 Cause I called it the chocolate.
 It was the chocolate two or the chocolate three or the chocolate for whatever is that
 really long.
 Someone in, in, in chat is going to know what I'm talking about.
 Uh, God, what was the model number of that thing?
 Vlad reviewed it.
 The BL 40.
 Oh, I'm sorry.
 The BL 40.
 Yeah.
 The BL 40.
 Yes.
 Oh my God.
 That's right.
 I remember this now.
 This thing is a,
 Wow.
 Longest phone ever.
 The BL 40 is actually long enough to hold the view.
 Ironically.
 Can we, can we end this thing?
 I can't.
 Let's be done.
 We, we need to get out of here before we start talking about Blackberry and it gets
 depressing.
 So this has been the verge mobile show.
 If you want to follow us on Twitter, you really should.
 We're all at verge.
 I'm at back lawn.
 Chris is at Z power.
 Neely is at reckless and we'll be back next week, possibly with Vlad Savov, which will
 be super exciting.
 So thanks.
 Thanks guys.
 Be data.