iPhone X Review

The iPhone X is finally here. Nilay had the chance to review it, so, along with Paul, Ashley, and Dan, he discusses what it’s like to use the phone in the real world as well as what the process of reviewing it was like. We also welcome Phil Esposito, The Verge’s lead video director, to the show for the first time to discuss the roller coaster that is working on the two videos we produced throughout the week. There’s a whole lot in between that — like Paul’s weekly segment about a robot dog — so listen to it all and you’ll get it all. 03:22 - iPhone X first impressions 24:33 - iPhone X review with Phil Esposito 37:16 - Animoji 50:14 - Paul’s weekly segment “Can form an emotional bond with members of the household while providing them with love, affection, and the joy of nurturing and raising a companion” 53:48 - The HTC U11 Plus was originally intended to be the Google Pixel 2 XL Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hey Vergecast fans. After you've gotten updated on the developments in tech this week, come join us at Worldly, Vox's foreign policy podcast. It's Jen Williams, Zach Beecham, and me, Yulchid Risen, with your weekly guide to making sense of the wider world, the big stories, the small ones, the depressing ones, the funny ones. You can find us in your favorite podcasting app. Come subscribe, rate, review, email us at [email protected]. We'd love to hear from you.

• 0:23Nilay Patel?

  This episode of The Vergecast is brought to you by Qualcomm Snapdragon Gigabit LTE. With download speeds up to seven times faster than typical home Wi-Fi, Snapdragon Gigabit LTE can turbocharge all of your connected apps. You can stream 360-degree videos in 4K with minimal buffering. You can access files in the cloud nearly as fast as you would if they were stored on your phone. You can download hours of movies or music in a matter of seconds. To learn more, visit snapdragon.com/gigabit today.

• 0:51Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of theverge.mobi/biz. That's a URL. Yeah, a friend of mine today on her Instagram story, she's like, "Today I learned that URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator." Oh, really? And then her next story was like, "I feel so much better about everything." Like, she, like, made her face. What does URI stand for? Indicator? Informant? Anyway, this is also part of the Vox Media Podcast Network, of which I maintain that our section is the best section. Absolutely. I'm Neelai Patel. Paul Miller is here. Hello. Dieter is out this week. Come by. So, we're replacing him with a, like, a rotating cast of luminaries.

• 1:36Nilay Patel?

  Okay. So, Dan is sitting here. Hey, Dan. Hello. Dan Seifert. Yes. Ashley Carmen is here.

• 1:42Speaker 02

  Hello. I can't believe you described us as luminaries.

• 1:44Nilay Patel?

  Luminaries. Well, Ashley, I'm excited that you're here, because the other podcasts in our fleet...

• 1:50Speaker 02

  The Armada, I've heard you refer to it as.

• 1:52Nilay Patel?

  The Armada of two, two things. Is your show. Why'd you push that button?

• 1:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:57Nilay Patel?

  Which is going great, and I think people should listen to it. Tell us about the show real quick.

• 2:00Speaker 02

  So, in the show, we talk about decisions we make with technology and more of the social implications behind them. So, our past episodes have been about super likes on Tinder, celebrity likes on Instagram, like, going back to when my boyfriend liked a picture of a butt on Instagram. He has to listen to the podcast to know what I'm talking about.

• 2:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 2:19Speaker 02

  So...

• 2:20Nilay Patel?

  You gotta get in there. It's going great. What's your next episode about next Tuesday?

• 2:22Speaker 02

  Next Tuesday, it will be published very in the, early in the morning for all you Vergecast listeners, so please subscribe so you can listen. But, it's going to be about sharing your passwords to Netflix, or Hulu, or streaming services with your significant others or friends.

• 2:37Nilay Patel?

  Wow. And I will tell you that right before we recorded this show, I was listening to them do pickups, and it is hilarious. So, listen to that.

• 2:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, there is a very good story from our audio engineer, Andrew, who does the Vergecast too. You're gonna want to hear this story.

• 2:50Nilay Patel?

  Alright. But Ashley's here just because...

• 2:53Speaker 02

  You will laugh.

• 2:54Nilay Patel?

  I consider Ashley to be my personal emoji expert. And I'm gonna make her play with an emoji on the phone live.

• 3:01Speaker 02

  Wait, can I just say my favorite new emoji for iOS is the brain?

• 3:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 3:05Speaker 02

  The brain is great!

• 3:07Nilay Patel?

  And then later in the show, our video director, Phil Esposito, who has made the iPhone 10 videos with us and our huge video team, he's been on a real roller coaster of emotions with this phone, because he's been watching me use it this whole week. He's gonna join us. But, that leads me right into it, which is it's iPhone 10 week. Yeah. And it's been a wild ride. You're listening to this on Friday. Our review, our full official review, will have published. I'm updating the one on the site, and our review video will be up on YouTube, so you can watch it there. The review video, at this point, Phil is literally editing it while we record it. Hmm. It's hitting like 15 to 20 minutes, because there's so much, but I think it's gonna be good.

• 3:49Nilay Patel?

  Is there like a montage where you're like a child, and then you get a little older and a little wiser, and now you're... Well, there's definitely a montage in which I got the phone on Monday, and we published a review on Friday.

• 3:59Speaker 03

  We, we took a picture of Neelai when he first got the phone, and we'll take a picture when this view, uh, review publishes.

• 4:03Nilay Patel?

  I look like old Obama.

• 4:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, it'll be old Obama picture.

• 4:07Nilay Patel?

  So it's been a ride. Explain the situation. What happened? How'd you get the phone? Okay, so usually, I think, listeners to Verchess know, we get things a little bit early. Every now and again, a Verchess listener is like, Dieter's not talking. I don't know how's the thing. Like, it's happened. But usually, we get things a week or so early, and then we get a full period of time to review it so that we can publish a review that's like informed and well thought out. Last week, we were talking because we did not have the phone. Yeah, it should be very obvious when this thing's happening. But Dan operates most of our review program. Embargoes are pretty normal, and they serve a purpose. Readers want reviews to be well-informed. Companies don't want snap judgments.

• 4:51Nilay Patel?

  We would like to take our time. Like, they work. There are issues with them, whatever, but the fundamental concept is you get some time, you agree to not talk about it, so that you can publish a good thing at the end, and bring it to service out of it. Apple, this time, did something different with the 10. For better or worse, I actually think it's fine. We had to work really hard, but that's why we're here. Apple gave us the phone on Monday, and they said in 24 hours, you can start publishing. They gave other people some other kinds of access. So I think Matt Panzerino at TechCrunch had it for a week, Nicole Nguyen at BuzzFeed, who is great, by the way. I encourage everyone to read her stuff. I think she's a rising star. She had it for a week, and Lanzunoff at Mashable had it for a week. So they had it early. And then, this was like a controversy that I think was completely overblown.

• 5:37Nilay Patel?

  Apple held a hands-on event for YouTubers, pretty good YouTubers, to come in. They have like a loft here in the city. They basically had the same hands-on access that we had at the launch event. And then you got to it early. I think it's great. Like, honestly, that's great. I watch as much YouTube as anybody. We run a YouTube channel. Go crazy. The thing that I think was hard for us was we wanted to like participate, and I think our audience, I hope, wants us to participate, so we like raced up a 24-hour. I had it for 24 hours, made a video, so like literally making the video while I'm like unboxing the phone and setting it up. There was a moment where I used a feature for the first time on camera. It's like a lot of that, right? So I can't do battery life testing. I can't do performance testing. I basically like-

• 6:21Speaker 03

  Barely got apps installed by the time we had to-

• 6:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, like it was setting up. Like, we got a question like, is the phone hot? And I was like, it's hot as shit right now because it's installing every app I've ever downloaded in history. All of this is fine. I actually had a really good time making that video. It was like, it was that thing where you're like, there's a deadline and you're like, everyone's gonna work really hard and come together. That video was great. Then we like, decided we're gonna publish a review, because we can publish a first look review. I've reviewed many products in 24 hours before, actually. Motorola used to be-

• 6:49Speaker 03

  It's not ideal, but we've done it.

• 6:50Nilay Patel?

  We've done it. Like Motorola used to be super guilty of this. They would like, hand me a phone and be like, "Tomorrow." And I'd be like, "Alright, everyone, it's a Motorola phone."

• 6:59Speaker 04

  It has a pentile to explain, it's really bad. Done it again.

• 7:02Nilay Patel?

  One more time, right? Uh, so it's like, not out of our scope of capability. And I was like, this is a unique moment for us, in that it's rare that I get to he- hear from the audience while I'm reviewing the thing. So we're gonna go up with like, here's the first draft, ask me questions, I'll update the review, and we'll make a full-on review video with, like, your questions integrated into it. It's something we've never done before, so it's a- Right, it's a challenge, it's also like, a big opportunity. Super excited to take that opportunity. That is all I have done this week, is like, use the phone, test the phone, monkey with the phone. It's been wild. It's been fun. And like, our whole team is like, all around us. Like, I, every time I use the phone for like, 20 minutes, like, another video director like, pops up out of a bush and is like,

• 7:47Nilay Patel?

  "I need the phone!", and like, runs away with it for a while. Uh, James Barham is constantly taking test photos with it. So we have the iPhone X, the reviews are out, here's what I'm gonna say, and then we can like, dive into the things. It's a really good iPhone. They didn't actually change a lot about the fact that it's an iPhone. So, the way you unlock it is different, and the screen is bigger, and there's an emoji.

• 8:07Speaker 04

  Those are large fonts.

• 8:09Nilay Patel?

