Pod Insights The Vergecast Echo Look, RED announces a phone, and new iPhone rumors About this episode The week of Independence Day, Nilay, Paul, and Dieter get together in a classic format of The Vergecast to bring you the top tech news that hit the site this week. To name a few, we’ve got a review of the Echo Look, a new Android phone announced, and some breaking news in the middle of the show.
There’s a lot more in between that, so listen to it all and you’ll get it all.
04:48 - Amazon’s Echo Look does more for Amazon than it does for your style
25:17 - RED is making a $1,200 smartphone with a “holographic display”
32:07 - New report claims iPhone 8 won’t feature fingerprint sensor in display
41:08 - Ashley’s segment “Spotted”
42:16 - Qualcomm is trying to ban iPhones from being sold in the US
51:24 - Paul’s weekly segment “TOOTHPASTE PODS”
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Transcript 10,332 words · 4 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:04 Nilay Patel? Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of The Verge.com. I'm gonna tell you a couple of things, just to start. One, it's just, it's just the three of us again. So I'm here, I'm Neil, I'm Patel Dieters in San Francisco.
0:17 Speaker 01 I am, luckily, in San Francisco. I've, I've had a week and a half of just the worst travel.
0:24 Nilay Patel? And Paul is here in New York.
0:25 Speaker 02 Hey.
0:26 Nilay Patel? The other thing I'm gonna tell you is that Paul has next to him, a box, an empty box. They're building out more of the studio here. And we have discovered something called the Dinky Link DL85K IR receiver kit. So there's just, I can't get rid of these IR blasters.
0:43 Speaker 01 Is Dinky Link real?
0:45 Nilay Patel? It's called the Dinky Link, it's a trademark.
0:47 Speaker 02 TM, Dinky Link. I think they should call like the-
0:50 Speaker 01 It's an IR blaster?
0:51 Speaker 02 The IR, like, trade consortium.
0:53 Nilay Patel? They're, they're building it-
0:54 Speaker 02 Dinky Link.
0:54 Nilay Patel? IR trade consortium. They're so sad. They're like, we gotta keep it going.
1:00 Speaker 01 Shouldn't we save this for Paul's weekly feature that has the same name every week that we never forget?
1:03 Speaker 02 No, no, no, I got that covered.
1:05 Nilay Patel? He's got it covered. Okay. The, the third thing I will tell the audience is that this was the week, uh, that we celebrated our nation's birth.
1:13 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
1:13 Nilay Patel? Fourth of July. Um, and as such-
1:16 Speaker 02 240 years?
1:18 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
1:19 Speaker 02 Still going strong.
1:20 Nilay Patel? Doing great. Doing just fine. We're gonna make it through.
1:25 Speaker 01 Not to be that guy, but it's 241.
1:28 Nilay Patel? See?
1:29 Speaker 02 I don't know, I thought, I thought somebody said 240.
1:30 Speaker 01 And also not to be that guy, but it's, do you set the, the nation's birth at the Declaration of Independence? Or at the signing of the Constitution?
1:38 Nilay Patel? Um, well, that's a big spread.
1:40 Speaker 02 I think of it as the, I think of the Declaration of Independence as our primary founding document. Cause it lays out the principles upon which we were founded. And then we tried a couple of things.
1:52 Nilay Patel? Yeah, we iterated.
1:55 Speaker 01 We pivoted.
1:56 Nilay Patel? They're like, it's early days. Uh, and they spit out the constitution. They had, they had up to 12 messaging apps.
2:02 Speaker 02 The Declaration of Independence was our minimum viable product.
2:07 Speaker 01 Third, thirdly, my, my third, not to be that guy, and then we can move on is, can I just say that using the, using the phrase birth and nation in a sentence together is a very fraught thing. Cause if you screw that up, you end up saying the very wrong thing.
2:20 Nilay Patel? Yeah, it's true, but I didn't.
2:21 Speaker 01 Now we can move on.
2:22 Nilay Patel? Uh, so that's great. But because of that fact, uh, there's no news this week. So if you are listening to the Vergecast to be a roundup of tech news, we're going to get through it all in the next 10 seconds and then just chit chat for a while. It's going to be great.
2:37 Speaker 01 Yeah. I got feelings about, I don't know, stuff.
2:41 Nilay Patel? Feelings about stuff. The Vergecast on this, the first week of July. No, there's stuff. There's a little bit of stuff.
2:47 Speaker 02 First and most importantly, there's no Overwatch hero.
2:51 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
2:51 Speaker 02 Doomfist. How do you guys feel about Doomfist?
2:54 Nilay Patel? It's a great name.
2:55 Speaker 02 Here's my question.
2:56 Nilay Patel? Really good name.
2:57 Speaker 02 Doomfist is out right now playable on the public test realms, right?
3:01 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
3:02 Speaker 02 But it won't be available like on consoles and in like the regular ranked matches. You know, you can test Doomfist, but it's not like the real true playable character. So which day should we take off as a company? Should it be the public test realm day or the wide release day?
3:23 Nilay Patel? So in this metaphor, the wide release day is the constitution.
3:27 Speaker 02 No, no, no, no, no, it's not a metaphor. I'm just thinking, you know, we're a progressive 21st century media company.
3:35 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
3:36 Speaker 02 And I play Doomfist right now and I love you guys. I love coming to work and doing my job. But boy, I could be punching people.
3:46 Nilay Patel? On Fridays in New York, we typically, we, we ditch the office and go work in a bar. You can do that tomorrow. We have to bring the 21 inch Acer Predator laptop to the bar.
3:58 Nilay Patel? By the way, can I point out the Dinky Link is labeled for use with all types of cable and satellite boxes, works with LED, LCD, and plasma TVs, and then also CFL lighting, which I don't understand at all. Anyway, that's a fact.
4:12 Speaker 02 It would interfere with IR.
4:19 Nilay Patel? Alright.
4:20 Speaker 02 I don't know.
4:20 Speaker 01 This is a real weird hang. I was gonna talk about Zelda for the next 45 minutes.
4:23 Nilay Patel? No, there's news, there's actually news.
4:26 Speaker 01 Alright. If you haven't read Nick Statt's article about the Trials of the Sword, I highly recommend it. He nailed the feeling of it. It's a great piece.
4:35 Speaker 02 Zelda DLC, that's news.
4:37 Nilay Patel? Alright.
4:37 Speaker 01 Yeah.
4:38 Nilay Patel? Everything is news. No, there's actually news. There's a bunch of voice assistant news, which we're gonna string together into a bundle of news. So...
4:46 Speaker 01 We're gonna craft a narrative.
4:48 Nilay Patel? Yeah. Lauren Good reviewed the Amazon Echo Look, which is the weird camera. She was here, she had it here in the office when she was here last week. It is a startlingly weird device. I think her read on is, I mean, her headline actually was, "It does more for Amazon than it does for you." You should read her review, watch the video, it's all great. But here's what I want to say about that thing. It is stunningly strange to me that they would put out something that is so weird and creepy without promising you what actual value it would deliver. Right? So we encounter tons of these products all the time. Where literally Google will be like, "It's early days, but just try it out."
5:31 Nilay Patel? And like, as you people use it, we'll figure out what it should do.
5:34 Speaker 02 Hmm.
5:35 Nilay Patel? I don't think you can do that with a camera that's supposed to go in your bedroom.
