The Google Nexus Initiative: A Shift in Strategy and Priorities

It's been two years since Google made headlines with its announcement that it would no longer support Android devices manufactured by certain OEMs, including Acer. The move was seen as a way for Google to regain control over the Android platform and ensure that only devices conforming to its standards received official Nexus branding and support. However, this decision has sparked controversy among device enthusiasts and some critics argue that Google's actions are overly restrictive and target specific manufacturers.

Google's Motivations Behind the Decision

In retrospect, it's unlikely that Google would have taken such drastic measures two years ago. The company was less concerned about the Android ecosystem at that time, and its priorities were different. However, with Amazon's success in forking Android on the Kindle Fire, Google has become more anxious to maintain control over the platform. This shift in mindset is evident in their recent actions, as they strive to keep the spirit of Android alive while adapting to the changing landscape.

A Concern About Consistency

The decision to exclude Acer from the Nexus program raises questions about consistency across different manufacturers. While Samsung might have received similar treatment if it had launched an OS claiming Android compatibility, Google's actions seem unfair and targeted towards specific companies. Proper communication between OEMs and Google is crucial in such situations, but it appears that there was a breakdown in this process.

The Amazon Factor: A Catalyst for Change

Amazon's strategy with the Kindle Fire has been successful, and it's clear that Google recognizes the impact of Android on mobile devices. The company may finally be drawing a line around what constitutes true Android compatibility, leaving room for expansion if necessary. If Google expands its definition of Nexus phones, it will provide more flexibility for device enthusiasts while maintaining control over the platform.

Nexus Phones: A Desirable Option?

While many would like to have a selection of Nexus phones to choose from, the current state of affairs is less than ideal. The flagship Android Nexus phone is often released on subpar hardware with mediocre displays and cameras. It's time for Google to deliver a high-quality Nexus device that truly represents the spirit of Android.

Tired of Limited Options

One major issue device enthusiasts face is the lack of stock Android options on AT&T with LTE. To get genuine Android experience, users must resort to hacking or wait for manufacturers to release their own versions of Android. This situation has been ongoing for years, and it's time for Google to change its approach.

The Verge Mobile Show: Next Week

That's all for today's episode of the Virge Mobile Show. We'll be back next week with more news, discussions, and analysis on the latest mobile trends. Don't miss out on our conversations with experts and insights into what's shaping the future of smartphones and tablets. Follow us on Twitter to stay updated and share your thoughts on the topics discussed in this episode.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso The Verge mobile show is kind of like an iPhone launch you wait for it you wait for it you're so excited and then it finally comes and it's pretty much what you expected but you know maybe that's not so bad because it's also everything that you hoped for stay tuned for the vge mobile show I am deer bone I'm Dan Seer I'm Chris Ziggler and this is episode 17 for the week of September 17th 2012 of The Verge mobile show it's our golden virge mobile show golden yeah what makes it golden isn't that isn't that like your golden birthday is like when the birthday falls on the day of your age I thought golden would be like the 50th show or something I think I 30th 50th is diamond platinum I'm looking it up now hold on wait everybody hang on yeah no 50 is is golden 50 is golden okay there's a pony wait this is our this is our Crystal no our 15th show was our Crystal show and our 20th show will be our China show nice yeah 25th will be our Silver Show anyway so if you notice Vlad savov is not with us today unfortunately yeah he is at photokina uh taking amazing pictures of cameras that also take amazing pictures yes very meta at photokina very very jealous to be honest with you I am they've actually done a really excellent if you haven't seen the coverage there's a there's a stream explaining all the stuff that's happened at photokina and uh you know I'm not a camera nerd but they've done a really good job of making all this camera news accessible and understand understandable so like I can actually read through the stream read our stories and not feel like I'm an idiot which is what most camera coverage makes me feel like like when I go to DP Review it just makes me dumb can I just say that I am in the process of eing both my kidneys and selling a large amount of cocaine for a Leica m i I will I will do a wide variety of legal things uh for a Le a m i i uh I had the opportunity to use an M9 for a couple weeks a couple years ago and and was just like it's it's a really hard thing to explain in specs because it is not it doesn't compare very favorably to anything uh but it's there's something about the experience of using a Leica that is just extremely uh appealing and it is it is hard to describe you just got to use it and then you understand why people pay upwards of 10 or 15,000 for leab bodies and lenses indeed I'm that has nothing to do with phones though so so uh here's the thing uh there was a big iPhone event last week and um it's dominated the mobile news and we're going to talk about the iPhone for I think it's fair to say a very long time we have a lot of thoughts and feelings and things to say about the iPhone there's a lot of details to dig into and just a lot of stuff to say and so um if you're here looking for us to talk about the fact that there's an orange version of the Lumia 820 but not of the 920 and how angry that makes me um that rant is going to have to wait until next week is is that a direct shot at me deer because that felt like like you were aiming that at me no I'm they're making an orange version of the 820 but not of the 920 and it drives me crazy I guess we should also mention that like Nokia showed we got to get into the iPhone stuff anyway that Nokia showed like a literally like a quarter of a second blip of a cyan Lumia 920 it was one frame promo video it was one frame yeah like so I have a theory about this I have a theory about I I I I'm sorry to to derail the conversation already but actually it's not my theory this was going around on Twitter apparently a previous version of the video that had been uploaded by Nokia showed more of that cyan phone and so I think what happened was they they realized their mistake and attempted to trim it out and miss that one frame how you miss frame middle of a shot that's ridiculous I don't know I don't know who knows what sort of weird editing tools they're using but uh I think that's what happened I love that we're like we're not going to talk about anything but the iPhone and we immediately start talking about the Lumia I would I would personally be game I would be totally fine with a 90minut show about Nokia phone colors I could I could do that every week at nause uh but anyway the real question what color phone would Paul Walk use if he had a Lumia phone oh that that is a that is a supernova of all my favorite things that you're I literally about to pass out just thinking about this this topic let's talk I please let's let's get let's first things last did you guys pre-order I did I did not what really this this blew my mind when Chris told me that he did not this is what happens I was I was telling Dan this uh I think last week what I do and this happens every single year and has since the first well since the second Ione the iPhone uh 3G what happens to me is I swear up and down that I'm not going to get an iPhone I don't pre-order and then uh the morning of the event comes and I wake up like at 4 a. and I'm like ah Shucks I'm gonna go get in line and then I go get in line and I buy one happen with the 4S happened with the four it's going to happen again with the 5S uh so we'll see what happens on Friday but there's a very real chance that I will be standing in line at 4 in the morning well are you so with the 4S um I rolled in 4S and the uh the iPad 3 sorry the new iPad I rolled into uh an AT&T store for the 4S and a um Verizon store for the iPad at like 11 o'clock in the morning just like waltzed in zero line bought the phone and the iPad and waltzed out no problem wow I kind of think that that's going to happen this time around I don't think that there'll be no at the carrier stores I think it's a bigger I mean we know it's you know they they've pre-sold twice as many as the uh the story they broke all of their sales records well yeah and this time around you've got all the people with the iPhone 4 coming off contract or have been off contract waiting for the five uh where you didn't have quite as many for the 4S so I have a feeling there's going to be some selling out and some lines oh yeah yeah yeah no I pre-ordered uh 32 gig black on AT&T uh I think the black one Style hey man I think that the the fact that they they painted or they they brushed over they they darkened the the metal rail around it I think it looks awesome yeah I'm actually super excited for this Hardware which I didn't think I would be um but I really am I think it looks great I think um we'll see how I feel about the the larger screen you know I've been using a 1x or a Galaxy S3 for and Galaxy Nexus and all these other big screen phones for so long that I think it's going to actually feel a little bit cramped um but you know I think having a super thin phone and a reliable LTE phone uh I'm actually pretty excited about that I'm pretty excited about uh being able to tether off of this thing because being tethering off of Android works for the most part but USB tethering especially um seems to be hit or miss especially after Android 4.0 they Chang their driver model a little bit and so uh it's often the case that like I'll plug in an Android phone and it won't show up as a USB modem on my Mac and it's big hassle and the iPhone 5 I'm excited to go back to like totally reliable USB tethering yeah I I feel pretty strongly going back to the your color selection deer and Dan um I feel pretty strongly that with this generation white and black get flip-flopped and black is like the Chic color and white is the uh White is like the standard like normal color do you guys agree I totally agree like the last generation I was all about uh the white model I think the the white model looks great it's the one I owned and Etc but um and I usually go for the white phone but this time around just that you know I hate to use this the murdered out phrase but uh that that black really just kind of like grabbed me and that that matte finish and uh I don't know I went black yeah yep well let's uh let's stick with like talking about hardware specs here of course we know about the larger display um we know about LTE and LTE bands like this is actually interesting so um with the 4S they had basically a single model with single Radio setup for CDMA and GSM and it was basically the same thing worldwide with this one there's how many different there's because the Verizon and the AT&T are different and the the Sprint one also I don't know how that ties in I believe there are three models in total so there's three there's three SKS but I'm I'm of the feeling and I know a lot of other people in the industry are as well that there's really only two models and uh you the the extra skill is just kind of like um with certain things disabled and certain things enabled on the same Hardware as the other models so you've got your your AT&T LZ model which is the a1428 uh I believe and so that supports your standard HSPA Plus on all of AT&T's bands standard GSM of course and then um it supports AT&T's LTE bands and that model will be sold in Canada it works on the Canadian LTE carriers and then after that you've got the a114 29 CDMA version which is going to be offered by Verizon and Sprint and that has compatible LTE bands for both Verizon and Sprint as well as your necessary CDMA cover um band support and it also has uh HSPA plus support on the same bands as the AT&T model so you can use it uh globally uh just like you could with the 4S and then the third model is the a1429 GSM model which has all the same things things except it doesn't have the all of the same things as the Verizon and Sprint model but it doesn't have the CDMA support which I feel is just it's just turned off um because the LTE band support is pretty much the same and the other things are are pretty much the same so you've got three to choose from um the G the gsma a1429 is the uh unlocked model I guess you could say that that's probably going to be offered in um various parts of Europe Etc uh and and of of course the the other Global markets that support LTE yeah this is the first time in a really long time that I was tempted to switch to Verizon just for the global roaming but I realized like I don't actually globally roam all that often so I decided to take a risk on staying with at so here's the thing you'll still be able to globally roam with the AT&T model you just won't be able to do it on LTE so if you had gone with the Verizon model you could roam LTE on the um when when um e launches its LTE Network you'll be able to roam on there and you can roam on the I think it's T-Mobile's running uh the LT Network in Germany um but you won't be able to do that with the LT model or with the AT&T model but you will be able to roam on HSPA plus with the AT&T model so I I'm sure that it killed Apple to have to roll multiple physical Hardware devices for this launch because they you know they went from two iPhone 4S down to one for the 4S and I think that was a very Purp purposeful move for them and the the LTE that you know the completely disjoint horrible mess of a of an of a global LTE brand uh uh band structure has destroyed any hope in the near term of of launching a global device with a single uh set of SKS so um until RF Engineers do some amazing things that they obviously haven't done yet yeah it it's it's it's kind of crazy like uh just I think this uh we we saw it with the iPad uh the new iPad how there was separate models for AT&T and Verizon LTE but I think it just uh uh the iPhone 5 really just speaks to the mess of the LTE bands that are Global and are worldwide and and how in not interoperable they are right uh running down some of the other specs the camera like what's different that still an 8 megapixel camera I guess they've got a a sapphire thing uh so it's less likely to get scratched but they they didn't really talk up other than the panorama mode um they didn't really talk up the camera a whole lot and that panor panorama mode thing like I hope it's way better than what the third party apps are that are out there because if it's basically the same thing that you could have done before like don't get me wrong the the camera on the iPhone 4S is best of class I I think it only up it only wasn't until the 1X and the Galaxy S3 that any other phone even came close um so it's not like they needed to Sprint ahead there um but it's not like you know if you you're not going to want to upgrade to the five just for the camera right yeah I I think that I think that uh all of these guys Apple included are running up against some physical limits about or over what they can do with cameras with the optic you know the the size of the Optics that they're that they're using and that's something that you know you're seeing devices like the 808 overcome by just including massive Optics which isn't really uh is an Apple's bag and I don't think that you're GNA see them do that in the future right yeah I mean it at this point until the same thing with LTE until Engineers uh create this you know crazy breakthrough that you know uh defies the laws of physics as we know them right now uh there is kind of like this this diminishing returns we get with these uh with the phone cameras um now as far as the differences between the 4S and the five camera uh that sapphire crystal makes it a little bit smaller um so that that leads to the thinner design which I think we're going to speak to in a minute um but it's also the camera's a bit faster and I think that's leaning on the new processor so the shot to shot time is faster um the focusing all that fun stuff should be faster uh and I hope that the panoramic thing is is I I expect it to be pretty simple and pretty easy um but yeah like you said derer I hope it's better than the third party apps yeah okay so you brought the thinness I mean we I mean it's thinner right it's 7.6 millim Apple kept saying it's the thinnest smartphone on the planet which is not true right isn't there like an AOS phone in Japan that's this thin yeah there's been some like sharp models that are like under 7 mm Y and there's that Oppo and then depending on how you measure it of course the Droid Razor is 7.1 but it has the hump at the top right right so it doesn't count I'm just saying that flat out doesn't uh I don't know I'm I'm excited to for it to be thinner um it's it's weird I