  But like, it's an iPhone. And you either think that is the best thing in the world, and a lot of people do, or you don't, right? And like, it's not, I think the people who are deep into Android are not gonna, not gonna be swayed by talking pigs in iMessage, right? And the people who love iOS are not gonna be like, "This ruined all of my expectations", and like, buy another phone. But I think the people who are like, "I want a bigger screen in a smaller package", they're gonna be tempted by it. And the people who love really beautiful hardware are gonna be like, "This is really beautiful hardware." Yeah. Once you dry, once you dive into it, it's the same, the fundamental experience of it is largely the same as using an iPhone 8.

• 8:49Speaker 04

  I think i- it's really striking. I can't get over it. I, I, I remember Dieter was like, "Don't use the Essential Phone, you'll hate bezels forever", and I was like, "This is fine",

• 9:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:01Speaker 04

  And you don't use the the the SA, you'll hate bezels forever. And it's like, I I think the SA looks beautiful, but it's not really my my aesthetic.

• 9:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:10Speaker 04

  And there's just something about the iPhone X is really getting me aesthetically.

• 9:14Speaker 03

  So you think it's it's visual, when you say it's striking, it's visually striking.

• 9:18Speaker 04

  Visually striking.

• 9:18Nilay Patel?

  It's beautiful. Yeah.

• 9:20Speaker 03

  Well, except for the back.

• 9:21Nilay Patel?

  No, I mean, so what Dan is pointing out, because the back actually looks also just like the iPhone 8.

• 9:27Speaker 04

  It's glass back. The back's not great.

• 9:29Nilay Patel?

  But the camera bump is gigantic.

• 9:32Speaker 03

  It's gigantic, and the fact that they switched the orientation makes it stand out even more. And we've got, I mean, if you've seen the coverage earlier this week, we've got what Apple's calling the silver one, which is basically the white one. And I think every reviewer has that model.

• 9:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:46Speaker 03

  And it is not a flattering color on this phone. It's like not a not a pure white. So like, if you compare it to the white on iPhone seven or whatever that had a front white front, if you compare the white to that to this, it this looks dull and dingy.

• 10:02Nilay Patel?

  Oh, man, we've already scratched the back of this phone.

• 10:04Speaker 03

  It's got a glass back that you can scratch. It looks dull and dingy. And then the chrome frame, the surgical steel that Apple claims, just kind of looks kind of cheap to me. I'm I personally ordered a space gray one, and I'm very happy that I did not get the silver model.

• 10:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I ordered a space gray one, too.

• 10:24Speaker 04

  Here's here's the way I think of the the parts of the phone that are not the screen. It's a tenuous frame around a portal to, as what Neil I points out, iOS 11, which is still a thing. But it just looks more like a portal than any phone I've seen.

• 10:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's you know what it is? And I I think this is a really interesting decision they made. They didn't curve the screen around the sides like Samsung does, and the bezels are actually pretty thick, like, for what they are.

• 10:52Speaker 04

  But but regularly thick.

• 10:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so it's it's basically a black border with notch at the top. And then, like, a beautiful display. And I think the black border actually makes the display pop out. Like, I think it makes it look really good.

• 11:04Speaker 03

  The fact that the display is is basically amazing, like,

• 11:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 11:08Speaker 03

  helps sell it all.

• 11:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, it's right. I mean, this is like the Johnny Ive line, like, we just want it to be all display.

• 11:15Speaker 04

  We want the hardware.

• 11:17Nilay Patel?

  I'm not paying a lot of attention, but that's just a thing I want. You know, like smokes a huge spliff and gets in this Ferrari.

• 11:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's an Aston. It's definitely an Aston.

• 11:32Nilay Patel?

  It's beautiful. Like, there's no getting around it. The thing that struck me as I've been using it more and more is it is the aspect ratio of the display is confusing people. So it's a bigger diagonal number. It's 5.8 inches and the iPhone 8 Plus is 5.5. But this has a taller aspect ratio, so it's actually smaller. And it's way more. It's way more like an iPhone 8 than you would expect. It reminds me more of going from the 4 to the 5. Than from like the 6 to the 6 Plus.

• 12:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's basically a taller iPhone 8. Like, it's the same width as an iPhone 8.

• 12:05Speaker 04

  But the rounded corners, that's what really confuses me. The rounded corners mean that you can't. I was trying to develop an application the other day on the Mac. And I managed to draw a pixel on the screen.

• 12:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 12:20Speaker 04

  You know, in a window, you can draw a pixel on the top left corner. You could draw a pixel on the top right corner. But on a Mac application, the bottom two corners are slightly rounded. Which means I could not draw a pixel there. There's a, there's a no-go zone.

• 12:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 12:37Speaker 04

  So there's a lot.

• 12:38Nilay Patel?

  Paul hates rules.

• 12:38Speaker 04

  I hate.

• 12:39Nilay Patel?

  He just wants to be free.

• 12:40Speaker 04

  Rules. I want to be free. I mean, I think a part of what makes this phone look so striking are these curved corners, but there, there's a lot of wasted space.

• 12:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean. There's a ton of wasted space. One of the things that bugged me is that up by the notch, like the notch itself doesn't actually bother me all that much.

• 12:59Nilay Patel?

  You, you learn to ignore the notch within minutes.

• 13:02Speaker 03

  What I can't ignore is the fact that Apple aligned the status bars and battery and time with the bottom of the notch, leaving all this like screen space above them unused. And like, I wish they were just vertically centered between it.

• 13:17Nilay Patel?

  I don't think anyone knows what to do with the bunny ears. Like.

• 13:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:21Nilay Patel?

  For the one thing that truly bothers me about iOS 11 on this phone, apart from a lot of things, is that when you pull down from the left side, it's the notification sheet and it like, it pulls down over the thing, over the display, and that makes a lot of sense to me. And then you pull down from the other side and Control Center like fades in from nowhere.

• 13:43Speaker 03

  I just, I just want to point out-

• 13:44Nilay Patel?

  And I just don't understand it.

• 13:46Speaker 03

  Android had that interaction with Android 4.4, uh, KitKat, I believe, and they, uh, went back on it because it's a bad interaction.

• 13:55Nilay Patel?

  And also, I, I actually didn't get to this in the review, I don't think it's in there. The only way to see whether your Bluetooth is connected or the battery percentage is to pull down-

• 14:04Speaker 03

  Oh, this annoys the hell out of me.

• 14:06Nilay Patel?

  So they, because the notch eats up all that space.

• 14:09Speaker 03

  And they have all the space above the icons-

• 14:10Speaker 04

  You can't put the percentage number on the battery?

• 14:12Nilay Patel?

  No, you have to pull down Control Center and then it shows you what's going on with Bluetooth and it shows you the battery-

• 14:17Speaker 03

  Send it back. Paul, Paul just verbally spiked this phone into the ground.

• 14:22Speaker 04

  I have always just living life between-

• 14:24Speaker 03

  I live and die by the battery percentage.

• 14:28Speaker 03

  Like, I don't, I don't care about LTE signal, I don't care about Wi-Fi connectivity status, like, all that stuff can like be through a swipe down because if it's a problem, I'm gonna look and check it. Battery percentage, I need to know like as quickly as possible so I know whether I'm gonna make it or not.

• 14:45Nilay Patel?

  It's very dire.

• 14:47Speaker 03

  It's serious business.

• 14:48Nilay Patel?

  I mean, you can still see it, you can be like, oh, that's pretty low.

• 14:50Speaker 02

  Dan, I just imagined your life was like chargers everywhere.

• 14:53Speaker 03

  Why do you think I have chargers everywhere?

• 14:56Speaker 02

  I just imagine you would never having a dead phone.

• 14:58Speaker 03

  No, no, that's the goal, is to never have a dead phone. But in order to never have a dead phone, I need to know what its battery status is.

• 15:04Nilay Patel?

  I'm just buying you a battery case. It's gonna be fun.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  He loves wireless.

• 15:07Nilay Patel?

  Are they making a battery case for this thing? I haven't seen one yet. Um, but I'm sure they will, I mean-

• 15:13Speaker 03

  I don't-

• 15:14Nilay Patel?

  Really? They made one for the six and the seven and the eight. Did they? It's all the same case. Yeah, I guess you're right. A lot of people, by the way, asked about reachability. This whole phone, so the answer, the short answer is it is there. Hmm. The long answer is that everything about this phone requires you to like learn a complex system of moves. It's like wizarding school. Yeah, so you're like, you swipe up from the bottom, you're like, I got it. Nailed it, I'm gonna be so good at using this phone. You figure out Face ID, it's like, gotta be a little closer to your face than you think, we get into that. Levio saw. Yeah, and then you're like, okay, app switching, I'm into it. And you swipe up and you hold, and you're like, I didn't get it. Alright, I'm gonna do it again, and then like you start to feel it, you're like, okay. Alright, that one was a little harder, you got it.

• 15:57Nilay Patel?

  And then it's like reachability, and you're like, I, I suck at this phone. What's your success rate on app swiping? So app swiping, you just swipe at the bottom. No, you just did accessibility. I just blew it. So app swiping- So far, we're at 0%. You swipe along the bottom. What are you doing? I'm not doing, I'm under pressure. It's all move. There you swipe a gap. It's like, I was so good at archery at practice, now I'm in the Olympics, I'm just firing arrows into the stands. I hate when I get to the Olympics. And I do way worse than I did in practice.

• 16:30Nilay Patel?

  So swipe.

• 16:33Nilay Patel?