5:39 Speaker 02 And watch you dress.
5:41 Nilay Patel? That part to me seems really weird.
5:44 Speaker 01 I will make one small counterpoint to that argument.
5:47 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
5:47 Speaker 01 Which is, she's right that it tells Amazon more than, gives Amazon more value than you get. I think that the like, comparison of outfits feature, her take on that also seems very accurate. It seems very random and not very helpful. But... There are people who get genuine, real value out of logging their outfit every day. And they can look back and see what they wore. They can have a, just a log, just a, a, a series of photos. Put in an organized, put, single place where they can have a nice picture of what they wore that day. And, you know, what they want to wear the next day. There is a genuine value there.
6:27 Speaker 01 Whether, taking, you know, a picture with your iPhone, uh, in a mirror and then putting that in an album doesn't already solve that problem for you.
6:35 Speaker 02 Right.
6:35 Speaker 01 Is a whole other question.
6:37 Speaker 02 Why is this $200?
6:39 Nilay Patel? Yeah, see, I, Dieter and I were talking about this, um.
6:42 Speaker 02 Because that's a great use case, but $200.
6:45 Nilay Patel? With your Echo Show review, like, yeah, so many, so much of the value of the Echo line is that it asks nothing of you. It sits there, then you talk to it and like, does something for you. I think it's different when you put a $200 camera in your bedroom. Like, it just, that thing is asking something of you. It is asking you to trust Amazon every second of the day.
7:05 Speaker 02 Hmm.
7:06 Nilay Patel? And I just, like, if you're not gonna, I, I get what you're saying, Dieter, about the pictures, but you have to deliver, like, a stunning amount of constant user value.
7:15 Speaker 02 I feel like half of the people I know have stickers over their laptop cameras.
7:19 Nilay Patel? It's a thing, Mark Zuckerberg has a sticker over his laptop camera.
7:22 Speaker 02 Right.
7:23 Nilay Patel? Why don't we put stickers over our phone cameras?
7:25 Speaker 02 We should sell a Verge sticker to put over your.
7:27 Nilay Patel? Ooh, that's not a bad idea.
7:29 Speaker 01 I'm thinking about getting an Echo Show.
7:31 Speaker 02 But that is a good point.
7:33 Nilay Patel? Really?
7:33 Speaker 01 Because I want a better, I want a better set of speakers so I can actually hear the news while I'm taking a shower. And I, like, having an Echo in the bathroom is genuinely useful because you can, like, ask it what, you know, is on your calendar and blah, blah, blah, blah. And the idea of having the better speakers and a screen that will just, like, cycle through what's on my calendar for the day seems really useful. The idea that I wouldn't, yeah, the Echo Show, um, I definitely would put some tape over the camera if it were in my bathroom.
7:58 Nilay Patel? Yeah, I, so I, the Echo Show has great speakers. Like, I listened to it a lot over the weekend. And I, it, to me, the, that HomePod, unless it is, like, transcendent every time you turn it on.
8:13 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
8:13 Nilay Patel? The, just selling it on audio quality alone is not a great.
8:18 Speaker 02 Well, it's got music facts.
8:20 Nilay Patel? It's got music facts. I mean, like, I just read this long Reddit thread about how it's doing DSP processing and what it's doing in the four-inch woofer, and the only speakers that can match are these like $80,000 BO Sun 90s. And I mean, I love that stuff, and I will read it all day and believe it, whether or not I truly, deeply understand what it means. But the simple fact of the matter is, most people can't tell. You just can't tell. Is it loud? Most people think louder things sound better. Most people think brighter TVs look better. And so the Echo Show gets real loud, and it has a screen, and that screen is kind of useful. I watched a bunch of YouTube videos on that screen over the weekend.
8:59 Speaker 01 Yeah. It's also kind of not useful. It really wants to display ads. They don't go full ad on the Echo Show, but they go like half ad.
9:10 Speaker 02 What's an ad example?
9:12 Nilay Patel? Hey, this movie's out. Just stuff like that. They're headlines. But they're all headlines about product.
9:17 Speaker 01 They're quote-unquote headlines.
9:19 Nilay Patel? They're headlines about money you might spend.
9:20 Speaker 02 That's how I feel about modern media.
9:22 Nilay Patel? Yeah. The stupid fake news.
9:27 Nilay Patel? They're fake news headlines about movies that don't exist.
9:32 Nilay Patel? Go see Avengers 7, out today. Just stay, Alexa, buy tickets.
9:37 Speaker 02 So there's a new voice assistant thingy in China, the Tmall Genie from Alibaba. So Google's blocked in China.
9:48 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
9:49 Speaker 02 Google, Google system.
9:51 Speaker 01 Well, they're not blocked so much as they, I mean, they're blocked, but they also pulled out. They got out of China.
9:57 Speaker 02 Both things.
9:58 Speaker 01 And it's been a long-running, every time anybody asks Google, like, there's a general Q&A session with Google, the first question's always, "So you're gonna make it back into China or what?" And there were rumors that maybe the store would get in there, and maybe it did in like a limited way, the Play Store. But it's still, I don't know, it's still a mess.
10:18 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
10:19 Speaker 01 That's why they're focused on India so hard.
10:20 Speaker 02 I feel like good for them, though.
10:22 Nilay Patel? Yeah, they're making a stand.
10:24 Speaker 02 Yeah.
10:25 Nilay Patel? I mean, I just don't think you can put any rando assistant in a speaker and call it a product. And I think that there's so much of that going on. And then I look at what Amazon is doing, and the show is a better idea about what the next phase of these things should be. And then I, you know, like... What's the, there's one with Cortana now. It's like a Harman Kardon one.
10:47 Speaker 02 Yeah.
10:48 Nilay Patel? I don't think that thing, you can't match that up. It's the same problem as the iPhone and the App Store. You can't just make another phone with another operating system and be like, this is just as good as the operating system everybody else uses. And I think that first mover advantage for Amazon is just going to be incredible. But I don't, what I don't understand is how they can make the show, which is great, and then make the look, which is totally confused. Like, it doesn't do much for you.
11:16 Speaker 02 It doesn't even look modern.
11:18 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
11:19 Speaker 02 It looks like, like early 2000s webcams.
11:23 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
11:23 Speaker 01 It's just a, it's just a big old lozenge.
11:25 Nilay Patel? Yeah, it's a, I don't know. But it's better that Amazon is putting out like 50 form factors.
11:30 Speaker 01 Lauren saw a teardown of the look and it has extra cameras in it that they don't tell you about. Like, they know it's creepy, so they've got the one camera, but there's another camera behind the black thing that's the depth sensing camera.
11:43 Nilay Patel? Oh my god.
11:43 Speaker 02 Wow.
11:45 Speaker 01 And I think it also has like an infrared sensor, which is, you know, which also sends out information.
11:51 Speaker 02 I would like the Echo Look if it was like, if it was an extension of like their Mechanical Turk program. It's like-
11:59 Nilay Patel? So like 400 strangers judge you?
12:01 Speaker 02 No, no, no, no, no, no.
12:02 Nilay Patel? Sounds like high school.
12:03 Speaker 02 In the, in opposite directions, like Amazon like was just upfront about it. It's like, look, we need to learn about clothes. We're really into them. We want to know more.