never thought of the iPhone 4 and the 4S as being like a chunk um I guess the other thing go ahead I I am not excited for it to be thinner I'm going to let you finish but let me just say that what they should have done is kept it the same they should have pulled the Razer Max trick they should have kept it the exone ma no I don't want an iPhone Max I want there to be one model and I want them to say it's the same thickness as the 4S we didn't have to make it any thick and but oh by the way you now have two freaking days of battery life that's more impressive than saying it's 7.6 millim or whatever yeah I'm really curious to see what the battery life is going to be because they when they were talking about battery life specs they they basically I think they only pointed out standby time but everything else was basically the same um and I mean I have problems with uh battery life on uh the LTE phones I've been using so far like it's it's a real struggle to get a full day and if um you know with this new form factor and the new dock connector which we got to get to if if I can't get a full day out of this thing it's going to really suck to be constantly looking for a charger for the iPhone right also I would love to see apple release something called with with two x's in it the iPhone Max like that would be lifechanging would be lifechanging but I mean seriously like you know that's a tradeoff that I'm I'm definitely willing to make and I'm really fearful that all OEM Apple included are still uh playing this this uh this pissing contest where they're trying to make the phones thinner and thinner and thinner with blatant disregard for the fact that a phone that can make it from say 7 in the morning until 5: or 600 p.m. is not full day battery life and it is not acceptable I would say that at least once a week possibly twice on any phone that I use really right I'm on the Galaxy Nexus but any phone uh I'm in a situation where I'm out and my phone dies and there's nothing I can do about it right yeah I I totally agree with you Chris I think I think when the iPhone 4 design came out a couple of years ago it was kind of like mindblowing thin at the time um and and you know I don't I've never in the two years since then or almost two and a half years since then I've never felt like that design was thick or cumbersome or unwieldy or anything like that so if they could have at kept that same millimeter and added however much battery capacity that would afford um yeah that would have been pretty great now the other side of this okay so if they had added that battery capacity it would have added a ton of weight right I mean this thing weighs what what is it uh so so it's lighter yeah so it's significantly lighter I think the iPhone 4S was like 141 gram so if they had just kept it the same weight I I I would have been thrilled I never I mean the the um iPhone 4S doesn't feel like a heavy phone it's not like 200 g so uh I would have much rather had the ex extended battery life and then I won't be using a silly like external battery case that I end up doing uh from time to time with my 4S because the battery doesn't get me through the day yeah uh I do want to give appple credit for bringing back the aluminum back uh I think that looks awesome and um I'm not sad to see the glass back go um I was never happy when they switch to plastic um and then you know moving to Glass was a nice fix um but I feel like you know their original Vision with the original iPhone was aluminum now they've finally gotten back to that I'm pretty pretty excited about that I hope it feels good like that's one of my problems with the uh the HCC 1s like it's got that that sweet um microarc oxidized aluminum thing but I don't like the way it feels because it feels like a chalkboard so I just hope this feels like just straight up good aluminum well there there is one problem with the aluminum on the original iPhone uh and and maybe they've kind of gotten around it with this one we don't know yet but with the original iPhone you still see it occasionally today if you know every once in a while you see someone that's using an original iphone for God only knows what reason uh but they they're um they're scratched to hell and they're dented they're physically dented which is a Phenom a phenomenon That's Unique in the phone world because 99% of phones are plastic which doesn't Dent right yeah I mean you still see that on like the iPod Touch uh the most up to up to the new ones that were just announced but the the other iPod Touches from last year Etc they get scratched extremely quickly uh and and you frequently see them dented too so yeah be interesting to see if Apple solved that nano SIM whatever it's a little tiny Sim I've already ordered ad I'm sure it's going to be the worst yeah no I was I was going to ask you about that you you ordered you you took the plunge are you are you fearful uh for what your experience is going to be like with that adapter on Friday uh I am I now I think it was seen at Asia put up a story where they they took uh a micro SIM and like shaved it down to what they think the the size of the nano SIM is and it it still worked and they were able to get it to continue to work on a hcc1 x um and so I'm assuming it'll be okay um I hope it will I still want to be able to switch phones it's one of the main reasons I stuck with AT&T um but if it's not I mean you know there's worse things in the world than being stuck on an iPhone 5 yeah um I I've always had problems with I mean you know the problem with these adapters is that there's no way to lock a Sim into the adapter right so like um you know I I use I use an adapter on a micro SIM in the Galaxy Nexus for instance and it's a it's a it's a slide in tray type and uh when you're when you're pulling it back out what happens sometimes is the the micro SIM will kind of start to fall below the adapter a little bit and then it'll catch on either a pin or the the indentation where the actual cont s are and then it gets stuck and then you you're sitting there trying to pull down and it takes 10 minutes um and I'm assuming those kinds of problems are only going to get worse with the Nano Sims because it's a physically smaller thing uh you basically need Carney hands to uh de these things so we we'll see I'm uh I'm I'm I'm hopeful that this is going to be manageable but I suspect you're going to hear a lot of horror stories over the next few weeks of people trimming their micro SIMs or their standard Sims down to nanosims up size and you know breaking the Sim or doing something to the context where it shorts them or you know because you're you're your physic if I'm not mistaken you're physically cutting into the contact pad in order to get it down to Nano Nano SIM size oh I am not cutting down a Sim that's that's crazy I'm just I'm gonna activate the phone and then hopefully I'll be able to put it in an adapter and size up from there I would I I have zero desire to tell anybody that it's a good idea to try and file down a Sim to nano SIM size I think that is a recipe for pain yeah especially since you with the iPhone 5 it's going to have the tray you're going to have to get it to to match in that tray perfectly and and and like Chris was saying the contacts footprint on a micro SIM is like the whole size of the nano SIM itself so uh you're definitely uh cutting it close I guess you could say with the the cont uh okay we got to talk about the what what's left for Hardware the lightning dock connector uh all new connector um it works you know it's reversible uh It's All Digital and so that's why the adapter to the old uh doc adapter is so expensive because they actually have to have a digital to audio converter in there uh the feature that you lose is some of these iPod out features which to be clear is just like mirroring display on like a BMW car or something but it'll still work with audio docs um with this big giant adap um and look why does Apple think it's too good for USB I I don't know and it drives me absolutely nuts like I I mean people complain about the micro USB connector but really it's not a bad connector it's it's hard to damage uh it's ubiquitous uh it's pretty straightforward to use like you have to really be trying too hard in order to put it in upside down um I'll tell you exactly what uh what Apple's problem is with micro USB it's the fact that made for iPod is an extraord and made for iPhone is an extraordinarily lucrative uh seal of approval for Apple that it charges accessory makers extraordinary amounts of money to use and if they switch to micro USB that only incentivizes companies to skirt the made made for iPad uh or excuse me made for iPhone seal and go Rogue uh and you as it as it stands these companies are going to have to license the the lightning uh Port the the connector which is you know I mean that all adds up to dollar signs for Apple that's exactly what's going on it's still they're going to have new features that that are capable that unless you do something crazy to extend the micro USB standard Like You Know audio out and video out and I mean whatever else I suppose but you know whatever I don't know I'm I'm pretty bitter about this I just you know it's like there's Apple exceptionalism for making money um and you if you can make the case that this connector is better for consumers um I haven't seen it I this does not seem like it's better for consumers than just going to micro USB right I mean I think you could have made that argument with the 30 pin connector N9 years ago uh because micro USB wasn't around uh mini USB might not have even really been around all that much so there wasn't a lot of great connectivity options and that kind of gave a standard connector uh that did a whole heck of a lot for uh uh the iPod at the time um but today it's it's a different story and they they're making a connector that to the lay person looks like a micro USB connector I think the average person will look at the port on an iPhone 5 and be like oh it's the same plug as my Galaxy S3 or whatever it is um just because it it looks almost the same it's almost the same size physically um so you know it's it's a little a little I mean Chris has probably nailed it right on the head for the reason why but it's just like you said are not exactly consumer friendly now I wonder how many how many stories you're going to hear of uh of iPhone 5 owners coming into genius bars with micro USB cables jammed into the lightning Port tell me that it's got to be just a little bit bigger than the micro USB plug so it just won't cram in there it'll just fall out you would hope at least that smart um I don't know like and are they selling the micro USB to 9pin dot connector adapter in the US or is it still only the UK I believe it's only the UK I haven't heard that it's in the US because the only reason they're selling it in the UK or in the EU is to meet with regulations that require the compatibility um and that doesn't exist here in the US so Apple's not not offering it um so yeah and I mean those regul are good they should have you know V anyway go ahead I was just going to say to be clear they aren't they aren't laws they are um a number of OEM agreed to these principles several years ago and apple is just adhering to them but I don't think that there are any actual uh EU laws that would prevent uh prevent them from selling the iPhone in EU countries uh if if they weren't adhering to them I think that they're just they're doing it voluntarily I don't know why because they're really half-assing it but so the other thing that really bothers me with lightning and we were kind of talking about this in our chat room yesterday is the fact that it doesn't support USB 3.0 out of the box it's supports USB 2.0 even though all of Apple's you know 2012 laptops have USB 3.0 uh ports uh plenty of Windows laptops have USB 3.0 ports and USB 3.0 is fully backwards compatible with USB 2 .0 um so if if Apple's forcing us to use a cable to do a lot of heavy syncing um and and interface with iTunes why can't it be USB 3.0 that's a good point it drives me there's no good answer to that question not one that I'm happy with so uh Sean holler put up a really good report about the new connector and what it means for accessory makers and just accessories in general um and my personal complaint is like doesn't I ordered an extra cable and it's not ready to ship right away so I'm going to be down to just one cable to charge my phone and I'm not comfortable with that I carry literally like four micro USB cables in my bag all the time because I know I'm going to lose them um really nerv this is very easy just buy two iPhone 5es take the cable out of one and put the put the phone away um but no like this this article made a really good point like the the big accessory makers they're excited about this right you know as long as you know Apple lets them make new accessories they get to crank out new accessories and sell more stuff and that's really exciting what but it it's a problem for this trend of you know smaller companies and guys uh launching products on Kickstarter where like they had gone through this whole plan with the original dock connector and now they're they're they just don't have the uh the resources to you know go back from scratch quickly and easily but you know the balans of the world they're super pumped about this they're gonna be able to sell you all new stuff right yeah right it is interesting though if you go in and read Sean's report it's interesting uh to hear basically all the big guys uh jawone Belin and there was another one Logitech maybe that he talked to and all of them sort of hinted at the fact that um that you know the dock connector days are numbered like eventually everything is just going to be Wireless whether you like it or not uh and so that I mean yes they do in the short term they do get to profit by turning around all these new dock uh devices with lightning connectors but then in the long term they think that it's just all going to be you know this Wireless ecosystem of course you'll still need to one of the the advantages of these doc devices is that they charge your phone while you're playing music or or whatnot um and you'll lose that advant Advantage once you go completely wireless but maybe by then we'll have wireless charging too like over you know over the air wireless charging which has long been a dream of the uh of the industry how horrendously ugly and bulky are the first generation of uh battery packs going to be for this thing you remember like in the early days of the iPhone battery packs they they were super thick on the bottom because people hadn't figured out how to like minimize the amount of extra plastic they had to have next to the dock connector like they're going to have to start that whole process over again they're going to have to leave space for the headphone jack in addition to the microphone and the speakers um I mean they're just going to be the worst they're going to be terrible y oh yeah and I mean not to belabor this cuz I'm not really surprised but you know Apple chose not to go with wireless charging um and they also chose not to put NFC on there and it's funny like I kind of I don't know what the wireless charging because I do find that really convenient but the NFC thing I'm kind of on their side I feel like you know if it's not there it's not there and Apple's not going to try and force it and I'm totally okay with that decision I'm going to challenge you on the wireless charging thing uh because it wireless charging to me is one of those features that sounds really cool and you really think that you want it but then once you have it you're like well it it only works on this one pad which I would be running a micro USB cable to anyway so what is actually the advantage of having it so three seconds of my life every day when I just go and set my phone down on the charger instead of reaching for a cable and plugging it in so the convenience of getting in my car and just setting it on on you know at least with the you know webos days the the magnetic charger you just set it on your dash and you're done like it sounds really stupid but it is really convenient it's really nice and if they had if they had enabled wireless charging then and they had stuck to you know the chees standard like like Nokia did then I wouldn't be looking at this uh hell storm of having only one cable for the next however long and you know losing it and not being able to charge my phone at all I'd at least be able to use the wireless charging fair enough yeah I think you brought up all the points that I I I had intended to say uh just because I remember with my you know my pre I had a uh I stuck one of the Touchstone things to the my the dash of my car at the time and I just would like get in my car and plop my pre right on there and it was like the most convenient thing ever and if like a notification came in I could see it quickly and easily and it was charging up it was fantastic I don't think wireless charging is the answer for everything um because if if you want to use your phone while it's charging uh it's really inconvenient while it's sitting on uh a wireless charging dock but just having the option there would would be nice also does anyone know what the maximum current is for Chi oh that I don't know and that's actually one of the things I'm curious about about what the current's going