  This is the Olympic, this is the phone Olympics, that's how to think of it, that's the Vergecast. Yeah. You swipe along the bottom, it's super easy, it's fine. That's good. And then reachability, where you like pull the interface down. Right. Which is a thing that you desperately need, because to get to control center, you gotta pull down from the opposite corner. Yeah. You like start halfway on the dock and like pull down. And I'm like, I'm getting better at it, but it took me a day or two to figure it out.

• 16:55Speaker 03

  We forgot about the giant waste of space below the keyboard, too.

• 16:58Nilay Patel?

  Oh yeah, and, and, Dan, is this gonna be the whole show?

• 17:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, basically.

• 17:02Nilay Patel?

  Dan hates the phone.

• 17:04Speaker 03

  Dan hates the phone that he just spent $1,200 on.

• 17:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, when you open Safari or the keyboard, there's a huge buffer at the bottom. Safari has a lot of Chrome at the top. The usable content area on this phone consistently maps to the iPhone A. A lot of controls get moved into like the top and bottom zone. But you're often looking at a thing, especially if you have apps that aren't optimized, like Gmail, Google Docs, Spotify, they all run with what I'm calling software bezels.

• 17:35Speaker 03

  I mean, it looks like, you know, our managing editor TC said this earlier this week. When you open an app that's not optimized, like Google Maps, and you look at it, it looks like an iPhone 3G.

• 17:47Nilay Patel?

  Right, because it's got the Chrome bezel. I mean, the apps are getting optimized fast. I talked to Apple about this and I was like, you know, when they moved to the 6, it took forever for app developers to upgrade their apps to the 6. And you would see the big time and like this big silly keyboard. That's all still there if you find an app. It's like the big silly keyboard is still there on this phone. But Apple's point was, we think it's going to go faster. We're helping developers. We also went through the pain with the 6 of rolling out Auto Layout in the dev kit. So Auto Layout will take you a long way there.

• 18:20Speaker 03

  What makes them think it's going to go faster? Like if anything, when the 6 came out, it was the new iPhone and the new iPhone that everyone bought, right? This is one of three new iPhones that, you know, half the people or, you know, whatever, buying new iPhones this season or over the next year, maybe buying an 8 or an 8 Plus, and it doesn't matter if the app is.

• 18:41Nilay Patel?

  Right, so they think it's obvious that the people who buy the 10 are like early adopters. They're very vocal. They clearly have money to burn. So if you're an app developer and you want to like do in-app purchases or all the things that you do, subscriptions, you're incentivized to like service your richest customers, basically.

• 19:04Nilay Patel?

  And then the other, so that's one piece of it. So there's like incentive there that's financial. And then it's just easier because iOS since the time of the iPhone 6 has gotten a lot better at laying out apps.

• 19:15Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 19:15Nilay Patel?

  Right? So the auto layout system inside of the dev kit is just more useful.

• 19:20Speaker 03

  I bet.

• 19:20Nilay Patel?

  That's their argument.

• 19:21Speaker 03

  I bet like the, you know, the indie developers are gonna be the ones all over it. Like, they're gonna be the ones updating their apps and they're gonna, because they get a press cycle out of it, all the

• 19:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the PRs are coming in.

• 19:31Speaker 03

  You know, will cover it, will even cover some of the more interesting ones. And it's good for them and they'll get more customers from that. I'm more concerned about like Google updating its suite and Microsoft and like all of like the big companies of apps that I use all the time and rely on every day and are kind of slow and lumbering and take their time doing things. Like, you know, Google's apps are like, they're, they're kind of good on iOS sometimes, but they take forever to get new iOS features. Like, if you're on an iPad and you want to use slide over and split screen and stuff like that, like, like Google Apps, like, took forever to get that, if they even have it at this point.

• 20:06Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 20:06Speaker 03

  So that's more what I'm worried about.

• 20:08Nilay Patel?

  The last Google lock update for the iPad actually, they replace the entire interface with a screen that just says, please buy a Pixelbook. I thought that was very disturbing. Uh, Chase updated its app yesterday. It's MPR. It's like, now we support Face ID. And like, opened it, sure does. Giant software bezels.

• 20:24Speaker 03

  Yeah. So Chase, let's, let's be clear. Chase is done.

• 20:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 20:28Speaker 03

  They shipped Face ID support.

• 20:30Nilay Patel?

  They figured it out.

• 20:32Speaker 03

  The bezels will remain.

• 20:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 20:33Speaker 03

  And like, that's my point is like, the big apps, like the companies that have zero incentive to update their apps, Google, Microsoft, Chase, these established companies that aren't even selling their apps, they're free apps and you're gonna use them anyways. Like, they're not gonna, like, that's what I'm worried about, waiting for those updates.

• 20:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Uh, the one I keep bringing up, this is actually super funny. Uh, I was texting Walt about the phone. He was super interested in it. Um, and I was like, I'm worried about this app thing. He's like, it'll be fine. And I was like, I bet you, uh, like $10 that Delta will not have updated its app in a year. Cause it took Delta two and a half years to remember that the iPhone 6 was out. It's like, I'm always on flights. I'm like, I'm like, fuck you, Delta. Like, should I tweet at them? This is ridiculous. Like, no.

• 21:17Speaker 03

  Delta doesn't care. You're still using it.

• 21:18Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, so I say this to Mossberg and he just replies, well, it's a fucking airline, Neil.

• 21:24Nilay Patel?

  But on the whole, I think that Apple's argument was there's gonna be the first immediate wave, then there's gonna be like the fast middle, that's what they were calling it. And I think Google will be in that fast middle, like YouTube already updated.

• 21:39Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 21:39Nilay Patel?

  It's in Spotify's best interest to update, but they'll probably pull it off. And then there's gonna be the trailing, and everyone's gonna have a different selection of the apps that trail. And if you follow, if a lot of your usage is in that, the reality is this phone is gonna feel a lot like an iPhone 8 to you, just you're gonna open a bunch of apps and you're gonna get that screen size.

• 21:57Speaker 03

  How many, how many apps are having trouble with the bunny ears or whatever we're calling them? Cause I know there were some when we first got it, like day one, like Dark Sky was not laying out properly and stuff like that.

• 22:09Nilay Patel?

  Uber had that logo under the. Yeah, Uber's still do, none of this is a huge, Dark Sky's still broken. I was hoping it updated.

• 22:16Speaker 03

  Love you guys, Dark Sky, great app, please.

• 22:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, there's a reason it's on my home screen.

• 22:19Speaker 03

  Of all, of all apps, please update that.

• 22:20Nilay Patel?

  It's gonna be fine. Like, I, I'm not actually worried about the bunny ears being, like, you don't use that a lot. Overall, the screen is this massive upgrade, and whatever little price you pay is the early adopter price. Like, the whole world hasn't followed you down this road, but you have a beautiful screen. You're gonna be great, you're gonna love it. I think it looks way better than Samsung screens. I think it looks way better than the Pixel 2 XL screen. The, like, the Pixel 2 XL screen to me is like a deal breaker. I have one now.

• 22:49Speaker 03

  Oh, absolutely, I agree.

• 22:50Nilay Patel?

  And I just, I don't like looking at it. My SIM card's still in my Pixel 1, which by the way is currently my favorite phone, cause it's, it's just like a wonderful thing. And I have one and it took so long to get it, and it's like so special to me. I don't know, like, I put my SIM in this and it automatically re-enrolled me an iMessage.

• 23:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, boy.

• 23:05Nilay Patel?

  And my friend, like, it was like, welcome home.

• 23:07Speaker 03

  It told all your friends, it's like, he's a blue bubble again.

• 23:09Nilay Patel?

  It, my friend's like, you're a blue bubble again. And I was like, oh man, I can't do this with you. And then I started sending out emoji, and it was like, I love this, I love it. So maybe it's gonna stay in here, who knows? All right, we're gonna take a quick break. Our video director, Phil Esposito, is gonna join us after the break. I'm gonna read this ad this quick, and then Phil's gonna join us.

• 23:29Nilay Patel?

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• 24:13Nilay Patel?

  glow-in-the-dark underwear, you'll also get free shipping and 100% satisfaction guarantee. Go to meundies.com/verge. That is meundies.com/verge. Does your underwear glow in the dark? It doesn't yet. Okay.

• 24:29Nilay Patel?

  Hear that? That was me ordering. I heard. We're back. Phil.

• 24:34Speaker 05

  Hi.

• 24:34Nilay Patel?

  Hello. I don't think Phil's ever been on the show before.

• 24:36Speaker 05

  I have not.

• 24:37Nilay Patel?

  So, Phil, for listeners of the show, Phil's our lead director in the tech group in our video team. He's the one who makes a lot of the reviews that you've been seeing. He, I would say he and I have been on a process, a journey of discovery together. Because like, he was, if you watched our preview video and there's me talking in the car, that's Phil in the car with me as I'm unboxing the phone. Day and night, Phil and I have been playing with this phone together. Phil, I would describe your current situation as a roller coaster of emotions.

• 25:08Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, my current situation is in wanting to buy the phone.

• 25:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 25:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, a little bit. I was gonna preorder the phone. I was super, I've been all hype since this phone came, you know. I was out in California for it. I was like, this is it, I'm buying it. I've been using-

• 25:23Nilay Patel?

  For the launch. So, if you watched our hands-on video, Phil was at the launch event with us and he's the one who shot the hands-on video.

• 25:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, and the only upsetting part about that was I didn't remember actually touching the phone when I was there.

• 25:34Nilay Patel?

  Those days are terrible.

• 25:35Speaker 05

  Right. But, we're back and we had the phone and it's cool, but I don't think I'm gonna get it anymore.