12:14 Speaker 02 For free, we will give you this thing. If you take seven photos of outfits every week, you know, you get to keep it and eventually we'll give you some advice back. Maybe sometimes we'll show you other, I don't know, just like, just like embrace the, the, the crowdsourcing of big data thing. It's exciting to me.
12:39 Nilay Patel? Here's what I want out of an Echo Look.
12:41 Speaker 02 Don't hide it from me.
12:42 Speaker 01 You know how when you, maybe you don't have this, but I've got, there's a little mirror by our front door and you leave the house and you're like, oh, look in the mirror real quick and see if you look like a doofus. If your hair looks funny or whatever. But I forget to do it because sometimes when I'm rushing out the door, um, and then I'll get on the train and oh, look, my fly is down. That's awkward. And then you're standing on the train and it's really crowded and you gotta like zip your fly up without anybody noticing that you're zipping your fly up. It's awful. I want an Echo Look that sits by the front door that sees me coming. And then like snaps a quick picture and then immediately does a bunch of information processing and then shoots me a text message that says, "Your hair looks really dumb right now. What are you doing? Get back in the apartment and fix it."
13:24 Nilay Patel? There's brownie on your forehead.
13:26 Speaker 01 Also the fly thing.
13:27 Nilay Patel? Paul?
13:29 Nilay Patel? How'd you get brownie there, man?
13:34 Nilay Patel? Well, that's stage two of the AIs to figure out positive effects. I provided an alibi for your situation.
13:44 Nilay Patel? Amazon's vast cloud resources have examined you. Oh, Amazon alibi? Provided one of three plausible backstories for your current condition. I would take that. I just think it's great for me. Speaking, by the way, of assistants, Wall Street Journal says Samsung making a smart speaker with Bixby, which was all but inevitable, but Bixby delayed in the United States because they don't have enough data, which seems very, I don't know. All these other assistants weren't delayed because of a lack of data. I don't, I kind of don't understand what is truly going on with Bixby. And I-
14:22 Speaker 01 I think Samsung doesn't either.
14:26 Nilay Patel? Well, their whole line with it on the phone is it's not meant to replace Google Assistant. It's meant to do all these other things on a phone, but if you make a speaker with it, now you're head to head with the assistant.
14:36 Speaker 01 Yeah, there's no, you don't, unless they really believe that there's like a deep smart things market for it and that the Bixby speaker will be better at smart things than anybody else. Also, Samsung's music service is MIA, so when they launch their smart assistant, it's gonna, I imagine it'll talk to Spotify, but they've, they partnered with Google Music for Bixby. And so it'll be a Google Music speaker? I'm not really clear. I, I don't understand why I would want a Bixby speaker as opposed to-
15:09 Speaker 01 Alexa speaker or a Google Home or a Siri speaker or whatever else. I'm also not looking forward to the platform wars in smart speakers like that just platform wars with phones was super fun with laptops and you know PCs, PC versus Mac, iOS versus Android versus BlackBerry versus WebOS versus Migo or whatever. Like that was fun. That was a blast. There was, you know, there was some competition to get apps if you, I don't know, you, you, you could like, you'd buy a new one every two or three years and then you could like comparison shop the different platforms and you could comparison shop different form
15:50 Speaker 01 factors and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But with home speakers, it's just the idea that there's going to be a platform battle between Siri and Cortana and Alexa and Google and Bixby just sounds exhausting.
16:02 Speaker 02 What's the
16:03 Speaker 01 Am I just old?
16:03 Speaker 02 What's the angry, because the thing I remember from that, that saga with, with all these different mobile platforms is like, look how much we paid to get Angry Birds on our app store.
16:16 Nilay Patel? Like that funded Instagram for like a hot minute, right? No, Instagram was never on Windows Phone. That was a thing.
16:21 Speaker 02 It never made it to Windows.
16:22 Nilay Patel? I think Microsoft couldn't pay enough.
16:24 Speaker 01 Yes, it did.
16:25 Nilay Patel? It did?
16:26 Speaker 01 It did eventually, but it came when it was too late.
16:29 Speaker 02 So what's, what's, what's the Angry Birds of smart home assistants? Is it Spotify?
16:36 Speaker 01 I mean, if Sonos is smart, it's Sonos.
16:41 Nilay Patel? Instagram on Windows Phone is still on beta.
16:46 Speaker 02 Beta, beta, guys.
16:51 Nilay Patel? Sorry, that's the saddest thing in the world. And it only has a 3.6 rating. Anyway, that's really sad.
16:58 Speaker 01 There's also, sorry, I just watched Get Out finally and the, the Microsoft product placement in that movie is hilarious. Like, I don't know, watching this movie, you suspend your disbelief whenever you watch any movie and I'm like, okay, I'm in it. I'm, I'm in this narrative world. I fully believe the creepy things that are happening here. Except you have a Windows Phone. I know you don't.
17:21 Nilay Patel? It really does take you out of the narrative.
17:24 Speaker 01 It's the least realistic thing happening right now.
17:28 Nilay Patel? No, I get what you're saying about smart speaker platform. I just, there was a big winner in phones. Like overwhelmingly, at least in terms of developer support, right? Like iOS like ran away with it. And then there was like a huge platform in Android. And it seems like Alexa is going to run away with it. And Google's gonna make the cheaper one that more people buy. Like it feels like the same thing to me.
17:55 Speaker 01 Well, I feel like Google is trying to change the terms of the debate by trying to make, you know, stuff feel like the web, or you could just ask it for anything and it'll go out on the internet and figure it out. Alexa's actually moving in that direction a little bit. It's now pretty smart where if you ask it to do something and it can't, if it knows about a skill that actually could do that thing, it'll recommend that skill to you. But the idea that these things are going to fight using the, the, the field of battle for a home assistant, for a speaker is very, very different than it was on phones. On phones, it was who has the coolest hardware, who has the fastest processor, who has the biggest app store, who has the best camera.
18:39 Speaker 01 But on home speakers, is it just raw number of skills? Is it sound quality? All of the things that are people are going to use to try and pick between these are really fuzzy. And they're all, other than sound quality. Well, with sound quality, it's actually worse because like it'll sound different in the store and in your house. And it's very subjective to describe it, blah, blah, blah, blah. If it's number of things the assistant can do, everyone's just going to throw big numbers at you and you're going to not have any way to compare them. I have no idea as a consumer walking into a store, what you're going to do to look at these five speakers or 10 speakers, whatever you can pick from, and make a coherent decision.
19:20 Nilay Patel? You're going to pick the one with the screen that's a hundred dollars cheaper than the HomePod.
19:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, there you go.
19:24 Nilay Patel? I mean, right? The show is $2.29, it has a screen and it's pretty loud. And like, unless you are so deep into Apple world, and it's not even that integrated into Apple world, like a thing you can't do with it is to play a movie on your Apple TV. Probably the next, the next Apple TV will do that, but it's like.
19:43 Speaker 01 I don't know, man, AirPlay 2, it's going to change your life. We know so much about how it's going to work.
19:48 Nilay Patel? Is it? Someone tell me. Do you know what AirPlay 2 is? Please send me an email. Cause no one seems to know.
19:56 Speaker 02 Call 1-800-NELI.COM.
19:58 Nilay Patel? That'd be great. That's a great phone number.
20:01 Speaker 02 But I made up.
20:02 Nilay Patel? Alright, I'm gonna.
20:03 Speaker 01 Anyway, Bixby, go ahead and release a speaker, but. No, don't, don't.