to be on this connector if it'll be 2.1 or or whatever you know the different the different amperages are yeah the problem I mean I have this problem with basically every modern smartphone now where the uh the the phone just in an idle state or certainly when you're using it is drawing enough power so that um plugging it into a micro USB cable uh just barely keeps up with it like it doesn't really charge it just keeps the battery level stable or maybe very or if you're tethering you're just watching it slowly die or or if you're using GPS services in your car and it just can't keep up with it yep right and that problem's only going to get worse and we've heard in fact I think we talked about it on the show before there's a there's an add dundum to the usb3 specification that increases uh the maximum current but that's still I I don't even think it's approved yet so uh I don't have anything else to say about the hardware now that I've gotten my little rants out despite everything i' I've complained about with this connector uh I I still am actually pretty excited for the hardware I think it's going to be um impressive and I'm going to feel really good with it in my pocket and uh like I'm even excited about the the um What's The Phrase the chamfer edges the bezel that they they made that angled instead of straight across I think that'll feel nicer too the sandwich look is gone so it's it's a yeah it's a smoother look I guess you could say um so we talked a little bit about AT&T and Verizon but Chris you put together a report about you know our LTE Network's going to suddenly start sucking now that we're going to have all these iPhones on them and tell us that I screw up by staying with at& uh well we'll find out right there's only one way to know for sure and that's that's to see what happens over the course of the next few weeks yeah so I mean I I I think I've talked about it before I I've noticed that the that AT&T's network has gotten noticeably slower since the Galaxy S3 launched and I don't think it's any coincidence that I see Galaxy S3s on the street nonstop I think that it's been an enormously successful phone for AT&T and and Verizon and all the carriers that it's launched on um so you take that level of success multiply it by two or three or four uh and and do it all over again and that that begs obvious question are the LTE networks going to be able to survive in their current configurations uh we we talked to um an AT&T spokesman uh about it and uh he emphasized the fact that uh you know they've they've learned lessons since since the HSPA days and they're implementing new technologies like small cells uh and self-optimizing networks uh that that kind of count for that sort of heavy usage but at the end of the day your physical limit your ultimate limit is that the fact that you have a certain amount of spectrum available and if you run out of spectrum and if everybody's trying to tweet at the same time uh you're going to run into problem so we we just twe is be the problem tweeting will bring networks to their knees well my point Remains the Same though I mean the you know uh we have to see the twit the new Twitter app is really inefficient it's actually it's not just limited to 140 characters every single one of those characters is a megabyte and so when you send a tweet out it takes up a huge chunk every character is an emoji uh icon and yeah I would not doubt it I would not doubt it the way Twitter is going um so yeah I mean we we'll have to see what happens uh but but if if it does bring the networks to their knees that uh that's I mean that is a very very uh damning conclusion uh and a damning state statement about that the state of Wireless in the US so we have to hope we all have to collectively hope that uh that these networks stay operational and that they're fast enough to actually use so Chris I got to ask you which of the networks do you think is going to be the less the least hit by the the iPhone I have my own Theory I know the answer I know the answer I got it in the US you want to know what the answer is Sprint T-Mobile t-mob T-Mobile yeah yeah I mean yeah I mean you have to look at what to answer that question you need to look at at what carriers are are you know shouting from the highest hilltops that they're still offering unlimited data and the reason they're doing that is because their networks are underutilized and over engineered and uh and so yeah those are T-Mobile and Sprint um that also means of course that if those networks rapidly load up uh for whatever reason then they're probably at greater risk of ultimate failure that that's just and I'm not I'm not saying that out of any knowledge that I have I just have to assume that would be the case so uh but yeah I I I do agree it's going to be either T-Mobile or Sprint that's that's at you know in the best position also that that that question is I you have to take it on a market by market basis I'll give you a prime example AT&T uh only has uh 5 megahertz um up and down for LTE network in Chicago whereas in most markets it has 10 by1 so uh Chicago is more likely to have major LTE problems on AT&T brought about by the launch of the iPhone 5 than say uh Dallas you know Chris we're we need to move you to like Atlanta or Memphis or Seattle any other City other than Chicago because you and your uh your the depth of knowledge that you have about AT&T's uh Network failures in Chicago is are second to none uh and we really need to spread that knowledge around we need to embed you in other cities so that you can complain about their uh Wireless just like you do about Chicago well Seattle uh you know Seattle has still does not have AT&T LTE they're supposed to launch soon but I think that they are you know if you look at at the major cities in the US that haven't launched with AT&T LTE at Seattle's probably the biggest at this point and I do get complaints almost weekly from people saying why the heck don't we have LTE yet and uh it's a great question because you know AT&T has a big uh smartphone office in Seattle of course uh um you know Microsoft is there uh you would you would just think that it would behoove AT&T to launch LTE there as quickly as possible right well okay we gota we got to start talking about uh other stuff and by other stuff I mean other iPhone stuff um let's talk about iOS 6 uh I guess I mean there's a bunch of bunch of little things but they showed off everything and it was all the same stuff that we' seen before I mean genuinely the only new feature that we hadn't already already seen from WWDC that I can think of is that uh it has you know a different aspect ratio um and we have another great report from uh Ellis right yeah about what what app developers think and what kills me about this okay they're going to letter box apps that's fine um but you know most of the developers that he spoke to were like yeah we figured this was coming and H you know it's not like the end of the world and what it blows my mind is we have spent the past 5 years hearing this cudle about fragmentation based ont screen size and what a huge problem it is for Android developers to have to Target all these different screen sizes and my feeling has always been that the screen size difference wasn't the real problem here it was other fragmentation issues and sort of the fact that most of these developers have responded to this with kind of a collective shrug like it doesn't surprise me and it shouldn't surprise anybody it's just so funny that we've spent so much like so much of our Collective psychic angst about the the screen size was wasted when really I think at the end of the day it's not that big of a deal that was a lot of Preamble for me to say shrug but there you go well so you know I I have I have a few I have a few thoughts on this uh first off I think that the letter boxing is correct me if I'm wrong I think that the apps appear in the middle is that right yeah yeah you're going to get uh black bars on the top and bottom if you're holding in portrait or left and right if you're holding in landscape yeah this so the app should appear at the bottom not in the middle um and that's so that you're maintaining the um the relationship between the thumb of the user's dominant hand and the bottom of the application uh and that that is that is the most uh um UI forward thing that I think I've ever said if the software keyboard like on a letter box app if the software keyboard pops up above the letter box and not from the bottom of the screen like like that will drive me completely insane yeah that'll be pretty nuts because like this is one of the things that really bothered me about the original implementation of Android 4 on the HTC1 x with that big black menu bar I mean I was I wasn't that angry about losing those pixels but what I was angry about was that the keyboard wouldn't be in the exact same spot on the screen every time you'd open it up it sometimes would be up above the menu and sometimes would be you know flush to the bottom of the screen and so I really hope that when you pop open the keyboard on these letter booxed apps that it'll be flush to the bottom of the screen right right but but I also think that that that Apple's expectation is that and I think it's a very fair expectation is that that uh the developers of any apps that matter in the App Store are going to be updated to support the new uh resolution very quickly in fact the the the major guys have probably spent the past yeah' already seen some upates to be honest with you that are say iOS 6 and iPhone 5 compatible I think tweet just updated today actually right yeah and that's just going to uh continue and it's going to happen very fast uh so you'll just have this you know you'll have the longtail of apps that are abandoned wear and and things that are sort of longer cycle apps that I'm sure will be a problem for the next year but those aren't really Apple's concern it's the it you know it's the the major apps and those are just going to get refreshed very very fast right so the rest of iOS 6 I mean it's coming out on the 19th for other phones uh which is tomorrow if you're listening to this live or today if you're listening to it the day it's released or last week if you're just catching up on virge mobile show podcasts which really you should be listening to these the moment they're out um I mean I don't know I I so the the story went around um the day of the event and uh I put up a piece the day after there's this idea that iOS 6 is boring um and I mean the truth is it's a little boring right there's there's not anything here other than Maps oh which we got to talk about Maps oh my god um that like is completely wildly different than iOS 5 right and and you know Apple always iterates small bits you know OS to OS on these updates but there's usually one big tent pole feature that you can be like this is the thing that changes the way you use your phone um and the thing that changes the way you use your phone in iOS 6 is like an app and as great as iOS is and I think it's great I really I really do um it's it's not like it's not a location OS like it's it has it does a better job of providing location services to third party developers um but for most consumers mapping and navigation is an app it's not a core OS experience and so I mean that's that's why you know we went with this angle that you know it's always uh 73° in sunny on the iPhone's home screen because like it hasn't changed and that's okay for a lot of people but on the other hand like there's a sense of like forward Moving Innovation and thinking about the future of computing um that like apple hasn't changed their vision for years and years on it and you know that seems a little bit I don't know I'm I'm not like freaking out I'm not troubled but you know I don't know I feel like I say it every year like man next next version they got to really shake it up because this is the same and like we're just saying it again with iOS 6 like we said with iOS 5 you know Nei said something very interesting uh the other day and and I I I think that I agree with him which is that um uh iOS 6 feels like Lon uh it's it's sort of this weird hodgepodge of features that nobody necessarily asked for and there no there is no single compelling uh you know there's there's no musthave feature that sets it apart and I I I do think like looking at the holistic picture of the iPhone 5 I do think that the story is about the hardware um on on balance not not about iOS 6 and uh but but to your to you know to your your point deer I I think that um we might be in for a long haul here like if you look at if you look at OSX you go back over the U the past decade um how much has the platform really changed go back and look at screenshots from you know uh 10.0 10.1 um it we you know this might just be the the ux that Apple has settled on and they're going to continue to to put Chrome on it until it's um impossibly stale and I I don't even know if apple has a has a game plan for for OSX much less iOS at this point yeah I mean if you were to to dump into like a you know OSX you know 10.0 or whatever you wouldn't feel terribly uh in you wouldn't feel like you're in a different world even if you've been using mountain lion for the past few months whereas uh you know other other platforms if you were to jump back 10 years uh it definitely feels like a different operating system right and and Windows 8 is the perfect example of that right like Windows 8 is like a is is a clean well I mean you still have the desktop mode right but if you look at the the the the ux that Microsoft is pushing for Windows 8 it is a clean break from everything you know about Windows and that's something that I mean apple is eventually going to have to cross that that you know that very scary Gap um and I think that the pro I was this on Twitter the other day I think the problem for companies like apple and Nokia and rim and Microsoft they they've all had this problem where that at some point even in the face of overwhelming success they need to uh feel this invisible inflection point where they need to make a clean break break and find the next big thing and and it's it's it becomes almost impossibly difficult to do that when you're experiencing this massive overwhelming success like like apple is doing the way I put this is the faster you go the harder it is to turn and they're going really fast right now they're selling a ton of phones right right so I don't think any of us can reasonably say when that point is going to come for them what you know when do they need to make that clean break I don't think anybody really knows uh are they planning for that clean break at this point I don't think anybody knows uh but but yeah in the meantime they're selling just bucket loads of of iPhones yeah okay so let's I mean so I mean you know FaceTime works over 3G or 4G that's great and except unless you're on AT&T and don't want to switch plans Siri got sport scores mail has this thing called uh VIP where you can have you know emails from certain people give you different notifications uh a feature that was introduced on Windows mobile uh you can reply to a text from a missed phone call a feature that was introduced on Windows mobile um there's I'm just saying man uh there's shared photo streams uh that's like I don't know interesting but it's like this weird like not quite a social network kind of I don't know it's weird um and but the thing I'm working up to like the big change is maps maps all Apple it's all new they've kicked Google to the curb and from everything that I've seen like it looks very pretty and uh it seems run pretty well and their flyover feature it's you know not as useful to me as street view but it is uh pretty cool and there is turn BYT navigation which is really important and um you know you don't have to keep hunting for thirdparty apps that have weird subscription models and blah blah blah uh third party navigation apps on iOS I've never been fond of at all especially compared to Android um so you get all that and all the third party apps should still work fine and everything should be great uh unless you live in a city and you need to use public transit right yeah that seems to be the big divide um between iOS 6 we'll have to see kind of how it plays out um or Maps I should say in iOS 6 we'll have to see how it plays out but like there's a lot of features that say uh someone who lives in a um a rural or suburban area uh would really appreciate like that turn-by-turn navigation that a lot of I think a lot of users have been wanting on iOS since uh Android uh introduced it a few years ago but at the flip side there's the uh you know Urban user who might rely on those um transit directions that are going to be no longer available directly and you'll have to go to a third party app option yeah yeah this feels like change that was driven solely on political and and you know a snap political decisions between Apple and Google and not any desire to actually improve the user experience uh because I you know I don't think there's there's anything I mean you can make some arguments about the flyover mode but that there is nothing with actual material benefit to the user in iOS 6 maps not to say that the that that Google or excuse me that that Apple's version of Google Maps was very good either right they they had essentially Google Maps uh had essentially remain unchanged