• 25:41Nilay Patel?

  Why is that?

• 25:42Speaker 05

  Um, because it's like, fine.

• 25:45Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 25:46Speaker 05

  It's not a-

• 25:46Nilay Patel?

  That's what I mean by a roller coaster. 20 minutes from now, Phil's gonna be like, "I'm so hyped about this phone."

• 25:51Speaker 05

  It depends, because it's a cool phone, but at the same time, it's like, still just a phone. And I thought it was gonna be a little bit cooler, but then I'll do something and like, I'm looking at it right now and it looks awesome.

• 26:02Nilay Patel?

  It really does look awesome.

• 26:03Speaker 05

  It's like, the best looking phone, and my whole point to that was, you know, Android phones that do the bezel-less thing are kinda like, fine, because, you know, every Android phone looks different, but when Apple does it, it's a totally new look, so I don't know.

• 26:18Nilay Patel?

  Seriously, I'm gonna have you back in 20 minutes and you're gonna be, you're gonna be off the charts.

• 26:22Speaker 05

  Well, I'm currently editing, so I'm gonna be-

• 26:24Nilay Patel?

  He's a little low. So here's what I really wanted to talk to you about. I'm happy that you shared your story with us. But, we published our preview video, sorry, I'm just being a jerk. No, I, I-

• 26:35Speaker 03

  Thank you for telling us your journey.

• 26:36Nilay Patel?

  I feel, I care deeply about your feelings. Uh, but, we published a preview video. In that preview video, I had problems outside, in bright sunlight, in weird lighting. You have been watching me unlock this phone, put it down, pick it up and unlock it again.

• 26:52Speaker 04

  Do you have Phil here to see if you're a truth teller?

• 26:55Nilay Patel?

  Yes!

• 26:55Speaker 05

  I'm just here to verify.

• 26:56Nilay Patel?

  I definitely feel like no one believes me.

• 26:59Speaker 04

  Alright, alright. Phil, confirm or deny, sometimes it was hard for Neelai to unlock the phone?

• 27:05Speaker 05

  Confirmed.

• 27:06Nilay Patel?

  I'm telling the truth!

• 27:09Nilay Patel?

  No one believed me!

• 27:11Speaker 04

  Phil, confirm or deny, that sometimes Neelai exaggerate?

• 27:16Speaker 05

  Sometimes.

• 27:17Speaker 04

  Oh, interesting, interesting.

• 27:19Speaker 05

  No, but even-

• 27:20Nilay Patel?

  I see what's happening here, Phil.

• 27:21Speaker 03

  I stood next to Neelai many times this week, waiting for him to unlock his phone, and he's not exaggerating a ton.

• 27:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, when we were shooting-

• 27:30Nilay Patel?

  That's right, Dan. But Dan hates the phone. This is like ridiculous.

• 27:32Speaker 03

  No, see, you guys got me all wrong. I hate out of love. I just want that unused space to be used.

• 27:38Nilay Patel?

  Dan Seifert, I hate out of love. That is the title of your memoir in the airport, dude. The Dan Seifert story. I wanted to unlock faster. I want the unused space to be used. Like, that's all I want. Phil?

• 27:52Speaker 05

  I mean, look, when we were, when we were shooting the impressions video, it was like clearly hit or miss. There was no like purposely holding it far away. We were like, just in your natural doing off camera, the inconsistency like made everything that we shot, you know, accurate.

• 28:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Here's what, here's what I've learned. Cause now I went and talked to Apple about it. They apparently had their engineers watching our preview video and like.

• 28:18Speaker 05

  Which is awesome.

• 28:19Nilay Patel?

  Trying to do, like measure where my hands were. Here's what, here's, here's, here's my final take on it after this week. Face ID works. It is actually a really useful and nice upgrade over Touch ID in a lot of ways. First of all, it worked. Phil's just like holding the phone in my face. So yeah, if you pick up somebody else's phone and point at their face, you can unlock their phone. Great upgrade for that particular use case. It's way simpler to set up than Touch ID. It requires virtually no understanding to use in the way that Touch ID sometimes required some understanding to use. Like I'm gonna put my finger here, it's gonna lock, I'm opening it. You just look at the phone, it's unlocked. It's almost like not having a passcode. So a huge upgrade just in getting people to secure their phone.

• 29:00Nilay Patel?

  It is fast in almost every lighting condition and it like works. It never failed so bad that I was like, I've gotta put it in my passcode. But it changes how you hold the phone, which is funny because it leads you to a lot of you're holding it wrong jokes. So if you're like me and you're always checking your phone, just like out of your pocket, you have to move your, how you hold the phone. You have to bring it closer to your face and be more intentional about it. If you're in weird lighting or in particular walking, you definitely have to like try harder in a way that you did not have to try with Touch ID. And I, the New York Times published their review today too, and they noted walking around in sunlight didn't always work. Do you wish there was a fingerprint sensor on the back?

• 29:45Nilay Patel?

  No, it, it has not occurred to me that I want that. Okay. So that's what I mean, like it is a good and useful upgrade over Touch ID. Apple is on the warpath. I think if you read some of the friendly publications to Apple, they're making a lot of comparisons to Touch ID in the early days. But I think that's somewhat disingenuous in that we are well past the early days of Touch ID. So if you, if you're here with a good thing that works and you hit reset. You can't be like, but remember three years ago? It wa- it's just like three years ago. Like, you've set an expectation of how things should work, and now you're hitting reset. You've gotta just accept, you gotta just take the lumps. But I think the lumps are worth it, cuz it mostly works. But, sometimes it doesn't.

• 30:27Nilay Patel?

  Like, I woke up this morning, it was early, I wasn't wearing my glasses, I picked up my phone, and like, had it close to my face. Didn't unlock. It was just too close to my face. So I had to like, change how I held the phone this morning. Which is fine, but you're gonna notice that a lot.

• 30:41Speaker 04

  To be fair, I, I have lots of, I don't know, I get like sweaty thumbs. I have lots of problems with Touch ID. Maybe I didn't set it up right. Like, there are a lot of times where, or it's just my phone, it's like wet, cuz I'm in the rain or something like that. There are a lot of times when I end up putting in my Pasco.

• 30:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And then the coolest thing we did with Face ID is we, Phil and Tom, our, Conner's our other director, figured out we can just get a night vision camera. So we have, well, explain it.

• 31:09Speaker 05

  Uh, so if you use any camera with a infrared mode, basically, which like, turns on night mode, and you shoot, we actually, we figured this out from the Xbox Kinect, cuz the Kinect does it the same exact way, which just like, makes total sense that this is a baby Kinect. Uh, it shows all the dots on your face, and it looks really, really insane.

• 31:30Speaker 04

  Do you have to, if you're using a night vision camera, cuz typical night vision camera has its own like flashlight of-

• 31:36Speaker 05

  So, ours, just like, how, you can turn that on and off.

• 31:39Speaker 04

  Oh, okay.

• 31:40Speaker 05

  So we just like, keep it off. Uh, but yeah, normally a night vision camera is like projecting an IR light. Uh, but this one's like, really great.

• 31:47Nilay Patel?

  Which one, what, what do we have?

• 31:49Speaker 05

  Uh, it's some Canon like Handycam.

• 31:51Nilay Patel?

  Literally, it's like-

• 31:52Speaker 05

  I think it's like $200.

• 31:54Speaker 04

  Was it, I thought it used to, it used to be like a Sony thing.

• 31:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Sony had night shots.

• 31:58Speaker 04

  Oh yeah, there we go.

• 31:59Nilay Patel?

  It was green.

• 31:59Speaker 04

  And-

• 32:00Nilay Patel?

  Famously green.

• 32:01Speaker 03

  There was a Sony's, and there, I wanna say there was Panasonic's night mode that got in trouble because it actually, like, worked like an X-ray mode, and you could see people's underwear. This was like a controversy 10 or 15 years ago with camcorders.

• 32:14Nilay Patel?

  This was a-

• 32:14Speaker 03

  Look it up, kids.

• 32:15Nilay Patel?

  Panasonic ginned up to sell camcorders. That, that, it just didn't work. Um, so, the way it works is super cool. Uh, and you can watch it in our video, cuz we figured out how to tape it. So, the, you, anytime you do a wake action, like you raise the phone, you tap the screen, click the button, the system engages for like 5 seconds. It flashes the IR illuminator, which is a fancy word for flashlight, I've discovered. If you watch our videos, that's the thing that's blinking. If the IR camera sees a face, the dot projector just like blinks on really fast. It's really fast.

• 32:48Speaker 05

  But it's like more than a face. It's your eyes. Cause if you're pointing it at your face and your eyes are closed, it's still just the giant orb of light. But as soon as you open up your eyes, it flicks all the dots on right away. So it's like looking for your eyes.

• 33:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's looking for attention. You can turn that off.

• 33:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 33:06Nilay Patel?

  In accessibility, but it's looking for your eyes. So if it sees your eyes, it flashes the dot projector. It takes a super fast picture with the IR camera. The dots go off, the camera's off. That gets hashed into a mathematical model and then compared in the, to the model, the hash, stored in the secure enclave on the A11. It's like a lot of steps and it works really, really fast.

• 33:26Speaker 03

  Yeah. The important point, or one important point is that even though you have to open your eyes to trigger it and make it work, it's not using your iris or your eyes as identifiers like say Samsung's system with the Note 8 does. It's, it's, it's using the entire face.