20:10 Nilay Patel? He tried. He really gave it a shot there.
20:12 Speaker 01 Samsung fundamentally, they want to take on Google and Siri. They want to do it, but they know they can't because they know it's not there. So they've got this other angle. Their story for explaining to consumers is really bad. It's not out in a real way. It's delayed. And now it's coming to a speaker. Cool. That's, that sounds like exactly, I want, I want the beautiful Samsung experience that I get on early versions, early iterations of Samsung software, talking to me in my house. That's what I want. I want TouchWiz from the Galaxy S3, the audio equivalent of that. That's what the Bixby speaker is gonna be. It's gonna be the auditory equivalent of TouchWiz on the Samsung Galaxy S3.
20:55 Speaker 01 It's gonna make a little water droplet noise every time you walk in the room.
20:59 Nilay Patel? That's gonna be great. If you're like, hey, Bixby, and it's like.
21:04 Nilay Patel? That is a version of the future.
21:07 Speaker 02 I do think Amazon's on to something. Eventually, the way we will think of these smart home assistants, they'll be impossible to separate them from the cameras. Either the camera will be built into them, or they will be connected to cameras throughout your home. But they're gonna know what's going, they're gonna know Dieter's fly is down and that I've got brownie on my forehead and, and like, they'll like, they'll, they'll like ask you if your kid is sick or like, where'd your dog go? Or like, don't forget to do the dishes before somebody's coming over. This isn't your calendar, you know? I really see, if, if these actually are not just a gimmick to set timers and play music,
21:47 Speaker 02 then they're, they're gonna have to continue to get a lot smarter about what's going on in your whole home. And I think that's definitely gonna involve vision.
21:55 Nilay Patel? Oh, there's no good soundboard.
21:59 Speaker 02 They're looking, this is supposed to be a touch wiz soundboard.
22:02 Nilay Patel? I found one. There's, I don't know.
22:04 Speaker 02 Yeah, we hit this survey that, um, morning, or a poll that Morning Consult did. Their priorities for, for voice controlled smart speakers. This is from consumers.
22:15 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
22:16 Speaker 02 Price, then speaker slash audio quality, then accuracy of device's voice recognition, then compatibility with devices you may already own, such as your smartphone, then access to a variety of music streaming services, and then ability for device to integrate with other services or platforms, such as controlling smart light bulbs. So skills is pretty far down the list.
22:39 Nilay Patel? Yeah. I mean, I think the killer app for this thing is still just saying play music. And I, yeah, to that extent, like the HomePod will be fine because it'll say play music. It'll play, if you have signed up for Apple Music, it will play some music at you. It will probably sound amazing. But if you are most, I mean, if you are most people, you think your white headphones sound great, right? You think your in, in, pack in iPhone earbuds sound just fine.
23:05 Speaker 02 Or you're not bothering.
23:06 Speaker 01 Well, you might not think that, but also you just don't care.
23:09 Speaker 02 Yeah, you don't care enough to, like, I feel like if someone came up to you and asked you, like, well, I'm sure they're not that good, but that's good enough for me, or I don't care.
23:17 Nilay Patel? Right. So why wouldn't you buy the cheaper one that sounds fine?
23:21 Speaker 01 Yeah.
23:22 Speaker 02 I D K.
23:23 Nilay Patel? All right, I'm gonna read this Squarespace ad. By the way, to the listener, I told you the show would be like this. I want you to know that. I did not make you a promise that we haven't. It's a chill, our nation was born this week. We're all taking.
23:36 Speaker 01 Coming up next, iPhone rumors. But first, this ad.
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24:40 Speaker 02 I made my own-
24:40 Nilay Patel? Everything's very inexpensive.
24:41 Speaker 02 I made a website in Squarespace the other day.
24:44 Nilay Patel? Yeah? Was it whyiserybrownymyforehead.com?
24:50 Speaker 02 No, someone needed a website. They had like a bad WordPress thing going on, and they're like, "Can you fix our WordPress?" I was like, "I don't mess with WordPress. I don't touch that stuff."
24:59 Nilay Patel? Do you use the offer code? Is it allowed? Are we allowed to use the offer code?
25:03 Speaker 02 I don't know. I didn't pay for it. I like built it and then handed it off to them.
25:08 Nilay Patel? Oh, but they could use the offer code.
25:09 Speaker 02 I told them to use the offer code.
25:10 Nilay Patel? The offer code, by the way, is VERGE, V-E-R-G-E. You get 10% off your first purchase. So go to Squarespace.com, check it out. It's great.
25:17 Nilay Patel? Paul, I want you to talk. Was it the Red Phone? Do you want to do your segment early? Or is it a different thing?
25:23 Speaker 02 I got another thing.
25:24 Nilay Patel? Yeah, another thing. Alright, let's talk about this Red Phone. I know you're hype about this Red Phone.
25:28 Speaker 02 Yeah. I love-
25:29 Nilay Patel? Explain why you're hype about this Red Phone.
25:32 Speaker 02 Okay. Red is a company, came on the scene like, I don't know, 2006 or something. They were like, "Hey, we set up a forum on the internet. We will post on the forum to tell you about fantastical cameras that we plan to build, but, you know, obviously this is going to completely fail and we'll never actually ship anything." They eventually shipped cameras, and then they shipped like the, well, their 8K Weapon camera-
26:01 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
26:01 Speaker 02 Was like what they shot Guardians of the Galaxy on. So, to me, it's like a real like success story of this like tech upstart, against all odds, you know, there's the cannons and the Nikons, but they weren't delivering what people really wanted.
26:14 Nilay Patel? I mean, we used to troll for news in the Red Forum. Where like the founders would post pictures of new cameras.
26:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, and that's the other thing. Yeah, they have like, they have the right sense of hype and buzz, which is just tantalize with just a little bit of information, keep people guessing, keep people waiting, because you end up waiting a long time for them to actually ship anything. And once they do, they don't ever make enough.
26:37 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
26:38 Speaker 02 And, but it, you know, people who have them, you know, are making cool things out of them. And they're like beautiful and kind of this really aggressive, black and red kind of way. So they announced a phone, the Hydrogen One, which has a 5.7 inch holographic display.
26:58 Nilay Patel? That means something.
26:59 Speaker 02 With nanotechnology.
27:00 Nilay Patel? Uses nanotechnology. It's gotta mean something.
27:03 Speaker 02 So here's my theory.
27:04 Nilay Patel? Because, and just before this, Red is not a company that bullshits about specs, right? They're like.
27:11 Speaker 02 The specs are the only thing that's real.
27:14 Nilay Patel? Yeah, that's all they do. So whatever these words mean, it presumably means something.
27:20 Speaker 02 Wait, I had, I had this PDF up. So, so they basically, they put out one photo of the phone, which is of kind of the back. You see a headphone jack, USB C plug. They've got this some interesting like proprietary-ish accessory connector that's gonna be like high bandwidth. The phone will work.
27:37 Nilay Patel? And like heat dissipation fins, it looks like?
27:40 Speaker 02 I mean, they put heat sinks on it because they just love heat sinks. Like, it doesn't matter if something's hot or not. They definitely put heat sinks on everything, and they did it in this case. But, let's see, where I have this.
27:51 Nilay Patel? Well, holographic nanoparticles are pretty toasty.