in iOS since the start and uh you know uh Google Maps on Android has lapped that product several times over so um I think that you know if you're upgrading from iOS 5 to six that jump is probably less of a um of a shock to the system than if you're moving from an Android device uh to iOS 6 unless you need transit directions right unless you need transit directions which I'm totally dependent on by the way the um well the other thing is that you know that these new map features that are the headline features uh Apple says won't be coming to the older devices so if you are on an iPhone 4 or an older iPod touch or an older iPad um you won't get the turn by turn navigation and you won't get the 3D flyover so in it for for especially for iPhone 4 users this really feels like they're losing features more than they're gaining anything um you know we'll have to see how the final product is and and and once we run some tests on it and see how how well it performs but at least if you're an iPhone 4S or an iPhone 5 user um you gain that turn by turn feature if you're losing the transit directions you're gaining the turn by turn feature so it can be kind of like a net zero whereas uh on the iPhone 4 you lose the transit directions and you don't gain the turn-by-turn feature yeah right you guys think that Google's going to go all out and release a new app for iOS Maps app they've done they I think they did a really good job with their YouTube app um and their Google+ app is good like they've figured out how to code decent native iOS apps um except for the the Gmail app yeah every other Google app is great except for the Gmail app so I hope that they they do release a Maps app a Google Maps app um but I hope that the team that built the YouTube app and the Google+ app work on it and not the team that built the Gmail app see I I really like I'm a big fan of conspiracy theories and I really like the notion that uh Google goes out of its way to either a make iOS apps crappy or B Nerf them in some tragic way um and of course to your point Dan the Gmail app is absolutely terrible uh the Chrome app for iOS of course is still B you know built on Safari it's not actually using um but the important Chrome features are there you get the syncing you get the Omni boox uh you get the cool tab management so that's like the the only thing that's really different when you jump from iOS to Android in Chrome is the rendering engine behind it like that the experi put the CH Google can't put the Chrome engine just can't yeah right yeah you're right they can't but but the fact remains I just allow me to have my fantasy world where I think that Google is trying to to Nerf iOS products specifically Gmail yeah well which I mean theoretically that's what they bought Sparrow for but that remains to be seen we don't know how that's going to play out yet yeah hopefully it plays out fast well one of the one of the other nerfed uh if you will if I can steal your term uh Chris uh iOS apps from Google recently was the Drive app which was virtually us when it came out cuz it was just a viewer and you couldn't create new files and you couldn't upload anything but that recently got updated um with the ability to create files and to upload files and stuff like that so that yeah that got unnerfed I guess um so hopefully you know Google can do the same with the Gmail app and hopefully if it if Google does decide to release a Google Maps app it's good from the beginning yeah are we done talk about the iPhone 5 uh well we can talk about pricing yeah okay so the iPhone 4S is down to 99 bucks on contract the iPhone 4 is free and the 3Gs is finally at long last gone which took forever yeah so I stuck around for so long yeah did well I mean nowadays the iPhone 4 is the same age as the 3Gs was uh when it was moved to the free price point but I think we talked about this a little bit last week and you know having an iPhone 4 class device at free um is is kind of a a a wild thing to think about I mean the iPhone 4 in 2010 was uh introduced a crazy display that we had not seen before um you know great Hardware obviously and a really solid camera and now you can get that for free on contract uh and if you compare it to the other phones that are available for free on contract it's like not even a contest yeah not even close even even though it's 2 and a half years old it's still not even a contest right no apple I have to say apple has figured out how to create a range of products and that's just to take it its amazing excellent old products and and keep them on the market and continue to lower the prices and I think that the you know the brand strength of the iPhone name carries all these products more or less equally so that you don't have these random names for the lowend products it it's a beautiful model and it it it's obviously working extremely well for them however I do think that they would have been very well served and the world would have been well served if they had uh if they had continued to to sell the 3Gs um as a just a dirt cheap prepaid uh device both in the US and abroad you imagine if you could get the 3GS for say $79 or $99 uh contract free uh it it would still be a great product even now as a prepaid phone right like that would be the go-to unlocked roaming phone to bring with if you travel to Europe or whatever right uh well the march of progress continues the iPhone is coming on Friday uh uh but tomorrow 19th no Day After Tomorrow No Tomorrow there's going to be uh an HTC event um we're expecting uh Windows Phone 8 devices I think from them um there's the Zenith the Accord and the Rio there's also been this 5in Android phone that's been floating around um and I mean I hope I mean we we've talked about this a lot that the one series and the 1X in particular hasn't uh helped Revitalize HTC much and so I'm hoping that whatever they're bringing to the table here will um be awesome first of all but we'll get serious support from carriers or Partners either Google or Microsoft depending on what it is they're announcing uh because I would hate to see HTC just you know Fade Into You know irrelevance I I don't think that they deserve that as a company yeah I I so you know we've seen we've we've seen um a few leaks uh from this supposed Windows Phone lineup from HTC and they uh uh I mean it's hard to get a sense it's really hard to get sense uh without actually seeing the devices in person and and you know being at the event or or whatnot to to to to feel out how they actually compare to what Nokia has on offer for Windows Phone 8 um and so you know I I don't feel comfortable really making any sort of definitive comment on these things but uh in general I do feel more bullish and again I know I say this with every new release of Windows phone but I feel more bullish about the hardware and the software going into this release uh than ever before for it's just a question of whether you know they get the like you said derer what you know they need the the the carrier support uh they need um they need to get their story straight with uh with updates and upgrades going forward they just need to to present I mean you know iPhone just keeps getting stronger and stronger and uh and you know if they want to compete in that end of the market they just need to to deliver an extremely powerful message uh going into the holiday season so hopefully I mean I I think that what the current rumors are tracking for an early November launch right for for most of these Windows Phone 8 devices including the 920 um yeah I don't know you know so we we've we've held you know I think that all three of us have held the 920 and it is a very beefy and heavy phone that I think is already a strike against it for people for anyone who's considering if you walk into uh say an AT&T store and you want to compare a 920 to uh to an iPhone 5 that's already a pretty powerful strike against it but it does have the the color range going uh for it and um and I think that that the Windows Phone 8 home screen just looks really cool I like the fact that you've got these multiple box sizes going on now um and uh yeah I mean we'll see I'm definitely going to there's no question about it that I'm going to own and use uh a Windows Phone 8 device of of some sort for some period of time I don't that's going to be one of these HTC's or a 920 or what um but I I said that with the 900 and I did I used it for several weeks and and and like I said before the you know the Achilles heel what ultimately killed it for me was the the lack of any sort of reasonable Gmail support so we'll see if uh I mean seriously all Google needs to do is enable its iOS web view on I on mobile I10 that is all they need to do and my prayers will be answered so we'll see if they can pull that off or if Google feels the need to pull that off I don't know that's a pretty junky fix if you ask me because you still have to go to the web view to you know deal with your no you you do yeah so you don't get you don't get proper notifications but you kind of do because so here's what I always do on iOS which is or this was before the sparrow days but uh what I would do is I'd set um I I'd set up a in exchange account pointing in my Gmail so I'd still get notifications and then I would I would put I would replace mail in the the fixed bar of icons at the bottom with a web icon pointing to the Mobile Gmail view so that you know and between the two kind of made it work and that's what I if theoretically if if uh Mobile Gmail worked properly on Windows phone that's what I would do on Windows phone but you get the the wet view which is completely worthless so we either need something that is the equivalent of sparrow for Windows phone or we need uh Google to fix uh the the very least the minimum effort fix is for Google to fix the uh the the the web view but we need something because the the the mail client I mean I get that it's great for like popy Gmail or what whatever it does not work well when you have something as rich and advanced as Gmail is especially if you actually put the time and effort into organizing it the way that you you can do if you you know if you take advantage of all the features I use priority inbox I use labels of the wazu and it's just it's completely unmanageable with a standard email client yeah I I agree there there's you know uh the the standard email client looks really great and it's uh fun to use at least on Windows 7.5 it was uh and it was very fast but it really lacked the uh robust Gmail support that you'd be looking for yeah so I think the last thing I want to talk about today is this insane thing that happened with Acer uh they were going to launch a phone based on the alun OS am I even pronouncing that right um and so they had like reporters going to this event and they just canceled it and they're like Google says we can't do this so we're not going to do it and like it's like what the heck happened and so then Google comes out and says yeah no we said they can't do it they can't launch this phone because it's based on Android and then the guys behind alun are like no it's not based on Android and there's been this back and forth between Andy ruin and the guys behind this this alun OS about whether or not it's a fork of Android um and whether or not Acer is allowed to launch a phone based on it and if they do that Google would you know kick them out and stop giving them support uh you know of like Google Apps and you know kick them out of the open handset Alliance it's a really weird story yeah so I I think the the damning I think that the the nail in in the coffin of Acer's story here was when Reuben I think it was Reuben who pointed out that uh Al yun's app store has pirated versions of Google apps in it Google Android apps so I mean like come on like what what's your defense at that point I mean theoretically I guess you could build a a platform that uh that is binary compatible with Android but uh first of all odds are you didn't and second of all that doesn't change the fact that you have these pirated apps chilling in your app store so right yeah so I mean the story from from from alun is that it they built this thing that they're not using the dvic uh engine which is the engine that runs you know bunch apps they're using their own custom thing that like mirrors its functionality which is ironic because dv's whole point was to do the same thing to Java right yeah anyway um so Google's saying no that's not true you're actually using our technology you know somewhere in here this is technically a fork and as a member of the Open Hand set Alliance um Acer has agreed not to launch stuff that is you know based on Android but not Android compatible um what's funny about that is you know Amazon's totally free to do that it's just not part of the open handset Alliance uh so there's been a lot of jokes running around about oh you know so ha haa Google's not so open anymore ha haa um and I don't know how I feel about that like part of me wants to like I don't know be sympathetic to this you know hating on Google for being evil about this and limiting one of their partners and telling them what they can and can't do um but on the other hand like I guess I'm kind of Happy to see the open handset Alliance finally actually mean something because to date it it seemed to me like it was just this you know PR shell and it didn't actually like have any teeth or you know there wasn't actually any real contributions from the other members um but this and even like you know Sony uh putting its stuff into this experimental project to launch a AOSP stock Android on Sony's handsets uh recently like it's starting to feel a little little bit more like an ecosystem and a little bit less like just Google's bag which is a totally ironic thing to say after Google just you know swung the hammer at Acer um I I have a different view I think that you know this this Hammer that Google swung is something that people have been wanting Google to do for a long time I think it went uh the way it happened was not how everybody wanted it to happen but people have been complaining about how you know you pick up one Android device and it doesn't feel like another Android device and you move to another Android device and it's a totally different experience and and I know a lot of people just wanted Google to put its foot down and say like you know you can conform to these standards or you don't get Gmail um and that's kind of like what happened here you know it Google said that Ali aliun is is not you know uh or Acer is not you know conforming to our standards with the Open Hands at Alliance uh with this alunos and you know if you you can do that but you're not going to get the open handset uh privileges um and I think that would a lot of people have been asking for Google to do that um but it just kind of went about the wrong way here so Le let's be clear I think that two years ago uh there's no way that Google would have done this they wouldn't have cared but I think that uh that what what Amazon did to Android is something that that Google never anticipated and I think that they are more anxious than ever to keep Android keep the spirit of Android uh close um and and we're seeing that bear out with this I I think that you know you you you put this exact story two years ago not Ruben not anybody else inside Google would have cared that this was happening but it's a different Google now and they have different priorities and and a different uh understanding for what they need to do to advance the platform in light of how successful Amazon was at forking Android in a meaningful way and you know went on to build successful products on top of it I don't think that Reuben ever anticipated that happening uh with with uh with Android yeah well you know the other thing about this that that rubs people the wrong way and I think rightly so is um that it was Acer uh I mean it feels like picking on the little guy if Samsung had gotten to the point where they were launching an OS that claimed to have Android compatibility do you really think that Google would have uh done this to Samsung answer true yeah yeah that's true but I mean you know it's also like I'm sure that there just wasn't proper communication between Acer and Google in the first place right um you know earlier on on this process um right but I I I take your point about about Amazon and what it's done with the Kindle Fire I think Google is finally drawn a line of this is where you know Android compatibility has to has to be and the question now is are they going to move that line to try and create more cons consistency across different manufacturers or is this where this line is going to stay right right I mean we we know there's still that that Wall Street Journal rumor from several months ago hanging over our heads that we haven't heard a peep about ever since about there being a line of Nexus phones supposedly announced right about now I'm expecting uh this to happen any time now if it if the rumor actually comes to fruition so you know if Google wants to expand the meaning of Nexus uh into something that's TR truly useful to Consumers then you know that that gives them more leeway to kind of ignore the rest of the noise but if they don't do that if they continue with the existing Nexus model which isn't very commercially successful in any meaningful way then yeah then then they might need to say okay well uh we need