• 33:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So it's creating this depth map of your face, hashing it into basically long string of numbers, compares the numbers. If you use Nemoji or portrait mode on the front cam, it just keeps the dots on all the time. And we have the demo of the Snapchat app, which shows like the better masks. It's not out yet. We just like a demo mode version that we have. Keeps the dots on all the time. And there's like a little controversy here. Reuters published a thing that's like, app developers get this data. So it's not the Face ID data, which is the hash that unlocks the phone. It's this other data about like muscles moving. It's the same stuff Nemoji does.

• 34:12Speaker 04

  They basically, I looked at the API. They, they give you basically a 3D mesh of a face.

• 34:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:18Speaker 04

  It's like, here's a 3D mesh. Do whatever you want with this 3D mesh of a face.

• 34:23Nilay Patel?

  That's wild. Um, but it's really cool and it works. It works really well. Like it's, that is this a good replacement for Touch ID? Is it going to work? Is it going to fail? So I, I don't know. I, the inconsistencies I've experienced are all about me having to adapt to the phone, which I have many, many feelings about. But if you are willing to adapt to the phone, it just seems to work. What it, what's your takeaway?

• 34:43Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, it's definitely like, at the end of the day, all it comes down to is adapting to the phone, which like YouTube comments are super quick to say that like, that's fine. But like in use, it is like pretty annoying and anytime. I mean, it is like why like there's no reason why you should have to change your whole life to do something that you've been doing for years, just like unlocking your phone. But like, other than that, if you follow Apple's criteria, it works fine.

• 35:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. The roller coaster with Phil, by the way, is very deep.

• 35:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm actually pre-ordering one right now.

• 35:16Nilay Patel?

  This is specifically why I wanted him. Like, we're in the valley, so we're gonna come out of it.

• 35:23Speaker 05

  I'm buying four.

• 35:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Well, when the week started, Phil was like, "I'm so excited we get this phone. It's finally here. We've got a Pixel right now." He's like, "I hate this thing." He's chucking it in the trash can.

• 35:34Speaker 05

  I get it, man. I like the Pixel. I wouldn't say I hate the Pixel. Pixel's like, solid. It's the best Android phone as I've had in Pixel 2, actually. I forgot that went out.

• 35:43Nilay Patel?

  Because of the screen. All right. Phil, we're gonna let you go because you've got to edit the video.

• 35:46Speaker 05

  I do need to edit this video.

• 35:48Nilay Patel?

  If you are listening to this, please go on YouTube and watch all of Phil and the rest of our video teams. Andrew did all the audio on the video.

• 35:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, this was a huge effort from everybody.

• 35:57Nilay Patel?

  Will Joel, our art director, did a bunch of crazy animations, including the opening shot.

• 36:02Speaker 04

  It's sick.

• 36:03Nilay Patel?

  You have to see. It's so cool. Okay, we're gonna let you get back to it, Phil. We're gonna read an ad. Ash is gonna come back and talk about emojis. This episode of The Vergecast brought to you by Squarespace. You ready to start a new business? Make it stand out with Squarespace. Beautiful templates created by world-class designers. Squarespace makes it easy to turn your ideas into a new and new, unique website. You can showcase your work, your blog, you can publish content, you can sell products and services of all kinds with just a few clips. You can also customize everything from look and feel to settings and products using beautiful templates created by world-class designers. Not to mention, everything is ready for mobile out of the box. And you can use Squarespace's analytics to help you grow in real time. Best of all, nothing to install, patch, or upgrade ever. But if you do have a question, Squarespace has award-winning 24/7 customer support to help you out.

• 36:47Nilay Patel?

  The future is coming. Make it brighter with Squarespace. It's a different one.

• 36:53Speaker 04

  Yeah. That one sounds like you're just kind of along for the ride, though.

• 36:57Nilay Patel?

  I really liked an idea, or a dream is just an idea without a website.

• 37:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:02Nilay Patel?

  That's, that's... But anyway, the future's coming. Make it brighter with Squarespace. That's this week's. Anyway, you can go to Squarespace.com for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use the offer code VERGE to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's Squarespace.com, offer code VERGE.

• 37:17Nilay Patel?

  All right, we're back. Ashley's back.

• 37:18Speaker 02

  Hello, I'm back. The headphones are warm from Phil's head and it's nice because it's cold in here.

• 37:22Nilay Patel?

  It's cold in here. So Ashley, what do you think of the phone?

• 37:25Speaker 02

  It's honestly like what Paul said earlier totally resonated where it looks best when it's at the home screen and the lock screen. Like, it's like, wow. In the Apple Store, you're gonna be like, wow. But then, once you start clicking around into apps, it's like, hmm, this is not as beautiful as I thought it was. Like, when you went onto Spotify, I was like, this almost looks worse than my 6S that I'm using.

• 37:48Nilay Patel?

  Wow, harsh.

• 37:50Speaker 02

  Dan?

• 37:51Nilay Patel?

  Dan's just hatin', man.

• 37:53Speaker 03

  I agree. I think it looks lovely when it's sitting on the table and the screen is on.

• 37:56Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 37:56Speaker 02

  Me and Dan agree.

• 37:57Speaker 03

  Home screen, number one.

• 37:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the home screen looks great.

• 38:00Speaker 02

  The home screen is great.

• 38:01Nilay Patel?

  I'm starting to, I'm quite taken with it. All right. So Ashley, I'm gonna ask you a question.

• 38:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:05Nilay Patel?

  I think emoji, and we're gonna send these to Phil. I think emoji are easily the best feature of this phone. And I'm in love with them. I think they're, like, I'm just watching myself talk right now and I'm a little fox, and it's delightful.

• 38:21Speaker 03

  So what does the fox say? I'm leaving. Bye.

• 38:25Nilay Patel?

  Please, Dan, you have done enough today.

• 38:29Nilay Patel?

  But you are the one with the hip internet culture podcast, so I wanna ask you what you think of this situation. And you, I think you used one once, real fast.

• 38:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:39Nilay Patel?

  But yeah, this is like your first deep experience with it, so this is real-time reactions.

• 38:42Speaker 02

  I didn't get to do a full range.

• 38:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. Which emoji are you, Ashley?

• 38:46Speaker 02

  Okay, so you can choose between a monkey, a robot, a cat, a dog, an alien, a fox, a poop, a pig, a panda, a bunny. There's actually a lot. A rooster, or chicken or something, or a unicorn. Honestly, I feel most attracted to either the cat or the panda.

• 39:03Nilay Patel?

  The panda's good.

• 39:04Speaker 02

  I like the panda because it has fangs.

• 39:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  Which is kinda concerning.

• 39:09Nilay Patel?

  So, Apple told me, by the way, the emoji are terrible at winking. Well, I said to Apple, "These emoji are terrible at winking," and they're like, "We know." And then they hinted that they were...

• 39:17Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. It looks like you have a twitch or something.

• 39:21Nilay Patel?

  Like, if you have a friend who's bad at winking, or you're bad at winking, the emoji are worse. And you know how friends who are bad at winking are hilarious?

• 39:28Speaker 02

  Okay, they're not bad at winking. They can't wink.

• 39:31Nilay Patel?

  You can get them to wink. It takes, it takes a lot of doing.

• 39:35Speaker 03

  I feel like... The wink is the one thing I would want to do with an emoji before sending it.

• 39:39Nilay Patel?

  So Apple is like, that'd be great for an upgrade. We know. We know about the winking situation.

• 39:45Speaker 02

  Okay, the alien's amazing.

• 39:46Nilay Patel?

  The alien's real good.

• 39:48Speaker 02

  Cause it doesn't have eyebrows, so it's fun.

• 39:50Nilay Patel?

  The monkey is real good. I'm asking, Ashley's so distracted. Are these, are these as important as I think they are?

• 39:58Speaker 02

  It's just gonna be fun.

• 39:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 39:59Speaker 02

  They're great. Like, I can totally see myself if I had an iPhone X, spamming people.

• 40:05Speaker 03

  Where can you use these? Is it just iMessage?

• 40:07Nilay Patel?

  No, this is actually notably for Apple.

• 40:10Speaker 04

  Anywhere where MOV files can be played.

• 40:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so if you have Android friends, you can send them an MMS, iMessage. Obviously, you send one, and then there's like a little checkmark that's like, you're still in jail, but this is delightful. And then if you just want to export it as MOV, you can just get it out of there.

• 40:26Speaker 04

  But what, what possible relevance would an emoji have versus, like, if you could do something similar in Snapchat?

• 40:35Speaker 02

  Well, so that's what I was just thinking, because like, I have multiple friends who think that the world is like fascinated with furries. Like, there's this whole theory about like, filters as animals and we just want to be like furries and, I don't know, there's, I don't know.

• 40:50Nilay Patel?

  Wait, please complete that song.

• 40:51Speaker 03

  Yes, go on.

• 40:53Speaker 02

  Well, it's just really weird that every, like Instagram filters for stories and Snapchat's AR filters, most of them, the most popular ones are animals. And it's like, what's up with our fascination with becoming animals? And then that ties into like furry culture, where it's like, are we all just secretly wanting to be furries, maybe?

• 41:08Nilay Patel?

  Apparently, my fursona is a fox, because that is my emoji. I think. It's that or the monkey.

• 41:14Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, there you go. I don't know.

• 41:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 41:18Speaker 02

  Sorry, I got distracted thinking about, apparently there's also this like acting test where you can determine your inner and outer animal. And I was so entangled, my inner animal was a koala. And I was like, that's so inaccurate. Anyway.

• 41:31Speaker 04

  Hey, what's wrong with koala?

• 41:34Speaker 02

  What characters does a koala have?

• 41:36Nilay Patel?

  The laziest of the bears?