27:54 Speaker 02 That's true. That's true. Okay, so, so here's the thing.
27:57 Nilay Patel? I don't know if that's true.
27:57 Speaker 02 They've created their own file format called .h4v. They call it Hydrogen, Red Hydrogen 4 View Content, like the number four view content. And here's my theory of what it is, right?
28:14 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
28:15 Speaker 02 And Sean kind of said this in his write-up, so I'm basically stealing it from Sean. But if I'm wrong, I want to take full blame.
28:22 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
28:23 Speaker 02 Think of the 3DS, right? So like 3DS basically works by having pixels at different angles. And so when you look at it with, you don't need glasses, but you can see 3D stuff, right? So basically halves the resolution of the device to show you 3D images. And then remember the Fire Phone, right? It had those, all those cameras on the face of the phone.
28:44 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
28:44 Speaker 02 And when you like look around, you could kind of like peek around 3D objects. So imagine those combined. Imagine a screen that's 3D, but it's also like tracking your movements. So it like, so it's just real immersive content.
28:59 Nilay Patel? Why would you want this in a phone from Red with Heat Sinks? Does it run Android?
29:03 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's an Android phone.
29:05 Nilay Patel? Okay.
29:05 Speaker 01 Of course, I mean, it has to.
29:06 Nilay Patel? You, you.
29:07 Speaker 02 Actually, you know what? Now that, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
29:09 Nilay Patel? It says it.
29:10 Speaker 02 It's a standalone, full feature, unlocked, multi-band smartphone operating on Android OS.
29:16 Nilay Patel? Okay.
29:17 Speaker 02 That just happens to add a few additional features that shatter the mold of conventional.
29:24 Nilay Patel? I love this phone.
29:24 Speaker 01 It, it converts stereo to quote, multi-dimensional audio and it will quote, assault your senses.
29:31 Speaker 02 I know.
29:32 Nilay Patel? It has a headphone jack.
29:33 Speaker 02 It has a headphone jack. It's just, there's so much bullshit in this. And the phone is, is, is 1195 for the aluminum version, 1595 for the titanium version. We've seen one photo of the back of the phone. We don't really know what all this stuff is, but you know what you can do right now?
29:52 Nilay Patel? What's that?
29:53 Speaker 02 Pre-order this phone.
29:55 Nilay Patel? This is a phone like literally designed just for Marquez Brown.
29:59 Speaker 02 I know, I know.
30:01 Nilay Patel? Targeted to him, exactly him. They're gonna make two of them.
30:05 Speaker 02 He bought three.
30:05 Nilay Patel? Of course. I love that kid. I'm just saying, they're like.
30:10 Speaker 02 They know, they know their audience.
30:11 Nilay Patel? They had a bunch of leftover battery packs. I'm like, what if we just put a screen on him and call him a phone?
30:16 Speaker 01 And it has a modular connector on the back, which.
30:20 Nilay Patel? I really wish that, I love standard ports, but we really need a standard port for crap you attach to phones, because it's ridiculous.
30:30 Speaker 02 The essentials.
30:31 Nilay Patel? Essentials got its, there's the Moto Z thing, there's this, thankfully Project Ara got axed, so it's not a fourth standard. There's just too many different ways, too many connectors.
30:43 Speaker 02 Microsoft has those connectors, Apple has connectors, right, on the iPad?
30:47 Nilay Patel? Oh, the smart connector, yeah.
30:49 Speaker 02 Yeah.
30:50 Nilay Patel? But that's not quite the same.
30:51 Speaker 02 Those are a little different.
30:52 Nilay Patel? Yeah, because those are specifically for keyboards. Like, I don't, there's nothing else you can plug into a smart connector on an iPad.
30:57 Speaker 02 They're not like a high bandwidth thing. Yeah, I guess, I don't know, I don't know, I guess you could standardize the connector.
31:04 Nilay Patel? I mean, all I want to know is, what was the meeting like, where they're like, yes, go forth? Like, someone pitched this, this didn't come out of like a giant consensus brainstorm. Someone was standing around and they're like, we should make a fucking phone.
31:21 Speaker 02 I do not know how Red the Company operates internally.
31:25 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
31:26 Speaker 02 But my external experience is I imagine two, possibly three dudes saying, I wish we had this. It's like, well, can't we build it? And, and then they'll like tell them, but people say it's impossible. And then they tell themselves, you know what? We've done the impossible before, we can do the impossible again.
31:48 Nilay Patel? So it's basically the beginning of an action movie shot on Red camera.
31:52 Speaker 02 It's kind of like a self.
31:53 Nilay Patel? They were just watching down all the footage that was coming through the servers.
31:56 Speaker 02 Oh, movie.
31:58 Nilay Patel? They're like, we should, what would, if we had a montage sequence, what would it be about? Building the world's best phone. All right. There's other phone news.
32:08 Speaker 02 Hmm.
32:09 Nilay Patel? This one is weird rumor territory, and I think it comes down to what Apple is actually planning to do with the iPhone. So there's just reports out in the world that the iPhone 8 will not have a Touch ID sensor.
32:22 Speaker 02 I don't believe it.
32:23 Nilay Patel? I think it might just be on the back, because there's been a lot of case leaks.
32:27 Speaker 02 Right.
32:28 Nilay Patel? Thus far with, with the space for that sensor on the back.
32:31 Speaker 01 Yeah. On the back makes way more sense to me. If, if there's no Touch ID sensor, I have just a kajillion questions about how you'll do all the stuff that you do with Touch ID.
32:43 Nilay Patel? Because when you have something like Face Unlock, it just unlocks without you asking it to do anything. It's also wildly insecure. And Touch ID is an action. Like when you log into your bank app, or you pay with Apple Pay, or you unlock your phone, you actually have to actively choose, I am doing this thing now.
33:04 Speaker 02 Even when you're downloading like a free app.
33:06 Nilay Patel? Yeah, but it's like an authenticated button.
33:09 Speaker 02 Yeah.
33:09 Nilay Patel? Right? Go ahead. Is this, right? But you don't want your phone to just be authenticated all the time.
33:17 Speaker 02 No.
33:17 Nilay Patel? You want to have some of those authentication actions happening.
33:20 Speaker 02 I like the idea that-
33:21 Nilay Patel? If there's a Face Unlock.
33:23 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah. I like the idea you had the other day of like password protecting like certain apps or something. Like Touch ID-ifying for like to make a multi-user.
33:32 Nilay Patel? Well, so here's where I think this is getting confused. This is my theory. I could be wrong. All of the rumors were they're gonna do virtual home button.
33:41 Speaker 02 Hmm.
33:42 Nilay Patel? And they had figured out how to do screen through fingerprint scanning.
33:46 Speaker 02 Right.
33:47 Nilay Patel? And there's a bunch of like component makers out like showing this stuff off.
33:51 Speaker 02 Hmm.
33:52 Nilay Patel? But it seems like-
33:53 Speaker 02 It's slow as hell.
33:54 Nilay Patel? The delta between the component makers being ready and Apple needing to shit this phone is too high.
34:00 Speaker 02 Okay.
34:01 Nilay Patel? So they probably weren't able to put the fingerprint sensor on the front through the screen, which is I'm assuming what they wanted to do. And they just stuck it on the back. And so-
34:11 Speaker 02 They pulled a Samsung.
34:12 Nilay Patel? Yeah, so somewhere-
34:13 Speaker 02 That is exactly whatever Samsung did with the Galaxy S8.