to rein in all of our oems and sort of create more consistency across the entire Android range which might actually be the more desirable you know as much as I would like to have a a a selection of Nexus phones to choose from that are you know true Nexus devices at the end of the day it might be more meaningful for Android or excuse me for Google to to put more uh you know to exert more control over their their main OEM Partners it's actually not a bad note to end on um now that the uh iPhone rumors have wrapped up and we actually know what the iPhone 5 looks like definitively um it's time for us to get some sweet sweet brand new Nexus action whether it's these multiple devices or just a brand new Nexus device from whoever it's going to be um it there is still no option of me to get stock Nexus stock Android on AT&T with LTE without hacking and I'm tired of that I'm tired of that situation I'm tired of the flagship Android Nexus phone um being on boring crappy Hardware with a terrible screen and even worse camera I'm ready for a really good Nexus phone yeah and it's it's I mean the Galaxy Nexus this wasn't um the most Cutting Edge phone when it was released and at this point it's pretty uh long in the tooth yeah well everybody thank you so much for watching the virge mobile show if you want to follow us uh you can comment on this post when it goes up you can follow us on Twitter as well we are all at Verge I am atbon Dan is at DC Seer Chris is at Z power of lad who you will hopefully see next week is at Vlad savov and like I just said we'll be back next week so tune in then thanks thanksso The Verge mobile show is kind of like an iPhone launch you wait for it you wait for it you're so excited and then it finally comes and it's pretty much what you expected but you know maybe that's not so bad because it's also everything that you hoped for stay tuned for the vge mobile show I am deer bone I'm Dan Seer I'm Chris Ziggler and this is episode 17 for the week of September 17th 2012 of The Verge mobile show it's our golden virge mobile show golden yeah what makes it golden isn't that isn't that like your golden birthday is like when the birthday falls on the day of your age I thought golden would be like the 50th show or something I think I 30th 50th is diamond platinum I'm looking it up now hold on wait everybody hang on yeah no 50 is is golden 50 is golden okay there's a pony wait this is our this is our Crystal no our 15th show was our Crystal show and our 20th show will be our China show nice yeah 25th will be our Silver Show anyway so if you notice Vlad savov is not with us today unfortunately yeah he is at photokina uh taking amazing pictures of cameras that also take amazing pictures yes very meta at photokina very very jealous to be honest with you I am they've actually done a really excellent if you haven't seen the coverage there's a there's a stream explaining all the stuff that's happened at photokina and uh you know I'm not a camera nerd but they've done a really good job of making all this camera news accessible and understand understandable so like I can actually read through the stream read our stories and not feel like I'm an idiot which is what most camera coverage makes me feel like like when I go to DP Review it just makes me dumb can I just say that I am in the process of eing both my kidneys and selling a large amount of cocaine for a Leica m i I will I will do a wide variety of legal things uh for a Le a m i i uh I had the opportunity to use an M9 for a couple weeks a couple years ago and and was just like it's it's a really hard thing to explain in specs because it is not it doesn't compare very favorably to anything uh but it's there's something about the experience of using a Leica that is just extremely uh appealing and it is it is hard to describe you just got to use it and then you understand why people pay upwards of 10 or 15,000 for leab bodies and lenses indeed I'm that has nothing to do with phones though so so uh here's the thing uh there was a big iPhone event last week and um it's dominated the mobile news and we're going to talk about the iPhone for I think it's fair to say a very long time we have a lot of thoughts and feelings and things to say about the iPhone there's a lot of details to dig into and just a lot of stuff to say and so um if you're here looking for us to talk about the fact that there's an orange version of the Lumia 820 but not of the 920 and how angry that makes me um that rant is going to have to wait until next week is is that a direct shot at me deer because that felt like like you were aiming that at me no I'm they're making an orange version of the 820 but not of the 920 and it drives me crazy I guess we should also mention that like Nokia showed we got to get into the iPhone stuff anyway that Nokia showed like a literally like a quarter of a second blip of a cyan Lumia 920 it was one frame promo video it was one frame yeah like so I have a theory about this I have a theory about I I I I'm sorry to to derail the conversation already but actually it's not my theory this was going around on Twitter apparently a previous version of the video that had been uploaded by Nokia showed more of that cyan phone and so I think what happened was they they realized their mistake and attempted to trim it out and miss that one frame how you miss frame middle of a shot that's ridiculous I don't know I don't know who knows what sort of weird editing tools they're using but uh I think that's what happened I love that we're like we're not going to talk about anything but the iPhone and we immediately start talking about the Lumia I would I would personally be game I would be totally fine with a 90minut show about Nokia phone colors I could I could do that every week at nause uh but anyway the real question what color phone would Paul Walk use if he had a Lumia phone oh that that is a that is a supernova of all my favorite things that you're I literally about to pass out just thinking about this this topic let's talk I please let's let's get let's first things last did you guys pre-order I did I did not what really this this blew my mind when Chris told me that he did not this is what happens I was I was telling Dan this uh I think last week what I do and this happens every single year and has since the first well since the second Ione the iPhone uh 3G what happens to me is I swear up and down that I'm not going to get an iPhone I don't pre-order and then uh the morning of the event comes and I wake up like at 4 a. and I'm like ah Shucks I'm gonna go get in line and then I go get in line and I buy one happen with the 4S happened with the four it's going to happen again with the 5S uh so we'll see what happens on Friday but there's a very real chance that I will be standing in line at 4 in the morning well are you so with the 4S um I rolled in 4S and the uh the iPad 3 sorry the new iPad I rolled into uh an AT&T store for the 4S and a um Verizon store for the iPad at like 11 o'clock in the morning just like waltzed in zero line bought the phone and the iPad and waltzed out no problem wow I kind of think that that's going to happen this time around I don't think that there'll be no at the carrier stores I think it's a bigger I mean we know it's you know they they've pre-sold twice as many as the uh the story they broke all of their sales records well yeah and this time around you've got all the people with the iPhone 4 coming off contract or have been off contract waiting for the five uh where you didn't have quite as many for the 4S so I have a feeling there's going to be some selling out and some lines oh yeah yeah yeah no I pre-ordered uh 32 gig black on AT&T uh I think the black one Style hey man I think that the the fact that they they painted or they they brushed over they they darkened the the metal rail around it I think it looks awesome yeah I'm actually super excited for this Hardware which I didn't think I would be um but I really am I think it looks great I think um we'll see how I feel about the the larger screen you know I've been using a 1x or a Galaxy S3 for and Galaxy Nexus and all these other big screen phones for so long that I think it's going to actually feel a little bit cramped um but you know I think having a super thin phone and a reliable LTE phone uh I'm actually pretty excited about that I'm pretty excited about uh being able to tether off of this thing because being tethering off of Android works for the most part but USB tethering especially um seems to be hit or miss especially after Android 4.0 they Chang their driver model a little bit and so uh it's often the case that like I'll plug in an Android phone and it won't show up as a USB modem on my Mac and it's big hassle and the iPhone 5 I'm excited to go back to like totally reliable USB tethering yeah I I feel pretty strongly going back to the your color selection deer and Dan um I feel pretty strongly that with this generation white and black get flip-flopped and black is like the Chic color and white is the uh White is like the standard like normal color do you guys agree I totally agree like the last generation I was all about uh the white model I think the the white model looks great it's the one I owned and Etc but um and I usually go for the white phone but this time around just that you know I hate to use this the murdered out phrase but uh that that black really just kind of like grabbed me and that that matte finish and uh I don't know I went black yeah yep well let's uh let's stick with like talking about hardware specs here of course we know about the larger display um we know about LTE and LTE bands like this is actually interesting so um with the 4S they had basically a single model with single Radio setup for CDMA and GSM and it was basically the same thing worldwide with this one there's how many different there's because the Verizon and the AT&T are different and the the Sprint one also I don't know how that ties in I believe there are three models in total so there's three there's three SKS but I'm I'm of the feeling and I know a lot of other people in the industry are as well that there's really only two models and uh you the the extra skill is just kind of like um with certain things disabled and certain things enabled on the same Hardware as the other models so you've got your your AT&T LZ model which is the a1428 uh I believe and so that supports your standard HSPA Plus on all of AT&T's bands standard GSM of course and then um it supports AT&T's LTE bands and that model will be sold in Canada it works on the Canadian LTE carriers and then after that you've got the a114 29 CDMA version which is going to be offered by Verizon and Sprint and that has compatible LTE bands for both Verizon and Sprint as well as your necessary CDMA cover um band support and it also has uh HSPA plus support on the same bands as the AT&T model so you can use it uh globally uh just like you could with the 4S and then the third model is the a1429 GSM model which has all the same things things except it doesn't have the all of the same things as the Verizon and Sprint model but it doesn't have the CDMA support which I feel is just it's just turned off um because the LTE band support is pretty much the same and the other things are are pretty much the same so you've got three to choose from um the G the gsma a1429 is the uh unlocked model I guess you could say that that's probably going to be offered in um various parts of Europe Etc uh and and of of course the the other Global markets that support LTE yeah this is the first time in a really long time that I was tempted to switch to Verizon just for the global roaming but I realized like I don't actually globally roam all that often so I decided to take a risk on staying with at so here's the thing you'll still be able to globally roam with the AT&T model you just won't be able to do it on LTE so if you had gone with the Verizon model you could roam LTE on the um when when um e launches its LTE Network you'll be able to roam on there and you can roam on the I think it's T-Mobile's running uh the LT Network in Germany um but you won't be able to do that with the LT model or with the AT&T model but you will be able to roam on HSPA plus with the AT&T model so I I'm sure that it killed Apple to have to roll multiple physical Hardware devices for this launch because they you know they went from two iPhone 4S down to one for the 4S and I think that was a very Purp purposeful move for them and the the LTE that you know the completely disjoint horrible mess of a of an of a global LTE brand uh uh band structure has destroyed any hope in the near term of of launching a global device with a single uh set of SKS so um until RF Engineers do some amazing things that they obviously haven't done yet yeah it it's it's it's kind of crazy like uh just I think this uh we we saw it with the iPad uh the new iPad how there was separate models for AT&T and Verizon LTE but I think it just uh uh the iPhone 5 really just speaks to the mess of the LTE bands that are Global and are worldwide and and how in not interoperable they are right uh running down some of the other specs the camera like what's different that still an 8 megapixel camera I guess they've got a a sapphire thing uh so it's less likely to get scratched but they they didn't really talk up other than the panorama mode um they didn't really talk up the camera a whole lot and that panor panorama mode thing like I hope it's way better than what the third party apps are that are out there because if it's basically the same thing that you could have done before like don't get me wrong the the camera on the iPhone 4S is best of class I I think it only up it only wasn't until the 1X and the Galaxy S3 that any other phone even came close um so it's not like they needed to Sprint ahead there um but it's not like you know if you you're not going to want to upgrade to the five just for the camera right yeah I I think that I think that uh all of these guys Apple included are running up against some physical limits about or over what they can do with cameras with the optic you know the the size of the Optics that they're that they're using and that's something that you know you're seeing devices like the 808 overcome by just including massive Optics which isn't really uh is an Apple's bag and I don't think that you're GNA see them do that in the future right yeah I mean it at this point until the same thing with LTE until Engineers uh create this you know crazy breakthrough that you know uh defies the laws of physics as we know them right now uh there is kind of like this this diminishing returns we get with these uh with the phone cameras um now as far as the differences between the 4S and the five camera uh that sapphire crystal makes it a little bit smaller um so that that leads to the thinner design which I think we're going to speak to in a minute um but it's also the camera's a bit faster and I think that's leaning on the new processor so the shot to shot time is faster um the focusing all that fun stuff should be faster uh and I hope that the panoramic thing is is I I expect it to be pretty simple and pretty easy um but yeah like you said derer I hope it's better than the third party apps yeah okay so you brought the thinness I mean we I mean it's thinner right it's 7.6 millim Apple kept saying it's the thinnest smartphone on the planet which is not true right isn't there like an AOS phone in Japan that's this thin yeah there's been some like sharp models that are like under 7 mm Y and there's that Oppo and then depending on how you measure it of course the Droid Razor is 7.1 but it has the hump at the top right right so it doesn't count I'm just saying that flat out doesn't uh I don't know I'm I'm excited to for it to be thinner um it's it's weird I never thought of the iPhone 4 and the 4S as being like a chunk um I guess the other thing go ahead I I am not excited for it to be thinner I'm going to let you finish but let me just say that what they should have done is kept it the same they should have pulled the Razer Max trick they should have kept it the exone ma no I don't want an iPhone Max I want there to be one model and I want them to say it's the same thickness as the 4S we didn't have to make it any thick and but oh by the way you now have two freaking days of battery life that's more impressive than saying it's 7.6 millim or whatever yeah I'm really curious to see what the battery life is going to be because they when they were talking about battery life specs they they basically I think they only pointed out standby time but everything else was basically the same um and I mean I have problems with uh battery life on uh the LTE phones I've been using so far like it's it's a real struggle to get a full day and if um you know with this new form factor and the new dock connector which we got to get to if if I can't get a full day out of this thing it's going to really suck to be constantly looking for a charger for the iPhone right also I would love to see apple release something called with with two x's in it the iPhone Max like that would be lifechanging would be lifechanging but I mean seriously like you know that's a tradeoff that I'm I'm definitely willing to make and I'm really fearful that all OEM Apple included are still uh playing this this uh this pissing contest where they're trying to make the phones thinner and thinner