• 41:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was like, damn, am I that lazy?

• 41:40Speaker 03

  I don't know about koals.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  Anyway, the key difference is that on Snapchat, yes, you can save the files, but they never look as good. Like, I'm not gonna text you a Snapchat. Same with the Insta stories.

• 41:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's not try was built from the ground up.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  This is made for iMessage sharing, which is the most, and just sharing in general, but iMessage particularly is where you're having those group chats with your friends. This is a good move. You could just be like, here's what I think of that alien face. Boom.

• 42:03Nilay Patel?

  So, what's-

• 42:04Speaker 03

  Alien face attempting to wink.

• 42:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:07Nilay Patel?

  They're missing a feature to make that work, which is they always have sound. You can't mute the emoji.

• 42:13Speaker 03

  They make sound?

• 42:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so what you're supposed to do-

• 42:15Speaker 04

  These are like voice memos.

• 42:17Nilay Patel?

  They're voice memos. What you're supposed to do is be like, so when I, when it automatically re-enrolled me an iMessage on my group text with my friends, like, they all got a monkey screaming, "I'm back on the blue bubbles." Which was great and a delight, and then my friend Vipin immediately texted me back and was like, "That was worth a thousand dollars."

• 42:35Speaker 03

  Oh, man, you're you.

• 42:36Nilay Patel?

  But you can't mute them. So if, what I wanna do is just like do the big eyes.

• 42:40Speaker 04

  As just like a single-

• 42:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, just like a reaction.

• 42:44Speaker 03

  So what if you, like, my phone lives on silent. Like, do I never hear them, or?

• 42:48Nilay Patel?

  No, they, they just sit there. You just unsilent and play them.

• 42:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:51Speaker 03

  But like, I don't wanna unsilent.

• 42:53Speaker 02

  Well, then, you don't get to participate in an emoji, Dan.

• 42:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Dan.

• 42:57Speaker 03

  Well, the music plays on silent mode. Like, you hit play and music plays. I'm just curious as to what happens with the emojis.

• 43:03Nilay Patel?

  I guess we can find out.

• 43:04Speaker 04

  Alright, let's do some silence.

• 43:05Speaker 02

  Okay, I just wanna say that this is an infinitely better effect than iOS 10 with the like blow up text.

• 43:12Speaker 03

  Yeah. Sent with lasers.

• 43:13Speaker 02

  Like, this is so much better and is going to be used so much more widely than lasers and- I'm back on the blue bubbles.

• 43:19Nilay Patel?

  Yep.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  Wow, me, I wasn't lying about that text.

• 43:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, of course it's my voice.

• 43:23Speaker 02

  You are the emoji.

• 43:26Nilay Patel?

  It just loops forever.

• 43:29Speaker 04

  Right, we're excited.

• 43:29Nilay Patel?

  Forever and ever, forever and ever and ever.

• 43:34Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh.

• 43:36Nilay Patel?

  We have to turn that off. This is the worst radio in history.

• 43:39Speaker 04

  Can we update the verge of units just now?

• 43:43Nilay Patel?

  I really did send that to all my-

• 43:45Speaker 04

  I'm back on the blue bubbles.

• 43:49Nilay Patel?

  What? This is what my friends expect from me.

• 43:51Speaker 04

  Is You're the Man Now Dog still, still a website?

• 43:54Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, so the answer is it plays when the phone's unmute. But you have to click the icon.

• 43:59Speaker 02

  It's interesting to me that you really love an emoji because when they announced the iPhone 10, I remember I wrote a piece about how like self, they were really marketing selfies and an emoji. And I was like, this is all for, I'm gonna use the word millennials who love to take pictures of themselves and to text. And it's cool that you really like it too because...

• 44:19Nilay Patel?

  Because you're old.

• 44:23Nilay Patel?

  Because I can see you slowly dying every day.

• 44:25Speaker 03

  As, as, as a member of Gen X, which has been slowly dying since the late 80s.

• 44:32Speaker 02

  But I assume you're not, you know, you're not taking, are you taking a ton of selfies on the reg and it's gonna like sending emoji and reading into like the deeper message of the emoji that was sent to you by your wife? I'm sure not.

• 44:42Nilay Patel?

  The only emoji my wife ever sends me is the, the lady who's like, "Stop."

• 44:48Nilay Patel?

  Cause I'm like, "What if we name our daughter Shadow?" And like, I just, that picture shows up.

• 44:52Speaker 02

  Absolutely appropriate emoji for that.

• 44:54Nilay Patel?

  That's like the main emoji. Oh, it's the two hands crossed. That's that one.

• 44:57Speaker 03

  That's awesome.

• 44:57Nilay Patel?

  That's like the main, I think that's like, just like, her keyboard is just that button.

• 45:01Speaker 02

  Most frequently used.

• 45:03Nilay Patel?

  It's just that one. Um, yeah, I don't really send a ton. I, I don't know. It's just, it's never occurred to me that having built a career on the use of words, that I should then transition to pictures. Um, I have tried to take selfies, but I'm not very good at it. Uh, I've been trying a lot because that's portrait mode.

• 45:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I wanted to hear about the selfie portrait mode.

• 45:24Nilay Patel?

  Uh, well, you should try one. Tell me if you think it's good. I think that Pixel 2 does a way better job of portrait mode selfies. I don't think this portrait camera is any good. Um, it's the same portrait camera as ever. But it's just lighting up the, um, it's lighting up the true depth dots. So the dots are on right now. When you do an emoji, the dots are on and it, it's fine. It works. It blurs out the back.

• 45:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:48Nilay Patel?

  I think the Pixel does a way better job with the front cam. The portrait photos from the rear cameras, way better on the iPhone. And then Dan and James Barham, our creative director, and Becca, one of our other video directors, and Corey, like just a lot of people staring at comparison photos today from the iPhone 8, the iPhone 10, the Note 8, and the Pixel 2. And no one agreed on anything, basically.

• 46:14Speaker 03

  No, we could not reach consensus.

• 46:15Nilay Patel?

  I will say, when my question, the thing that drove people to a decision, and a consistent decision, was when I said to people, when looking at pictures of themselves, James had taken with all the phones, which one would you post on Instagram? Most people picked the Pixel 2. Hmm. Which I think is fascinating, because the Pixel 2 is way more aggressive with contrast. I think it takes like more evocative photos. And James is always telling me the Pixel 2 gives him more to work with.

• 46:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:43Nilay Patel?

  The iPhone takes great photos, like, don't, I don't think they're bad. I think the Pixel 2 is just a little bit ahead of that curve in terms of evocative photos. Dan does not agree with me.

• 46:52Speaker 03

  Well, I agree that the, the Pixel images are more evocative, or whatever you want to say, because they do have like more aggressive contrast and stuff. But like, I think of when I'm taking a portrait, or a picture of a person, that's not what I want, because it's not a flattering look for a lot of portraits. So, in my take was, when we were looking at the portraits side by side, I often liked the iPhone 8s, or the iPhone 10s portrait image the best, because it had nicer skin tone rendition, it wasn't as like aggressively sharp, like, the Pixel wasn't over sharpened, but it was, it was like if it had been sharpened for a landscape photo, as opposed to a portrait. And if you do sharpening after the effect, after the fact, as a photographer, generally

• 47:37Speaker 03

  for portraits, you are trying not to, to go too sharp, because it's not a flattering look on skin. And so, the iPhone wasn't aggressive there, the color was a little better, and it was just a more pleasing portrait image.

• 47:49Nilay Patel?

  I prefer my portrait images to be gritty, and realistic, and look like the person just had like a hard night on the town. And that's why I like the Pixel. But everyone, we were like, which one would you gram right now?

• 48:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:02Nilay Patel?

  Consistently, the answer was the Pixel.

• 48:03Speaker 03

  I mean, a lot of people were wrong, but yes.

• 48:06Nilay Patel?

  Dan, you're really playing a character on this episode of the

• 48:09Speaker 02

  The stage lighting looks real bad. I just got lost into that.

• 48:14Speaker 03

  While Nilay was talking about something, I was watching Ashley play with the portrait mode camera on the front and I kind of like tried to photobomb her photo a little bit and she switches over to the stage lighting mode and it just blacks me all out.

• 48:29Nilay Patel?

  So you were playing with it, what do you think?

• 48:31Speaker 02

  The portrait mode on the selfie mode is fine. I mean, fine. First, like a selfie doesn't have to be the best photo in the world. If I look good in it, that's all I care about. And as far as I'm concerned, if the background's blurred and the attention's on me, okay.

• 48:48Speaker 03

  But stage lighting, how did that shit?

• 48:51Speaker 02

  That's bad and I hope that never takes over Instagram.

• 48:54Nilay Patel?

  So when we reviewed the eight, I was like, this is gonna be everywhere. I've seen it zero times.

• 48:59Speaker 03

  Because it's bad!

• 49:01Nilay Patel?

  Have you seen it on yours? I mean, my feed is mostly like pictures of other people's kids.

• 49:04Speaker 03

  I mean, part of it is not a lot of people own the eight or eight plus because most of the people that would have bought it in September have waited for the 10. But the other part is, it looks bad.

• 49:15Nilay Patel?

  Dan, just hate me.

• 49:16Speaker 03

  I know, like-

• 49:17Nilay Patel?

  Dan, name something you like.

• 49:18Speaker 03

  I love the display of the iPhone X.

• 49:21Nilay Patel?

  No, a complete product that you like.

• 49:23Speaker 02

  He loves peanut butter cups.

• 49:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, peanut butter cups.

• 49:25Nilay Patel?