34:16 Nilay Patel? Yeah, so somewhere in that murky chain of rumors and leaks and whatever, them taking it off the front and putting it on the back got turned into it won't have a fingerprint sensor.
34:27 Speaker 02 That sounds completely plausible and probably correct.
34:30 Nilay Patel? Right. One of the, one of the screen through component vendors was like, Apple didn't place the order. And that got turned into, but really they just moved it to the back. Because I cannot imagine them taking Touch ID away. Like, Apple Pay is built on Touch ID.
34:44 Speaker 02 Hmm.
34:45 Nilay Patel? And the idea of you like holding your phone to the reader and then like craning over to look at it makes zero sense to me.
34:51 Speaker 02 And that click noise slash vibration when you buy stuff with Touch ID.
34:57 Speaker 02 It's so satisfying. Love buying.
35:01 Nilay Patel? I gotta get a new phone. I think I held on to six S and imply the seven. It has like the weird pirate battery in it gets real hot all the time. It won't charge above eighty eight percent, which I believe is just a sign that I should watch Back to the Future. Because I don't want to think about the fact that I have a broken battery in my phone. I gotta get.
35:26 Speaker 01 So, okay. Let's assume for the sake of argument that they put the fingerprint sensor on the back of the phone. Let's also assume, because I think it's pretty safe, that for the sake of argument, that the high end iPhone, the tenth anniversary iPhone, has a near bezelless display on the front. Let's also assume for the sake of argument that they will iterate upon their dual camera system, but it will still, you know, it's not going to be a massive crazy improvement. What is going to be hardware wise on the tenth anniversary iPhone, the, you know, super fancy one that John Gruber is assuming is going to cost fifteen hundred dollars?
36:10 Speaker 01 That wasn't already done, potentially albeit not as elegant away on the Galaxy S8?
36:18 Nilay Patel? Yeah. Depth sensing camera for AR kit.
36:22 Speaker 01 Yeah.
36:23 Nilay Patel? Right?
36:23 Speaker 01 I think that's it.
36:24 Nilay Patel? Isn't that the answer?
36:25 Speaker 01 I think.
36:25 Nilay Patel? Crazy AR kit stuff?
36:27 Speaker 02 I feel like they can't put a like a
36:32 Speaker 02 a feature like that on a hyper premium. I haven't heard all these rumors about a fifteen hundred dollar phone, but they can't make a hyper premium phone.
36:40 Nilay Patel? They're not really rumors.
36:41 Speaker 02 That needs developer support to be really good. Like if they.
36:45 Speaker 01 Okay, so the going rumors are going to be that there's going to be a seven S and a seven S plus, and there'll be iterations on the current, you know, form factor, blah, blah, blah, blah. Then there'll be a premier, super fancy, high end iPhone that will have a bezelless display and whatever the new way to authenticate is and presumably depth sensing cameras. And it's going to cost a ridiculous amount of money and it's not going to come out until next year. And. The big question I have is, what can Apple do to this phone to justify a thousand dollar plus price that isn't just slight iterations on the stuff before? If they had had an under-screen Touch ID, that would be something amazing.
37:28 Speaker 01 If they, I don't know, there's a million other things I suppose you could do to a phone to make it that.
37:33 Nilay Patel? Holy crap, wow.
37:35 Speaker 01 Blow your mind.
37:36 Speaker 02 They can make it out of moon rocks or something.
37:40 Nilay Patel? Sure, you could.
37:41 Speaker 01 But I feel like it's gonna, the whole value proposition of this high-end iPhone is gonna ride on the quality of the cameras, unless they've got some insane thing up their sleeve that I would not think.
37:52 Nilay Patel? Or the screen, right? The new, an OLED screen with ProMotion, like, there's all kinds of stuff.
37:57 Speaker 02 Yeah, like, I feel like the bezel-less makes it, like, interesting and premium enough. I just, man, that's true, that's gonna suck. Like.
38:07 Nilay Patel? Stunning analysis from Paul.
38:09 Speaker 02 Like, I've, I always assumed, like, the iPhone 7, which was so, so similar to the iPhone 6S, which was so similar to the iPhone 6. It's like, it's like, they've been saving it up to go real different. So if the iPhone 7S isn't different, and you gotta, like, wait till next year to get an anniversary edition to get something different? That's a lot of years of nothing different.
38:35 Speaker 01 The enormous narrative around the 7 was, we held back because we're gonna do something crazy.
38:42 Speaker 02 Right, right.
38:43 Speaker 01 And they, and that was seeded out, that was not, that was not just a bunch of, like, guessing. That was very obviously put out into the world.
38:51 Speaker 02 It's definitely hard to do this, this new, different fancy stuff. But at some point, we got, we're ready for it, and Samsung's doing some pretty fancy stuff.
39:01 Speaker 01 Well, the question is, why can't, if Samsung can figure it out on their timeline, how is Apple not able to figure it out? I, I don't know, we'll see. That's what I'm saying. I think, though, the amount of bad information flooding into the world right now is.
39:15 Speaker 02 Yeah, there was, like, rumors today about, like, the iPhone 8, like, it's like, at some point, like, we can't. Can't take seriously rumors about phones that aren't out for three years.
39:27 Nilay Patel? Yeah, or you can't take seriously rumors about hardware decisions on a phone that will presumably ship in September or be announced in September because they've already started building them because they have to, because they have to make a commitment in a day.
39:38 Speaker 02 Yeah.
39:39 Nilay Patel? Okay, here's what's gonna happen. So as you know, we've been doing a bunch of experiments on Anchor because we need to get more podcasts into our mod of podcasts. So we've been doing tons of segments. You should listen to them there. Go to Anchor. It's great. But Ashley Carmen did one that's really cool. She called it Spotted. So I'm gonna read an ad. We're gonna run Ashley's segment. We're gonna come back, wrap this thing up.
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41:08 Speaker 03 A woman in a blue sleeveless blouse, wearing matching blue eyeshadow, sits next to me on the train. She has Candy Crush loaded up on her phone. She begins to play. After five minutes or so, her eyes start to close. She nods off. Her phone doesn't have automatic locking, so Candy Crush stays loaded, waiting for someone to find a match.
41:39 Speaker 03 She begins leaning to her left away from me.
41:45 Speaker 03 Eventually, that falling motion wakes her up, and she immediately looks down to see her phone, still in her hand, still running Candy Crush. As if nothing had happened, she makes a few more candy matches. But then, yet again, she closes her eyes and falls back asleep.
42:03 Speaker 03 This pattern continues for the entirety of the ride, which was at least six stops. I feel like I got a glimpse into her nighttime routine while in a very public place. Also, why no automatic lock, girl? Your battery's gonna die.
42:16 Nilay Patel? We're back, and there's breaking news. Qualcomm, everyone's favorite company.
42:21 Speaker 01 Qualcomm?
42:22 Nilay Patel? Has sued the International Trade Commission to block importation of the iPhone, because they say it... was it six, Dieter? Six patents?
42:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, there's six patents that have to do with extending the iPhone's battery life. And importantly, and this is the key thing with Qualcomm, Qualcomm says that these are not, like, they're not related to a standard. They're like specific Qualcomm technologies that Apple isn't paying for.
42:46 Nilay Patel? Well, that makes sense. So, man, I gotta, I gotta do the big Qualcomm piece.