and thinner with blatant disregard for the fact that a phone that can make it from say 7 in the morning until 5: or 600 p.m. is not full day battery life and it is not acceptable I would say that at least once a week possibly twice on any phone that I use really right I'm on the Galaxy Nexus but any phone uh I'm in a situation where I'm out and my phone dies and there's nothing I can do about it right yeah I I totally agree with you Chris I think I think when the iPhone 4 design came out a couple of years ago it was kind of like mindblowing thin at the time um and and you know I don't I've never in the two years since then or almost two and a half years since then I've never felt like that design was thick or cumbersome or unwieldy or anything like that so if they could have at kept that same millimeter and added however much battery capacity that would afford um yeah that would have been pretty great now the other side of this okay so if they had added that battery capacity it would have added a ton of weight right I mean this thing weighs what what is it uh so so it's lighter yeah so it's significantly lighter I think the iPhone 4S was like 141 gram so if they had just kept it the same weight I I I would have been thrilled I never I mean the the um iPhone 4S doesn't feel like a heavy phone it's not like 200 g so uh I would have much rather had the ex extended battery life and then I won't be using a silly like external battery case that I end up doing uh from time to time with my 4S because the battery doesn't get me through the day yeah uh I do want to give appple credit for bringing back the aluminum back uh I think that looks awesome and um I'm not sad to see the glass back go um I was never happy when they switch to plastic um and then you know moving to Glass was a nice fix um but I feel like you know their original Vision with the original iPhone was aluminum now they've finally gotten back to that I'm pretty pretty excited about that I hope it feels good like that's one of my problems with the uh the HCC 1s like it's got that that sweet um microarc oxidized aluminum thing but I don't like the way it feels because it feels like a chalkboard so I just hope this feels like just straight up good aluminum well there there is one problem with the aluminum on the original iPhone uh and and maybe they've kind of gotten around it with this one we don't know yet but with the original iPhone you still see it occasionally today if you know every once in a while you see someone that's using an original iphone for God only knows what reason uh but they they're um they're scratched to hell and they're dented they're physically dented which is a Phenom a phenomenon That's Unique in the phone world because 99% of phones are plastic which doesn't Dent right yeah I mean you still see that on like the iPod Touch uh the most up to up to the new ones that were just announced but the the other iPod Touches from last year Etc they get scratched extremely quickly uh and and you frequently see them dented too so yeah be interesting to see if Apple solved that nano SIM whatever it's a little tiny Sim I've already ordered ad I'm sure it's going to be the worst yeah no I was I was going to ask you about that you you ordered you you took the plunge are you are you fearful uh for what your experience is going to be like with that adapter on Friday uh I am I now I think it was seen at Asia put up a story where they they took uh a micro SIM and like shaved it down to what they think the the size of the nano SIM is and it it still worked and they were able to get it to continue to work on a hcc1 x um and so I'm assuming it'll be okay um I hope it will I still want to be able to switch phones it's one of the main reasons I stuck with AT&T um but if it's not I mean you know there's worse things in the world than being stuck on an iPhone 5 yeah um I I've always had problems with I mean you know the problem with these adapters is that there's no way to lock a Sim into the adapter right so like um you know I I use I use an adapter on a micro SIM in the Galaxy Nexus for instance and it's a it's a it's a slide in tray type and uh when you're when you're pulling it back out what happens sometimes is the the micro SIM will kind of start to fall below the adapter a little bit and then it'll catch on either a pin or the the indentation where the actual cont s are and then it gets stuck and then you you're sitting there trying to pull down and it takes 10 minutes um and I'm assuming those kinds of problems are only going to get worse with the Nano Sims because it's a physically smaller thing uh you basically need Carney hands to uh de these things so we we'll see I'm uh I'm I'm I'm hopeful that this is going to be manageable but I suspect you're going to hear a lot of horror stories over the next few weeks of people trimming their micro SIMs or their standard Sims down to nanosims up size and you know breaking the Sim or doing something to the context where it shorts them or you know because you're you're your physic if I'm not mistaken you're physically cutting into the contact pad in order to get it down to Nano Nano SIM size oh I am not cutting down a Sim that's that's crazy I'm just I'm gonna activate the phone and then hopefully I'll be able to put it in an adapter and size up from there I would I I have zero desire to tell anybody that it's a good idea to try and file down a Sim to nano SIM size I think that is a recipe for pain yeah especially since you with the iPhone 5 it's going to have the tray you're going to have to get it to to match in that tray perfectly and and and like Chris was saying the contacts footprint on a micro SIM is like the whole size of the nano SIM itself so uh you're definitely uh cutting it close I guess you could say with the the cont uh okay we got to talk about the what what's left for Hardware the lightning dock connector uh all new connector um it works you know it's reversible uh It's All Digital and so that's why the adapter to the old uh doc adapter is so expensive because they actually have to have a digital to audio converter in there uh the feature that you lose is some of these iPod out features which to be clear is just like mirroring display on like a BMW car or something but it'll still work with audio docs um with this big giant adap um and look why does Apple think it's too good for USB I I don't know and it drives me absolutely nuts like I I mean people complain about the micro USB connector but really it's not a bad connector it's it's hard to damage uh it's ubiquitous uh it's pretty straightforward to use like you have to really be trying too hard in order to put it in upside down um I'll tell you exactly what uh what Apple's problem is with micro USB it's the fact that made for iPod is an extraord and made for iPhone is an extraordinarily lucrative uh seal of approval for Apple that it charges accessory makers extraordinary amounts of money to use and if they switch to micro USB that only incentivizes companies to skirt the made made for iPad uh or excuse me made for iPhone seal and go Rogue uh and you as it as it stands these companies are going to have to license the the lightning uh Port the the connector which is you know I mean that all adds up to dollar signs for Apple that's exactly what's going on it's still they're going to have new features that that are capable that unless you do something crazy to extend the micro USB standard Like You Know audio out and video out and I mean whatever else I suppose but you know whatever I don't know I'm I'm pretty bitter about this I just you know it's like there's Apple exceptionalism for making money um and you if you can make the case that this connector is better for consumers um I haven't seen it I this does not seem like it's better for consumers than just going to micro USB right I mean I think you could have made that argument with the 30 pin connector N9 years ago uh because micro USB wasn't around uh mini USB might not have even really been around all that much so there wasn't a lot of great connectivity options and that kind of gave a standard connector uh that did a whole heck of a lot for uh uh the iPod at the time um but today it's it's a different story and they they're making a connector that to the lay person looks like a micro USB connector I think the average person will look at the port on an iPhone 5 and be like oh it's the same plug as my Galaxy S3 or whatever it is um just because it it looks almost the same it's almost the same size physically um so you know it's it's a little a little I mean Chris has probably nailed it right on the head for the reason why but it's just like you said are not exactly consumer friendly now I wonder how many how many stories you're going to hear of uh of iPhone 5 owners coming into genius bars with micro USB cables jammed into the lightning Port tell me that it's got to be just a little bit bigger than the micro USB plug so it just won't cram in there it'll just fall out you would hope at least that smart um I don't know like and are they selling the micro USB to 9pin dot connector adapter in the US or is it still only the UK I believe it's only the UK I haven't heard that it's in the US because the only reason they're selling it in the UK or in the EU is to meet with regulations that require the compatibility um and that doesn't exist here in the US so Apple's not not offering it um so yeah and I mean those regul are good they should have you know V anyway go ahead I was just going to say to be clear they aren't they aren't laws they are um a number of OEM agreed to these principles several years ago and apple is just adhering to them but I don't think that there are any actual uh EU laws that would prevent uh prevent them from selling the iPhone in EU countries uh if if they weren't adhering to them I think that they're just they're doing it voluntarily I don't know why because they're really half-assing it but so the other thing that really bothers me with lightning and we were kind of talking about this in our chat room yesterday is the fact that it doesn't support USB 3.0 out of the box it's supports USB 2.0 even though all of Apple's you know 2012 laptops have USB 3.0 uh ports uh plenty of Windows laptops have USB 3.0 ports and USB 3.0 is fully backwards compatible with USB 2 .0 um so if if Apple's forcing us to use a cable to do a lot of heavy syncing um and and interface with iTunes why can't it be USB 3.0 that's a good point it drives me there's no good answer to that question not one that I'm happy with so uh Sean holler put up a really good report about the new connector and what it means for accessory makers and just accessories in general um and my personal complaint is like doesn't I ordered an extra cable and it's not ready to ship right away so I'm going to be down to just one cable to charge my phone and I'm not comfortable with that I carry literally like four micro USB cables in my bag all the time because I know I'm going to lose them um really nerv this is very easy just buy two iPhone 5es take the cable out of one and put the put the phone away um but no like this this article made a really good point like the the big accessory makers they're excited about this right you know as long as you know Apple lets them make new accessories they get to crank out new accessories and sell more stuff and that's really exciting what but it it's a problem for this trend of you know smaller companies and guys uh launching products on Kickstarter where like they had gone through this whole plan with the original dock connector and now they're they're they just don't have the uh the resources to you know go back from scratch quickly and easily but you know the balans of the world they're super pumped about this they're gonna be able to sell you all new stuff right yeah right it is interesting though if you go in and read Sean's report it's interesting uh to hear basically all the big guys uh jawone Belin and there was another one Logitech maybe that he talked to and all of them sort of hinted at the fact that um that you know the dock connector days are numbered like eventually everything is just going to be Wireless whether you like it or not uh and so that I mean yes they do in the short term they do get to profit by turning around all these new dock uh devices with lightning connectors but then in the long term they think that it's just all going to be you know this Wireless ecosystem of course you'll still need to one of the the advantages of these doc devices is that they charge your phone while you're playing music or or whatnot um and you'll lose that advant Advantage once you go completely wireless but maybe by then we'll have wireless charging too like over you know over the air wireless charging which has long been a dream of the uh of the industry how horrendously ugly and bulky are the first generation of uh battery packs going to be for this thing you remember like in the early days of the iPhone battery packs they they were super thick on the bottom because people hadn't figured out how to like minimize the amount of extra plastic they had to have next to the dock connector like they're going to have to start that whole process over again they're going to have to leave space for the headphone jack in addition to the microphone and the speakers um I mean they're just going to be the worst they're going to be terrible y oh yeah and I mean not to belabor this cuz I'm not really surprised but you know Apple chose not to go with wireless charging um and they also chose not to put NFC on there and it's funny like I kind of I don't know what the wireless charging because I do find that really convenient but the NFC thing I'm kind of on their side I feel like you know if it's not there it's not there and Apple's not going to try and force it and I'm totally okay with that decision I'm going to challenge you on the wireless charging thing uh because it wireless charging to me is one of those features that sounds really cool and you really think that you want it but then once you have it you're like well it it only works on this one pad which I would be running a micro USB cable to anyway so what is actually the advantage of having it so three seconds of my life every day when I just go and set my phone down on the charger instead of reaching for a cable and plugging it in so the convenience of getting in my car and just setting it on on you know at least with the you know webos days the the magnetic charger you just set it on your dash and you're done like it sounds really stupid but it is really convenient it's really nice and if they had if they had enabled wireless charging then and they had stuck to you know the chees standard like like Nokia did then I wouldn't be looking at this uh hell storm of having only one cable for the next however long and you know losing it and not being able to charge my phone at all I'd at least be able to use the wireless charging fair enough yeah I think you brought up all the points that I I I had intended to say uh just because I remember with my you know my pre I had a uh I stuck one of the Touchstone things to the my the dash of my car at the time and I just would like get in my car and plop my pre right on there and it was like the most convenient thing ever and if like a notification came in I could see it quickly and easily and it was charging up it was fantastic I don't think wireless charging is the answer for everything um because if if you want to use your phone while it's charging uh it's really inconvenient while it's sitting on uh a wireless charging dock but just having the option there would would be nice also does anyone know what the maximum current is for Chi oh that I don't know and that's actually one of the things I'm curious about about what the current's going to be on this connector if it'll be 2.1 or or whatever you know the different the different amperages are yeah the problem I mean I have this problem with basically every modern smartphone now where the uh the the phone just in an idle state or certainly when you're using it is drawing enough power so that um plugging it into a micro USB cable uh just barely keeps up with it like it doesn't really charge it just keeps the battery level stable or maybe very or if you're tethering you're just watching it slowly die or or if you're using GPS services in your car and it just can't keep up with it yep right and that problem's only going to get worse and we've heard in fact I think we talked about it on the show before there's a there's an add dundum to the usb3 specification that increases uh the maximum current but that's still I I don't even think it's approved yet so uh I don't have anything else to say about the hardware now that I've gotten my little rants out despite everything i' I've complained about with this connector uh I I still am actually pretty excited for the hardware I think it's going to be um impressive and I'm going to feel really good with it in my pocket and uh like I'm even excited about the the um What's The Phrase the chamfer edges the bezel that they they made that angled instead of straight across I think that'll feel nicer too the sandwich look is gone so it's it's a yeah it's a smoother look I guess you could say um so we talked a little bit about AT&T and Verizon but Chris you put together a report about you know our LTE Network's going to suddenly start sucking now