  Oreos.

• 49:26Speaker 03

  Most Oreos are delicious, not all of them. There's nuance. You can't say, life is not, you know, yes or no questions. But like, you know, stage lighting is like one of those things where it's like, I can't believe it shifted.

• 49:39Nilay Patel?

  If you are listening to this show and you think that I'm the cranky one, I just want you to know that I am well tempered every day in my job at Dan Seaver.

• 49:49Speaker 03

  I'm not cranky, I just want things to be better.

• 49:51Speaker 02

  Well, and Dan sits across from Paul and I and it's seriously like the home improvement fence. It's like, it's like-

• 49:58Speaker 04

  Dan's like, what, what, you guys getting hyped about something over there? Oh no, no, no, no.

• 50:05Speaker 03

  Let me deflate that hype bubble for you.

• 50:08Nilay Patel?

  We've got, we're coming to the end here. I assure you, we will be talking more about the iPhone X in the weeks to come. But Paul, every week-

• 50:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:16Nilay Patel?

  Without fail, oh, and Ashley's here. The Circuit Breaker Duo.

• 50:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:19Nilay Patel?

  Every week, Paul does a segment. What's it called?

• 50:22Speaker 04

  It's called- Can form an emotional bond with members of the household while providing them with love, affection, and the joy of nurturing and raising a companion.

• 50:33Speaker 02

  That's catchy.

• 50:33Speaker 04

  Okay, that's the whole thing? Sony's back, back with the Ibo. Ibo 2017. Yes. The dog? The robot dog. It's a real animal themed show, isn't it? That they killed.

• 50:48Speaker 03

  They killed it.

• 50:49Speaker 04

  I've been so, so Sony had like the most advanced consumer robotics. Yeah, late 90s, early 2000s Sonys was, was the ish. And they just completely, because remember, uh, who was it? Creo? There was like their-

• 51:05Speaker 03

  That was a dinosaur, right?

• 51:06Speaker 04

  No, no, no, no, no. No, Creo is their humanoid. Yeah, yeah, yeah, this guy. You'd see him like dancing and stuff, but they never actually like sold him. Like he thinks he was in like a, he was in like a, like a music video. Don't call it him. It. There you go. Sorry. Don't gender the robots. I say it every week. I'm always gendering the robots. Uh, yeah, they just like, they just, they were cutting back, back in the like mid 2000s and they just stopped making robots and it's been really sad. And now they're back with a new Ibo. It's only for Japan right now. The Ibo was beloved. Yeah, well, this one looks very belovedable.

• 51:48Speaker 04

  It has- It looks more like a dog now, right?

• 51:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, it looks like an actual dog.

• 51:51Speaker 04

  It has LCD eyes and I don't know, sometimes the LCD eyes can, can be a little creepy.

• 51:57Speaker 02

  Was it you? I feel like I was just talking to someone on The Verge about these robotic dogs. We didn't know about this announcement. Cause I was saying I owned like a ripoff Sony robot dog named Poochie.

• 52:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, who are we talking to about? We definitely had this conversation.

• 52:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I was like, Poochie was real.

• 52:13Speaker 04

  But anyways, I'm very excited. It's gonna be like $1,700. It's got a, a subscription fee so that they can, uh, make it smarter using the cloud. It's basically gonna use machine learning to learn how to be more adorable to you.

• 52:30Speaker 04

  How much does it cost? $1,700.

• 52:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's actually-

• 52:34Speaker 03

  You'd buy a real dog for that?

• 52:35Speaker 04

  January 11th, 2018 in- 17 real dogs. In Japan. 1,700 real dogs. Where do dogs come from? Also, there's an optional air bone. No, eye bone.

• 52:48Nilay Patel?

  Eye bone.

• 52:49Speaker 04

  Yeah. It's like a bone.

• 52:51Nilay Patel?

  I'm into it. We gotta get one. That's gotta be on the Circuit Breaker show. That's the move.

• 52:56Speaker 02

  It's only in Japan. Sam Biford gets to have the most fun.

• 53:00Nilay Patel?

  He does have the most fun. Although, I will say, the giant speakers you brought on the Circuit Breaker show the other day, that the huge Sony one, also, I think only in Japan, because not out here yet. I think Sony's willing to send it back.

• 53:12Speaker 03

  Only in Japan and also in the middle of our newsroom.

• 53:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not moving.

• 53:16Nilay Patel?

  It's still there. No, no sign of sending it back. We have a lot of giant speakers. Um, okay, there's a little other, there's a little bit of additional phone news. So here's what I say. I know we have not nearly talked about the entire iPhone X, but here's what I'd like you to do if you're listening. Watch the video. It's on YouTube. Read the review. It's very long. It's on the website. Send us even more questions. Do you will be back next week. I'm sure we're gonna talk about this phone again. But there's a little bit of other news that I just want to wrap up with, which originally Dan pitched us that the entire show should be about the HTC U11.

• 53:52Speaker 03

  I, I thought that would be an interesting topic of conversation for an hour.

• 53:55Nilay Patel?

  Well, here's the... How? Well, here's the one bit that I just want to bring up. Uh, Vlad scooped this today. The HTC U11 was originally supposed to be the Pixel 2 XL.

• 54:07Speaker 03

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna correct you one little bit there, and it's an important distinction. It's the new U11 Plus that was announced this morning. Because the U11 was announced earlier this year. That had nothing to do with the Pixel. But the U11 Plus that was announced this morning, it's a, um, 6-inch, uh, 18 by 9 display. Basically, it's like the U11, uh, from earlier this year, but it's got a, you know, edge-to-edge display, bezel-less display, or whatever you want to call those. Uh, and Vlad, as, as you noted, reported that, uh, that was originally going to be the Pixel 2 XL, um, before Google switched paths and then HTC took it and then redeveloped it into the U11 Plus, which is pretty wild.

• 54:47Nilay Patel?

  Why did they do that?

• 54:48Speaker 03

  My guess, and, and Vlad has a very similar, uh, proposition in the article, is Google is super hot on Daydream, even though nobody uses it.

• 54:57Nilay Patel?

  Which is their VR headset.

• 54:58Speaker 03

  Which is their VR system. Yeah, nobody uses it. Uh, it's not popular. Don't, don't get any... Impression that it is, but Google wants its phones that say Google on them to support Daydream the best that it possibly can. And that means it uses an OLED display. And HTC has not used OLED displays in its phones regularly at all, if at all, in a long time. And it doesn't have the clout with the component suppliers to get the OLED screens into its phones, even though they were able to do it with Samsung OLEDs last year for the Pixel 1. That said, it meant that Google chose OLED, went with LG to build the phone, got an LG OLED, and look at where that we got us.

• 55:42Speaker 03

  So maybe they should have forgotten about Daydream for a minute.

• 55:44Nilay Patel?

  Eh, I don't know. The U11 looks very nice.

• 55:47Speaker 03

  I've got one right here. I got a U11, not a Plus, but the original, the first U11 right here.

• 55:52Nilay Patel?

  And you like it.

• 55:53Speaker 03

  I think it is a very good performing phone at a good price.

• 55:56Nilay Patel?

  But every time I pick it up, I think it feels super cheap.

• 55:59Speaker 03

  It feels slimy.

• 56:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, have you held?

• 56:02Speaker 02

  Let me, let me hold the slime phone.

• 56:04Speaker 03

  So, so my question with the U11 Plus story.

• 56:07Nilay Patel?

  She's just making a face.

• 56:09Speaker 03

  Is, is the reason that U11 feels slimy is because it's got this like curved glass back, which looks very cool, striking when it's brand new. And as soon as you touch it, it gets really fingerprinty and gross. And so the U11 Plus, it's almost the exact same thing. And I just wonder what a Google version of that phone would have looked like, because surely it would not have had all glass back. It would have been metal and partial glass.

• 56:30Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I think we're just in a moment. Dieter's been making this point over and over again, like every phone is compromised in some way.

• 56:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's for sure.

• 56:39Nilay Patel?

  I, I think, you know, the, so the Pixel 2 XL has the screen issue. The Samsung Galaxy S8 has some Bixby button.

• 56:51Speaker 03

  It does.

• 56:52Nilay Patel?

  In, in Bixby. The Essential Phone has a bad camera. The iPhone 8 is not the iPhone 10. That's its essential flaw. And the iPhone X is just very expensive. I don't, I think a lot of people were like, the notch is a break. It's not, it's fine. It's just really, really expensive and you're gonna pay this like early adopter tax of all these apps not being up.

• 57:15Speaker 03

  Right. In addition to what you're actually physically laying out for the phone.

• 57:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so if you got the money, you're gonna buy the phone. You're gonna be very happy. But there's not like the just get this one and be fine. The way like the iPhone four in my mind was for so long that just like pay the money for the iPhone four. It is by far the best product.

• 57:35Speaker 03

  I mean, you could say that all the way to like the iPhone six S, I think. It's like hands down, pay the money for the iPhone, you're gonna get a good experience. If you wanna be weird and use an Android phone, do that, but that's young.

• 57:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So we're just, it's a moment, but I think this, the X, I'm just like, I've used it all week. I have not, in the way that when I used the iPhone, the iPhone eight, the little one, I found myself just wanting the plus because I wanted the screen size. I haven't found myself in that zone with this yet. The Face ID stuff works. I, I, I think next week, we're gonna talk a lot about adaptation to the phone because I'll have another week of using it. I think all of Apple's products demand that you change your life around them now in a way that I find increasingly ridiculous, right? So like, there's no headphone jack on this phone. Apple's solution to that is that you buy some of their headphones. They like created a problem, they sell you a solution.