42:51 Speaker 01 It's been a long time since we've had a good knockdown ITC fight. Because there was a long time ago, HTC actually lost one of these and like temporarily had its imports banned. And then it got it figured out.
43:04 Nilay Patel? So, the international... this is deja vu for me. So, when you file a patent lawsuit, there's two ways to go. You can choose them both if you want to, but there are two ways to go. I can just sue you.
43:18 Speaker 01 Tell...
43:19 Nilay Patel? Federal court. Just do it. You're violating my patents. You go through a lawsuit, dah dah dah, you pay me. Or I can go to the International Trade Commission and say, "Hey..." These patents are being infringed and this product is being imported. I would like you to halt all imports of this product. So people do them both, because the ITC is way faster.
43:38 Speaker 02 What's the, how does the ITC work?
43:40 Nilay Patel? It's not fast.
43:42 Speaker 02 Like, like, like, are the ITC police running around? Like, or it's just like, have countries agreed to do this?
43:49 Nilay Patel? Or have, like, shipping companies? It's the US International Trade Commission, so it's inside the United States. It's a federal agency.
43:57 Nilay Patel? And it's got a bunch of administrative law judges in it.
44:00 Speaker 02 And it can shut stuff down.
44:01 Nilay Patel? And it can, it can halt imports. It can do, it does a bunch of other stuff, too. But this is like a main function.
44:07 Speaker 02 So Qualcomm is only filed for this?
44:10 Nilay Patel? They just filed. So what you do, so like when Apple was suing all the Android makers, it would file a lawsuit. And then it would file to block imports to the ITC. Because what, because that's death. You can wait the lawsuit out for years and years and years, and it'll take forever. But if you can't import the phones, you're toast. So this is like, patent holders do this routinely.
44:30 Speaker 02 Sooo.
44:31 Nilay Patel? If you got a lot of money.
44:32 Speaker 02 I mean, I've never heard of Qualcomm, but apparently I use them every eight seconds.
44:37 Nilay Patel? That ad's so creepy.
44:39 Speaker 02 Those ads are still up in the subway.
44:40 Nilay Patel? The, the, the complexity of the Apple Qualcomm dispute is so high that I have yet. I mean, I've, I've talked to Qualcomm's general counsel, I've talked to Qualcomm people, I've talked to Apple about it. The, the complexity of what they are fighting about is so, it's just so beyond my ability to synthesize it into something that makes sense. Because at the, the core thing that I think is not intuitive to people is that Foxconn sells iPhones to Apple. That's a thing that happens.
45:14 Speaker 02 Right, right.
45:15 Nilay Patel? So, Apple doesn't have any licenses from Qualcomm. Foxconn has licenses from Qualcomm. And then there is just an insane shell game of money that happens. So Apple pays Foxconn, Foxconn pays Qualcomm, Qualcomm pays Apple back. This is all true.
45:34 Speaker 02 What does Qualcomm pay Apple for again?
45:37 Nilay Patel? Like literally like marketing agreements and like buybacks and like things.
45:42 Speaker 02 Like rebates?
45:43 Nilay Patel? Yeah, so they have, they had what was called a master agreement. So there are rebates. So like, none of this comes down to Apple makes the phone and they need a license from Qualcomm.
45:51 Speaker 02 Right.
45:52 Nilay Patel? That is what I think most people would think. That is to some degree what Qualcomm thinks. But really what happens is Apple orders the phone from Foxconn. Foxconn makes phones for everybody, so they have this license to Qualcomm. And then Apple buys the phones from Foxconn at like a wholesale price. But it's weird because Apple also buys all the tooling for Foxconn. So like just the amount of complexity in the transaction stack is so high. I can't, I can't just come right out and be like, here's the problem. And Qualcomm's version of this is, well, there wouldn't be a problem if you just paid us. Which is a very simple answer.
46:37 Nilay Patel? But, you know, Apple's version is they want to charge us a percentage of the price of every phone at retail. Which I think intuitively in most people is also extremely unfair. Because if you buy a phone with 64 gigs of memory versus 128 gigs of memory, Qualcomm shouldn't make more of a patent royalty on that phone.
46:58 Nilay Patel? So I, I don't know, but they are at it. Like this is existential for both companies in a tremendously important way.
47:04 Speaker 02 And so they're saying they want the government to ban new iPhones. They're talking about phones like the iPhone 7, iPhone SE. Like newly manufactured phones from coming to the country.
47:15 Nilay Patel? Cannot import any products that infringe the patent. You have to, they have to name the products, so they named, they named the products. But yeah, this is just one more lever to pull for them to get to a settlement. But they are at it. I mean, there's news about this case every week.
47:28 Speaker 02 That's the end of this, right? That the end of this is very clearly a settlement. It's not, I mean, I.
47:35 Speaker 01 Are they really going to go to court? Are we going to have another big, long court case like we did with Samsung?
47:40 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
47:41 Speaker 01 There's no way that they could do that. I mean, I guess they could. I mean, there is, there's totally a way they could do that. But when you say that it's existential for both companies, I can't understate how true that is. You, Apple is not going to be able to replace Qualcomm tech or parts or patents in its phones. Qualcomm has too much power. Qualcomm, if it didn't get its stuff into the iPhone, they're like, that's got to be some enormous percentage of their business.
48:10 Nilay Patel? Right, so actually Qualcomm's bigger business is not Snapdragon. It's radio standard development and licensing. Right, so their, their patent licensing business is massive. And the reason they have that business is because they invested all the money in LTE. So like LTE, for the longest time LTE was not operable without Qualcomm technology somewhere in your life. And you can argue about how much you love or hate patents and patent licensing and all this stuff. But they invested the money and they want to see a return on it. And this is, that's the business model they built around it. So now they're racing ahead and they're doing 5G, just like everybody else is doing 5G. And that's their business and on and on and on and on. Apple's putting Intel modems in some of its phones, but you're right.
48:55 Nilay Patel? You can't, you just can't not pay the patent money to Qualcomm. It, there's just too much of the LTE standard is wrapped up in their technology. So someone has to pay some time.
49:07 Speaker 02 Maybe this isn't the right time for it, but I would love to have like a nice, solid round table debate about the benefits of patents. Because I used to be pretty into them.
49:19 Speaker 02 I, I, I'm a hundred percent, I listened to like this really long, really great podcast episode about like how drug, drug patents work and stuff. And it's just, I'm just done with them. People can find a way to be profitable without protecting those profits with patents. I'm just, I'm just done with them, but I want to, I want to hear all sides, but I'm, I'm done.
49:40 Speaker 01 You're over it.
49:41 Speaker 02 I'm just done. Love you Qualcomm, thanks for being in my life all the time. But this is just, it's just annoying. Like, I'm sure Apple and Qualcomm, they're, I mean, they're just being aggressive businesses that are trying to, you know, make the most money they can. And they both think they're right and they, you know, but this is just an annoying thing to have a fight over.
50:01 Nilay Patel? Yeah, I could talk about that for a long time, but I don't think we should do that now.
50:06 Speaker 02 Stay tuned for seventy small, three-minute installments on Anchor about patents.