that we're going to have all these iPhones on them and tell us that I screw up by staying with at& uh well we'll find out right there's only one way to know for sure and that's that's to see what happens over the course of the next few weeks yeah so I mean I I I think I've talked about it before I I've noticed that the that AT&T's network has gotten noticeably slower since the Galaxy S3 launched and I don't think it's any coincidence that I see Galaxy S3s on the street nonstop I think that it's been an enormously successful phone for AT&T and and Verizon and all the carriers that it's launched on um so you take that level of success multiply it by two or three or four uh and and do it all over again and that that begs obvious question are the LTE networks going to be able to survive in their current configurations uh we we talked to um an AT&T spokesman uh about it and uh he emphasized the fact that uh you know they've they've learned lessons since since the HSPA days and they're implementing new technologies like small cells uh and self-optimizing networks uh that that kind of count for that sort of heavy usage but at the end of the day your physical limit your ultimate limit is that the fact that you have a certain amount of spectrum available and if you run out of spectrum and if everybody's trying to tweet at the same time uh you're going to run into problem so we we just twe is be the problem tweeting will bring networks to their knees well my point Remains the Same though I mean the you know uh we have to see the twit the new Twitter app is really inefficient it's actually it's not just limited to 140 characters every single one of those characters is a megabyte and so when you send a tweet out it takes up a huge chunk every character is an emoji uh icon and yeah I would not doubt it I would not doubt it the way Twitter is going um so yeah I mean we we'll have to see what happens uh but but if if it does bring the networks to their knees that uh that's I mean that is a very very uh damning conclusion uh and a damning state statement about that the state of Wireless in the US so we have to hope we all have to collectively hope that uh that these networks stay operational and that they're fast enough to actually use so Chris I got to ask you which of the networks do you think is going to be the less the least hit by the the iPhone I have my own Theory I know the answer I know the answer I got it in the US you want to know what the answer is Sprint T-Mobile t-mob T-Mobile yeah yeah I mean yeah I mean you have to look at what to answer that question you need to look at at what carriers are are you know shouting from the highest hilltops that they're still offering unlimited data and the reason they're doing that is because their networks are underutilized and over engineered and uh and so yeah those are T-Mobile and Sprint um that also means of course that if those networks rapidly load up uh for whatever reason then they're probably at greater risk of ultimate failure that that's just and I'm not I'm not saying that out of any knowledge that I have I just have to assume that would be the case so uh but yeah I I I do agree it's going to be either T-Mobile or Sprint that's that's at you know in the best position also that that that question is I you have to take it on a market by market basis I'll give you a prime example AT&T uh only has uh 5 megahertz um up and down for LTE network in Chicago whereas in most markets it has 10 by1 so uh Chicago is more likely to have major LTE problems on AT&T brought about by the launch of the iPhone 5 than say uh Dallas you know Chris we're we need to move you to like Atlanta or Memphis or Seattle any other City other than Chicago because you and your uh your the depth of knowledge that you have about AT&T's uh Network failures in Chicago is are second to none uh and we really need to spread that knowledge around we need to embed you in other cities so that you can complain about their uh Wireless just like you do about Chicago well Seattle uh you know Seattle has still does not have AT&T LTE they're supposed to launch soon but I think that they are you know if you look at at the major cities in the US that haven't launched with AT&T LTE at Seattle's probably the biggest at this point and I do get complaints almost weekly from people saying why the heck don't we have LTE yet and uh it's a great question because you know AT&T has a big uh smartphone office in Seattle of course uh um you know Microsoft is there uh you would you would just think that it would behoove AT&T to launch LTE there as quickly as possible right well okay we gota we got to start talking about uh other stuff and by other stuff I mean other iPhone stuff um let's talk about iOS 6 uh I guess I mean there's a bunch of bunch of little things but they showed off everything and it was all the same stuff that we' seen before I mean genuinely the only new feature that we hadn't already already seen from WWDC that I can think of is that uh it has you know a different aspect ratio um and we have another great report from uh Ellis right yeah about what what app developers think and what kills me about this okay they're going to letter box apps that's fine um but you know most of the developers that he spoke to were like yeah we figured this was coming and H you know it's not like the end of the world and what it blows my mind is we have spent the past 5 years hearing this cudle about fragmentation based ont screen size and what a huge problem it is for Android developers to have to Target all these different screen sizes and my feeling has always been that the screen size difference wasn't the real problem here it was other fragmentation issues and sort of the fact that most of these developers have responded to this with kind of a collective shrug like it doesn't surprise me and it shouldn't surprise anybody it's just so funny that we've spent so much like so much of our Collective psychic angst about the the screen size was wasted when really I think at the end of the day it's not that big of a deal that was a lot of Preamble for me to say shrug but there you go well so you know I I have I have a few I have a few thoughts on this uh first off I think that the letter boxing is correct me if I'm wrong I think that the apps appear in the middle is that right yeah yeah you're going to get uh black bars on the top and bottom if you're holding in portrait or left and right if you're holding in landscape yeah this so the app should appear at the bottom not in the middle um and that's so that you're maintaining the um the relationship between the thumb of the user's dominant hand and the bottom of the application uh and that that is that is the most uh um UI forward thing that I think I've ever said if the software keyboard like on a letter box app if the software keyboard pops up above the letter box and not from the bottom of the screen like like that will drive me completely insane yeah that'll be pretty nuts because like this is one of the things that really bothered me about the original implementation of Android 4 on the HTC1 x with that big black menu bar I mean I was I wasn't that angry about losing those pixels but what I was angry about was that the keyboard wouldn't be in the exact same spot on the screen every time you'd open it up it sometimes would be up above the menu and sometimes would be you know flush to the bottom of the screen and so I really hope that when you pop open the keyboard on these letter booxed apps that it'll be flush to the bottom of the screen right right but but I also think that that that Apple's expectation is that and I think it's a very fair expectation is that that uh the developers of any apps that matter in the App Store are going to be updated to support the new uh resolution very quickly in fact the the the major guys have probably spent the past yeah' already seen some upates to be honest with you that are say iOS 6 and iPhone 5 compatible I think tweet just updated today actually right yeah and that's just going to uh continue and it's going to happen very fast uh so you'll just have this you know you'll have the longtail of apps that are abandoned wear and and things that are sort of longer cycle apps that I'm sure will be a problem for the next year but those aren't really Apple's concern it's the it you know it's the the major apps and those are just going to get refreshed very very fast right so the rest of iOS 6 I mean it's coming out on the 19th for other phones uh which is tomorrow if you're listening to this live or today if you're listening to it the day it's released or last week if you're just catching up on virge mobile show podcasts which really you should be listening to these the moment they're out um I mean I don't know I I so the the story went around um the day of the event and uh I put up a piece the day after there's this idea that iOS 6 is boring um and I mean the truth is it's a little boring right there's there's not anything here other than Maps oh which we got to talk about Maps oh my god um that like is completely wildly different than iOS 5 right and and you know Apple always iterates small bits you know OS to OS on these updates but there's usually one big tent pole feature that you can be like this is the thing that changes the way you use your phone um and the thing that changes the way you use your phone in iOS 6 is like an app and as great as iOS is and I think it's great I really I really do um it's it's not like it's not a location OS like it's it has it does a better job of providing location services to third party developers um but for most consumers mapping and navigation is an app it's not a core OS experience and so I mean that's that's why you know we went with this angle that you know it's always uh 73° in sunny on the iPhone's home screen because like it hasn't changed and that's okay for a lot of people but on the other hand like there's a sense of like forward Moving Innovation and thinking about the future of computing um that like apple hasn't changed their vision for years and years on it and you know that seems a little bit I don't know I'm I'm not like freaking out I'm not troubled but you know I don't know I feel like I say it every year like man next next version they got to really shake it up because this is the same and like we're just saying it again with iOS 6 like we said with iOS 5 you know Nei said something very interesting uh the other day and and I I I think that I agree with him which is that um uh iOS 6 feels like Lon uh it's it's sort of this weird hodgepodge of features that nobody necessarily asked for and there no there is no single compelling uh you know there's there's no musthave feature that sets it apart and I I I do think like looking at the holistic picture of the iPhone 5 I do think that the story is about the hardware um on on balance not not about iOS 6 and uh but but to your to you know to your your point deer I I think that um we might be in for a long haul here like if you look at if you look at OSX you go back over the U the past decade um how much has the platform really changed go back and look at screenshots from you know uh 10.0 10.1 um it we you know this might just be the the ux that Apple has settled on and they're going to continue to to put Chrome on it until it's um impossibly stale and I I don't even know if apple has a has a game plan for for OSX much less iOS at this point yeah I mean if you were to to dump into like a you know OSX you know 10.0 or whatever you wouldn't feel terribly uh in you wouldn't feel like you're in a different world even if you've been using mountain lion for the past few months whereas uh you know other other platforms if you were to jump back 10 years uh it definitely feels like a different operating system right and and Windows 8 is the perfect example of that right like Windows 8 is like a is is a clean well I mean you still have the desktop mode right but if you look at the the the the ux that Microsoft is pushing for Windows 8 it is a clean break from everything you know about Windows and that's something that I mean apple is eventually going to have to cross that that you know that very scary Gap um and I think that the pro I was this on Twitter the other day I think the problem for companies like apple and Nokia and rim and Microsoft they they've all had this problem where that at some point even in the face of overwhelming success they need to uh feel this invisible inflection point where they need to make a clean break break and find the next big thing and and it's it's it becomes almost impossibly difficult to do that when you're experiencing this massive overwhelming success like like apple is doing the way I put this is the faster you go the harder it is to turn and they're going really fast right now they're selling a ton of phones right right so I don't think any of us can reasonably say when that point is going to come for them what you know when do they need to make that clean break I don't think anybody really knows uh are they planning for that clean break at this point I don't think anybody knows uh but but yeah in the meantime they're selling just bucket loads of of iPhones yeah okay so let's I mean so I mean you know FaceTime works over 3G or 4G that's great and except unless you're on AT&T and don't want to switch plans Siri got sport scores mail has this thing called uh VIP where you can have you know emails from certain people give you different notifications uh a feature that was introduced on Windows mobile uh you can reply to a text from a missed phone call a feature that was introduced on Windows mobile um there's I'm just saying man uh there's shared photo streams uh that's like I don't know interesting but it's like this weird like not quite a social network kind of I don't know it's weird um and but the thing I'm working up to like the big change is maps maps all Apple it's all new they've kicked Google to the curb and from everything that I've seen like it looks very pretty and uh it seems run pretty well and their flyover feature it's you know not as useful to me as street view but it is uh pretty cool and there is turn BYT navigation which is really important and um you know you don't have to keep hunting for thirdparty apps that have weird subscription models and blah blah blah uh third party navigation apps on iOS I've never been fond of at all especially compared to Android um so you get all that and all the third party apps should still work fine and everything should be great uh unless you live in a city and you need to use public transit right yeah that seems to be the big divide um between iOS 6 we'll have to see kind of how it plays out um or Maps I should say in iOS 6 we'll have to see how it plays out but like there's a lot of features that say uh someone who lives in a um a rural or suburban area uh would really appreciate like that turn-by-turn navigation that a lot of I think a lot of users have been wanting on iOS since uh Android uh introduced it a few years ago but at the flip side there's the uh you know Urban user who might rely on those um transit directions that are going to be no longer available directly and you'll have to go to a third party app option yeah yeah this feels like change that was driven solely on political and and you know a snap political decisions between Apple and Google and not any desire to actually improve the user experience uh because I you know I don't think there's there's anything I mean you can make some arguments about the flyover mode but that there is nothing with actual material benefit to the user in iOS 6 maps not to say that the that that Google or excuse me that that Apple's version of Google Maps was very good either right they they had essentially Google Maps uh had essentially remain unchanged in iOS since the start and uh you know uh Google Maps on Android has lapped that product several times over so um I think that you know if you're upgrading from iOS 5 to six that jump is probably less of a um of a shock to the system than if you're moving from an Android device uh to iOS 6 unless you need transit directions right unless you need transit directions which I'm totally dependent on by the way the um well the other thing is that you know that these new map features that are the headline features uh Apple says won't be coming to the older devices so if you are on an iPhone 4 or an older iPod touch or an older iPad um you won't get the turn by turn navigation and you won't get the 3D flyover so in it for for especially for iPhone 4 users this really feels like they're losing features more than they're gaining anything um you know we'll have to see how the final product is and and and once we run some tests on it and see how how well it performs but at least if you're an iPhone 4S or an iPhone 5 user um you gain that turn by turn feature if you're losing the transit directions you're gaining the turn by turn feature so it can be kind of like a net zero whereas uh on the iPhone 4 you lose the transit directions and you don't gain the turn-by-turn feature yeah right you guys think that Google's going to go all out and release a new app for iOS Maps app they've done they I think they did a really good job with their YouTube app um and their Google+ app is good like they've figured out how to code decent native iOS apps um except for the the Gmail app yeah every other Google app is great except for the Gmail app so I hope that they they do release a Maps app a Google Maps app um but I hope that the team that built the YouTube app and the Google+ app work on it and not the team that built the Gmail app see I I really like I'm a big fan of conspiracy theories and I really like the notion that uh Google goes out of its way to either a make iOS apps crappy or B Nerf them in some tragic way um and of course to your point Dan the Gmail app is absolutely terrible uh the Chrome app for iOS of course is still B you know built on Safari it's not actually using um but the important Chrome features are there you get the syncing you get the Omni boox uh you get the cool tab management so that's like the the only thing that's really different when you jump from iOS to Android in Chrome is the rendering engine behind it like that the experi put the CH Google can't put the Chrome engine just can't yeah right yeah you're right they can't but but the fact remains I just allow me to have my fantasy world where I think that Google is trying to to Nerf iOS products specifically Gmail yeah well which I mean theoretically that's what they bought Sparrow for but that remains to be seen we don't know how that's going to play out yet yeah hopefully it plays out fast well one of the one of the other nerfed uh if you will if I can steal your term uh Chris uh iOS apps from Google recently was the Drive app which was virtually us when it came out cuz it was just a viewer and you couldn't create new files and you couldn't upload anything but that recently got updated um with the ability to create files and to upload files and stuff like that so that yeah that got unnerfed I guess um so hopefully you know Google can do the same with the Gmail app and hopefully if it if Google does decide to release a Google Maps app it's good from the beginning yeah are we done talk about the iPhone 5 uh well we can talk about pricing yeah okay so the iPhone 4S is down to 99 bucks on contract the iPhone 4 is free and the 3Gs is finally at long last gone which took forever yeah so I stuck around for so long yeah did well I mean nowadays the iPhone 4 is the same age as the 3Gs was uh when it was moved to the free price point but I think we talked about this a little bit last week and you know having an iPhone 4 class device at free um is is kind of a a a wild thing to think about I mean the iPhone 4 in 2010 was uh introduced a crazy display that we had not seen before um you know great Hardware obviously and a really solid camera and now you can get that for free on contract uh and if you compare it to the other phones that are available for free on contract it's like not even a contest yeah not even close even even though it's 2 and a half years old it's still not even a contest right no apple I have to say apple has figured out how to create a range of products and that's just to take it its amazing excellent old products and and keep them on the market and continue to lower the prices and I think that the you know the brand strength of the iPhone name carries all these products more or less equally so that you don't have these random names for the lowend products it it's a beautiful model and it it it's obviously working extremely well for them however I do think that they would have been very well served and the world would have been well served if they had uh if they had continued to to sell the 3Gs um as a just a dirt cheap prepaid uh device both in the US and abroad you imagine if you could get the 3GS for say $79 or $99 uh contract free uh it it would still be a great product even now as a prepaid phone right like that would be the go-to unlocked roaming phone to bring with if you travel to Europe or whatever right uh well the march of progress continues the iPhone is coming on Friday uh uh but tomorrow 19th no Day After Tomorrow No Tomorrow there's going to be uh an HTC event um we're expecting uh Windows Phone 8 devices I think from them um there's the Zenith the Accord and the Rio there's also been this 5in Android phone that's been floating around um and I mean I hope I mean we we've talked about this a lot that the one series and the 1X in particular hasn't uh helped Revitalize HTC much and so I'm hoping that whatever they're bringing to the table here will um be awesome first of all but we'll get serious support from carriers or Partners either Google or Microsoft depending on what it is they're announcing uh because I would hate to see HTC just you know Fade Into You know irrelevance I I don't think that they deserve that as a company yeah I I so you know we've seen we've we've seen um a few leaks uh from this supposed Windows Phone lineup from HTC and they uh uh I mean it's hard to get a sense it's really hard to get sense uh without actually seeing the devices in person and and you know being at the event or or whatnot to to to to feel out how they actually compare to what Nokia has on offer for Windows Phone 8 um and so you know I I don't feel comfortable really making any sort of definitive comment on these things but uh in general I do feel more bullish and again I know I say this with every new release of Windows phone but I feel more bullish about the hardware and the software going into this release uh than ever before for it's just a question of whether you know they get the like you said derer what you know they need the the the carrier support uh they need um they need to get their story straight with uh with updates and upgrades going forward they just need to to present I mean you know iPhone just keeps getting stronger and stronger and uh and you know if they want to compete in that end of the market they just need to to deliver an extremely powerful message uh going into the holiday season so hopefully I mean I I think that what the current rumors are tracking for an early November launch right for for most of these Windows Phone 8 devices including the 920 um yeah I don't know you know so we we've we've held you know I think that all three of us have held the 920 and it is a very beefy and heavy phone that I think is already a strike against it for people for anyone who's considering if you walk into uh say an AT&T store and you want to compare a 920 to uh to an iPhone 5 that's already a pretty powerful strike against it but it does have the the color range going uh for it and um and I think that that the Windows Phone 8 home screen just looks really cool I like the fact that you've got these multiple box sizes going on now um and uh yeah I mean we'll see I'm definitely going to there's no question about it that I'm going to own and use uh a Windows Phone 8 device of of some sort for some period of time I don't that's going to be one of these HTC's or a 920 or what um but I I said that with the 900 and I did I used it for several weeks and and and like I said before the you know the Achilles heel what ultimately killed it for me was the the lack of any sort of reasonable Gmail support so we'll see if uh I mean seriously all Google needs to do is enable its iOS web view on I on mobile I10 that is all they need to do and my prayers will be answered so we'll see if they can pull that off or if Google feels the need to pull that off I don't know that's a pretty junky fix if you ask me because you still have to go to the web view to you know deal with your no you you do yeah so you don't get you don't get proper notifications but you kind of do because so here's what I always do on iOS which is or this was before the sparrow days but uh what I would do is I'd set um I I'd set up a in exchange account pointing in my Gmail so I'd still get notifications and then I would I would put I would replace mail in the the fixed bar of icons at the bottom with a web icon pointing to the Mobile Gmail view so that you know and between the two kind of made it work and that's what I if theoretically if if uh Mobile Gmail worked properly on Windows phone that's what I would do on Windows phone but you get the the wet view which is completely worthless so we either need something that is the equivalent of sparrow for Windows phone or we need uh Google to fix uh the the very least the minimum effort fix is for Google to fix the uh the the the web view but we need something because the the the mail client I mean I get that it's great for like popy Gmail or what whatever it does not work well when you have something as rich and advanced as Gmail is especially if you actually put the time and effort into organizing it the way that you you can do if you you know if you take advantage of all the features I use priority inbox I use labels of the wazu and it's just it's completely unmanageable with a standard email client yeah I I agree there there's you know uh the the standard email client looks really great and it's uh fun to use at least on Windows 7.5 it was uh and it was very fast but it really lacked the uh robust Gmail support that you'd be looking for yeah so I think the last thing I want to talk about today is this insane thing that happened with Acer uh they were going to launch a phone based on the alun OS am I even pronouncing that right um and so they had like reporters going to this event and they just canceled it and they're like Google says we can't do this so we're not going to do it and like it's like what the heck happened and so then Google comes out and says yeah no we said they can't do it they can't launch this phone because it's based on Android and then the guys behind alun are like no it's not based on Android and there's been this back and forth between Andy ruin and the guys behind this this alun OS about whether or not it's a fork of Android um and whether or not Acer is allowed to launch a phone based on it and if they do that Google would you know kick them out and stop giving them support uh you know of like Google Apps and you know kick them out of the open handset Alliance it's a really weird story yeah so I I think the the damning I think that the the nail in in the coffin of Acer's story here was when Reuben I think it was Reuben who pointed out that uh Al yun's app store has pirated versions of Google apps in it Google Android apps so I mean like come on like what what's your defense at that point I mean theoretically I guess you could build a a platform that uh that is binary compatible with Android but uh first of all odds are you didn't and second of all that doesn't change the fact that you have these pirated apps chilling in your app store so right yeah so I mean the story from from from alun is that it they built this thing that they're not using the dvic uh engine which is the engine that runs you know bunch apps they're using their own custom thing that like mirrors its functionality which is ironic because dv's whole point was to do the same thing to Java right yeah anyway um so Google's saying no that's not true you're actually using our technology you know somewhere in here this is technically a fork and as a member of the Open Hand set Alliance um Acer has agreed not to launch stuff that is you know based on Android but not Android compatible um what's funny about that is you know Amazon's totally free to do that it's just not part of the open handset Alliance uh so there's been a lot of jokes running around about oh you know so ha haa Google's not so open anymore ha haa um and I don't know how I feel about that like part of me wants to like I don't know be sympathetic to this you know hating on Google for being evil about this and limiting one of their partners and telling them what they can and can't do um but on the other hand like I guess I'm kind of Happy to see the open handset Alliance finally actually mean something because to date it it seemed to me like it was just this you know PR shell and it didn't actually like have any teeth or you know there wasn't actually any real contributions from the other members um but this and even like you know Sony uh putting its stuff into this experimental project to launch a AOSP stock Android on Sony's handsets uh recently like it's starting to feel a little little bit more like an ecosystem and a little bit less like just Google's bag which is a totally ironic thing to say after Google just you know swung the hammer at Acer um I I have a different view I think that you know this this Hammer that Google swung is something that people have been wanting Google to do for a long time I think it went uh the way it happened was not how everybody wanted it to happen but people have been complaining about how you know you pick up one Android device and it doesn't feel like another Android device and you move to another Android device and it's a totally different experience and and I know a lot of people just wanted Google to put its foot down and say like you know you can conform to these standards or you don't get Gmail um and that's kind of like what happened here you know it Google said that Ali aliun is is not you know uh or Acer is not you know conforming to our standards with the Open Hands at Alliance uh with this alunos and you know if you you can do that but you're not going to get the open handset uh privileges um and I think that would a lot of people have been asking for Google to do that um but it just kind of went about the wrong way here so Le let's be clear I think that two years ago uh there's no way that Google would have done this they wouldn't have cared but I think that uh that what what Amazon did to Android is something that that Google never anticipated and I think that they are more anxious than ever to keep Android keep the spirit of Android uh close um and and we're seeing that bear out with this I I think that you know you you you put this exact story two years ago not Ruben not anybody else inside Google would have cared that this was happening but it's a different Google now and they have different priorities and and a different uh understanding for what they need to do to advance the platform in light of how successful Amazon was at forking Android in a meaningful way and you know went on to build successful products on top of it I don't think that Reuben ever anticipated that happening uh with with uh with Android yeah well you know the other thing about this that that rubs people the wrong way and I think rightly so is um that it was Acer uh I mean it feels like picking on the little guy if Samsung had gotten to the point where they were launching an OS that claimed to have Android compatibility do you really think that Google would have uh done this to Samsung answer true yeah yeah that's true but I mean you know it's also like I'm sure that there just wasn't proper communication between Acer and Google in the first place right um you know earlier on on this process um right but I I I take your point about about Amazon and what it's done with the Kindle Fire I think Google is finally drawn a line of this is where you know Android compatibility has to has to be and the question now is are they going to move that line to try and create more cons consistency across different manufacturers or is this where this line is going to stay right right I mean we we know there's still that that Wall Street Journal rumor from several months ago hanging over our heads that we haven't heard a peep about ever since about there being a line of Nexus phones supposedly announced right about now I'm expecting uh this to happen any time now if it if the rumor actually comes to fruition so you know if Google wants to expand the meaning of Nexus uh into something that's TR truly useful to Consumers then you know that that gives them more leeway to kind of ignore the rest of the noise but if they don't do that if they continue with the existing Nexus model which isn't very commercially successful in any meaningful way then yeah then then they might need to say okay well uh we need to rein in all of our oems and sort of create more consistency across the entire Android range which might actually be the more desirable you know as much as I would like to have a a a selection of Nexus phones to choose from that are you know true Nexus devices at the end of the day it might be more meaningful for Android or excuse me for Google to to put more uh you know to exert more control over their their main OEM Partners it's actually not a bad note to end on um now that the uh iPhone rumors have wrapped up and we actually know what the iPhone 5 looks like definitively um it's time for us to get some sweet sweet brand new Nexus action whether it's these multiple devices or just a brand new Nexus device from whoever it's going to be um it there is still no option of me to get stock Nexus stock Android on AT&T with LTE without hacking and I'm tired of that I'm tired of that situation I'm tired of the flagship Android Nexus phone um being on boring crappy Hardware with a terrible screen and even worse camera I'm ready for a really good Nexus phone yeah and it's it's I mean the Galaxy Nexus this wasn't um the most Cutting Edge phone when it was released and at this point it's pretty uh long in the tooth yeah well everybody thank you so much for watching the virge mobile show if you want to follow us uh you can comment on this post when it goes up you can follow us on Twitter as well we are all at Verge I am atbon Dan is at DC Seer Chris is at Z power of lad who you will hopefully see next week is at Vlad savov and like I just said we'll be back next week so tune in then thanks thanks\n"