50:13 Nilay Patel? All I will say is they are a huge incentive to invent something first. That is, that is unbalanced, a good incentive to provide to people who make things. Are they being abused like crazy? Probably. But that, I think the incentive is important. Cause otherwise, like, do you read about the, the, the woman who claims she invented the fidget spinner? It's like a whole thing. She didn't actually invent a fidget spinner. She invented another thing that spins. Which does not look like a fidget spinner at all, but there's, there's all this coverage of her. And she's like, I didn't have enough money to pay for my patent renewal, so now I get nothing. But then you're like, that thing isn't a fidget spinner.
50:54 Speaker 02 Right. I think that's the problem is when you dig into a lot of these patents.
50:58 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
50:58 Speaker 02 They're a little broad. They're a little vague.
51:00 Nilay Patel? There's been, since Apple and Android and all that went down, there has been a substantial amount of reform in the system.
51:07 Speaker 02 Yeah.
51:07 Nilay Patel? So like, it's not quite as bad as, it's not great. It's just not as terrible it was when literally every day I was writing a patent case. But, Roundtable, that's what Vergecast listeners want.
51:20 Speaker 02 I'm, I'm ready for it. Name the day. I'll be there.
51:23 Nilay Patel? I'll figure it out. You've got a segment.
51:25 Speaker 02 Every week.
51:25 Nilay Patel? Every week, same name, same time, rarely forgotten.
51:29 Speaker 02 Toothpaste pods.
51:34 Speaker 02 We had tortilla pods. We had bags with some juice in them and you'd squeeze them, but now we got toothpaste pods. Uh, there's this, uh, full mouth toothbrush called AMA brush. I don't know how you say it. AMA brush. It's um, it brushes all of your teeth, all at the same time. And it's like, it looks like a, like a sports mouth guard, but with like silicone, uh, bristles on it. Put it in your mouth, then you magnetically attach this handle to the front. So it looks like you're wearing like a, like a huge pacifier. And then it, and then it vibrates the mouth guard to brush your teeth in 10 seconds.
52:17 Speaker 02 They claim they can save you a hundred days of your life. If you brush your teeth like this. And then, but the key, in my opinion, is that they have a proprietary, or somewhat proprietary toothpaste pod that's refillable. Or it's not refillable. You have to buy your toothpaste pods from them because the toothpaste needs to be slightly more liquid to be able to be injected into this mouthpiece automatically. And then you spit.
52:47 Nilay Patel? How much does it cost?
52:49 Speaker 02 Uh, it's like a hundred bucks, hundred, 120 bucks. There's a, there's an optional wireless charging pad. So the setup is, you know, you have a mouth guard, your wife has a mouth guard, and then you can use the one handle for both of them, right?
53:01 Nilay Patel? Okay.
53:01 Speaker 02 And you just set them on the wireless charging pad and pick them up.
53:04 Nilay Patel? So you just like hold it up to your mouth?
53:07 Speaker 02 You put it in your mouth.
53:08 Nilay Patel? The mouth guard.
53:09 Speaker 02 The mouth guard is-
53:10 Nilay Patel? What's the handle for?
53:12 Speaker 02 You attach it to the front, right?
53:15 Nilay Patel? Okay. The handle's the thing that vibrates.
53:16 Speaker 02 Like imagine biting an apple. That's where you put it. Like you put the mouth guard right where you'd bite an apple. And that attaches magnetically to the mouth guard, then injects toothpaste into the mouth guard. Then it vibrates the mouth guard for 10 seconds to brush all of your teeth simultaneously.
53:34 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
53:35 Speaker 02 And then you're done. Then you spit.
53:38 Nilay Patel? Still not really following the, so you just bite them at, you like, and you- Yeah, it brushes all your teeth at once.
53:46 Speaker 02 Okay, okay.
53:47 Nilay Patel? You know, when you brush your teeth and you put like spend 10 seconds on each tooth. This thing just spends 10 seconds on all of them at the same time.
53:52 Speaker 02 Have you ever had an apple?
53:53 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
53:54 Speaker 02 All right. Imagine first you have a slice of an apple, right?
53:57 Nilay Patel? Yeah, yeah.
53:57 Speaker 02 Put that literally in your mouth and bite down on it, right? Like your mouth is full of a slice of apple. Now you take a small apple and put it to your lips and that's magnetically attached to the apple.
54:11 Nilay Patel? Apple slice.
54:12 Speaker 02 Already in your face.
54:13 Nilay Patel? This apple, this apple thing is not helping. Here's what I want you both to ask yourselves. Have, has Neil Hei successfully trolled us into explaining this thing three times? Because the answer is definitely yes. Now, what other fruits is it like?
54:30 Speaker 02 Uh, I've done the apple thing with oranges. Like you take an orange slice that's still, it's still, it's got the skin on, you know? It's like that.
54:42 Nilay Patel? It's like that. Watermelon?
54:45 Speaker 02 No.
54:46 Nilay Patel? Too big?
54:46 Speaker 02 Watermelon's too big.
54:47 Nilay Patel? What if you have a big mouth? It's tiny watermelon, big mouth.
54:52 Speaker 02 I just love this video because every time I try to explain this, I'm visualizing this Kickstarter video and the two models that like model this thing, it looks like they're in pain when they put it in their mouth. It's like, ah!
55:03 Nilay Patel? Hey, look, the future is not pretty.
55:06 Speaker 02 Exactly. That's what I tell everybody.
55:08 Nilay Patel? You're gonna brush all your teeth at once? You're gonna look like you're in pain while you do it. Okay. I think that's the show.
55:14 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
55:14 Nilay Patel? Look, there was not a lot of news this week. We apologize. I hope you all enjoyed yourselves. We certainly did. We always do. But next week is a new week. Things are gonna start happening again. One very important plug is that next week Lauren Good's new video series, Next Level, starts. It is awesome.
55:34 Speaker 02 Oh, boy.
55:34 Nilay Patel? So you're gonna see here, we're gonna have it on the Vergecast next week. Like it's gonna be a whole thing. There's ads on the site. We're doing ads for our own thing.
55:42 Speaker 02 Oh.
55:43 Nilay Patel? It'd be crazy. We're buying our own ads.
55:44 Speaker 02 See? Told you.
55:46 Nilay Patel? What?
55:46 Speaker 02 Media.
55:47 Nilay Patel? It's all, what? What does that mean?
55:53 Nilay Patel? But it's awesome. I've been, we've been, we've been working on it hard. She did an incredible job. So, look for that next week. It's called Next Level. It's gonna be huge. Lauren also has a great podcast that you can listen to. Too Embarrassed to Ask, Kara Swisher has Recode Decode, Peter Kafka has Recode Media. They're all wonderful. You can go listen to that stuff. Go to Anchor, listen to all the experiments. Let us know which ones you like. Let us know if you have ideas for new things we should try. I'm promising you, we will be rolling out new podcasts soon. There's also Verge Extras. A bunch of stuff is going on Verge Extras on that feed. So, listen, watch, enjoy. Also, go on Instagram, because Instagram's great. Instagram's the only good thing on the internet right now, in my opinion. Oh yeah, go to iTunes.com/verge, leave us a note, leave us a review. You can tweet at Paul, Paul's at FuturePaul. You can tweet at Dieter, Dieter's at Backlon.
56:38 Nilay Patel? I'm at Reckless. That was it. That was our nation's first podcast. It's not, it's not what it was. Goodbye, rock and roll.
56:53 Speaker 02 King George have made a terrible mistake.
56:55 Nilay Patel? Take us back.
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