• 58:29Nilay Patel?

  The, the, all of their laptops was like dongle city. By the way, Helen Havlak is our, I think she was on your show last week.

• 58:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:38Nilay Patel?

  She's our editorial director. She's writing a piece for us, which she rarely does because she's so incensed that you cannot buy a good, cheap USB C headphone adapter. They're all like crazy expensive. Like, we just live in this world where all these products are suddenly demanding literally adapters, if not like physical or lifestyle adaptations to them. And it's like, that's the thing I'm thinking about the most right now. Right? Like, Apple's laptops, our, our, the podcast director at Vox Media, Nishat, every time I see her, she's got a new 15 inch MacBook Pro with a little USB C dongle with a USB C plugged into it. Because there are like very few USB C thumb drives in the world. Like, we're just in that zone with these things.

• 59:21Nilay Patel?

  And I, I'm, I'm read a lot of other coverage of the iPhone X this week. A lot of it is very glowing to the point where some of it is like, literally a fucking romance novel. I'm just gonna be honest with you. And to me, I just keep coming back to the fact that this is a product that the richest company in the world wants a thousand dollars from you in order to own. And it's a product, it's the same set of trade offs as literally any other product that you might buy. It has some very big ideas, particularly on what the cameras are for, in terms of unlocking in AR, all this stuff that Apple's doing. But if you're not just pretty dead sober about, you spent some money, did you get that value back? And what is it asking of you? You're gonna, you're gonna end up in a week, you're gonna tie yourself in knots. So we're gonna keep talking to this phone, because I think it's really interesting, but

• 1:00:06Nilay Patel?

  more and more, I think, I'm fascinated by how much this technology asks us to adapt to it, instead of being adapted to us. Which coincidentally is like, what your whole show is about, right? It's like emergent behaviors around the things.

• 1:00:21Speaker 02

  It comes full circle.

• 1:00:23Nilay Patel?

  It's all full circle.

• 1:00:24Speaker 02

  Wait, I have a question.

• 1:00:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:25Speaker 02

  So after staring into, as Paul described, at the portal for a week, does my 6S look ancient to you?

• 1:00:32Nilay Patel?

  No, because it looks like an iPhone 8.

• 1:00:36Nilay Patel?

  No, you know, my other phone, so this phone, like I said, every 10 minutes, somebody takes this phone away from me to like, shoot a picture of it, or like, shoot some video or something. And my backup phone has been my Pixel all week. And I have not picked up a Pixel 1, not a Pixel 2. And I keep picking up my Pixel 1 and using it, and it's fine. Like, I don't feel like, oh my god, these bezels are killing me. And I, I think if you're going from this phone, the 6, the 7, the 8, to the 10, you're gonna perceive this massive difference in your life. If you already had a big phone, you're gonna perceive that you're now holding a smaller thing. Right, and like that difference is not quite as much. Right, it's just like a physi- the physical thing you're holding got smaller, it's not, the, the portal didn't get bigger.

• 1:01:22Nilay Patel?

  So, that, it's just kinda where my head's at with that. But, it doesn't look ancient, because this is also like, the most modern phone, Apple sells, like it's, other flagship looks just like that. Without a headphone jack.

• 1:01:33Nilay Patel?

  Which is a huge mistake. Um, is that it?

• 1:01:36Speaker 04

  I just was reading our website, great headline went up right when we started recording. "Google is apparently shipping some Pixel 2 XLs without an operating system."

• 1:01:46Nilay Patel?

  What are they doing?

• 1:01:47Speaker 03

  No blower.

• 1:01:49Nilay Patel?

  What are they doing? Oreo's really good, I love using Oreo.

• 1:01:54Speaker 03

  Well, you know, sometimes you get a phone and it doesn't have it.

• 1:01:56Nilay Patel?

  It's just like, how are they? How are they blowing it with this pho- ah, it's so disappointing.

• 1:02:01Speaker 02

  I think we should also say, Razer launched its first phone this week.

• 1:02:03Nilay Patel?

  It did, it looks like a square, it looks like a bread.

• 1:02:06Speaker 03

  It is an enormous platter of a phone.

• 1:02:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:08Speaker 03

  It has one cool redeeming feature, and that is, the display technology runs at 120 Hz, which, they worked with Google to enable Android to run at 120 frames per second. So it's basically the iPad Pro 10.5's ProMotion.

• 1:02:22Nilay Patel?

  But does it ramp down again?

• 1:02:24Speaker 03

  And it ramps down, it's on, it's, it's on the fly, so like, if you're just holding the phone, sitting there reading a webpage, it's not, it'll, it'll scale down. As soon as you interact with it, it ramps back up.

• 1:02:33Nilay Patel?

  That's awesome.

• 1:02:34Speaker 03

  And if you are watching a movie, or something that's not at 120 frames per second, like 24 frames per second, it will scale accordingly, appropriately.

• 1:02:42Speaker 04

  That seems like the future of everything.

• 1:02:43Speaker 03

  It's, it's, it's the coolest thing about that phone, and, um, the phone itself is basically, yeah, the phone is basically a tech demo. So, what I'm excited is seeing that tech make it to actual devices I wanna use.

• 1:02:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:56Speaker 02

  You mean you don't want the Razer branded dongle that comes with it?

• 1:02:59Speaker 03

  Uh, yes, other note, uh, this phone is like the size of France, and they still couldn't find a room for a headphone jack in it. Even though, Razer owns THX.

• 1:03:08Speaker 02

  They could've at least put some lights in it, so it lights up or something.

• 1:03:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, what are you doing, Razer? Where's the dragon?

• 1:03:13Speaker 03

  They did put two speakers, each with their own amps on it, so the thing gets ridiculously loud if you're not using headphones, but...

• 1:03:19Nilay Patel?

  If you're, if you're gaming.

• 1:03:20Speaker 03

  If you're gaming.

• 1:03:21Nilay Patel?

  Just Android gaming away on this phone. That's exciting, let's get one of those. Also...

• 1:03:28Nilay Patel?

  Tomorrow.

• 1:03:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, you know, we've got the iPhone X review going up tomorrow. And then if you are a gamer, we've got some fun stuff going up as well. The Xbox, Tom Warren has been reviewing the Xbox One X. And that will be going up tomorrow. So you got chock full of of good stuff, diverge.com slash guidebook.

• 1:03:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's a big, it's a big new Xbox. You know, I bought a PS4 Pro and now I watched all like the unboxing videos and the thing.

• 1:03:53Speaker 03

  Well, do you, what did you buy it for?

• 1:03:55Nilay Patel?

  Uh, to play Madden.

• 1:03:56Speaker 03

  Okay, so then you bought the right thing.

• 1:03:58Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 1:03:59Speaker 03

  Because like the games, like the PS4 Pro is better if you're a gamer. The Xbox One X is better if you want a whole home entertainment system.

• 1:04:04Nilay Patel?

  Oh, spoilers.

• 1:04:05Speaker 03

  And also, yeah, this is a great teaser for the review if you haven't read it yet by the time you're listening to this. The Xbox One X does not light up all the lights.

• 1:04:14Nilay Patel?

  No, I know, right? It it has HDR but not Dolby Vision. That's correct. I knew this. I'm on it. Dan keeps assigning me TV box reviews. By the way, I was made to review a random fucking Roku this week. That's also on the website.

• 1:04:25Speaker 03

  Yes, it was.

• 1:04:27Nilay Patel?

  How about you? He just gave it to me. I was like, here, fine, I'll review it. It's a Roku, done. It's fine.

• 1:04:33Speaker 03

  Does not light up all the lights.

• 1:04:34Nilay Patel?

  Does not light up all the lights. I'm working on it. Uh, I will say that my too light review system for TV devices seems to have really taken the internet by storm. So we're sticking with it.

• 1:04:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:43Nilay Patel?

  Uh, okay, let's plug some other stuff. Ashley, you've got Why'd You Push That Button, which is great with Caitlin Tiffany. Andrew produces this show, produces that show. That's great, you should listen to it, comes out on Tuesdays. Ashley, Paul, Heim, Jake and I also do the Circuit Breaker Show, which is super fun to do. It's like one of my favorite parts of the week. That is Tuesdays. Live. Live. Video.

• 1:05:05Speaker 02

  This week we'll have speakers.

• 1:05:07Nilay Patel?

  We have more speakers this week.

• 1:05:08Speaker 02

  More speakers this week.

• 1:05:09Nilay Patel?

  That's, that's why we do that show. Uh, that's live on Twitter at 4pm. The replay is on the site on Wednesdays. Megan Farookhmanesh, Russell Brandon and I host the Mr. Robot After Show. We're, man, we're doing a lot.

• 1:05:22Nilay Patel?

  This week, we had Carly Chakin, who plays Darlene. Next week, this is actually really cool. Next week, we're gonna be on USA right after Mr. Robot. So Robot's gonna end on TV. The after show's gonna be on, cuz we got Sam Smail himself, the creator of Mr. Robot. So if you're in, watching Mr. Robot, watch the after show.

• 1:05:41Speaker 02

  You have real TV?

• 1:05:42Nilay Patel?

  We're on the real TV.

• 1:05:43Speaker 02

  Wow, that's cool.

• 1:05:46Speaker 03

  Sign up for your cable service now.

• 1:05:48Nilay Patel?

  Please sign up for cable.

• 1:05:50Speaker 02

  Get your YouTube TV trial.

• 1:05:50Nilay Patel?

  Uh, yeah. Well, Mr. Robot, the season's real good. I'm not saying that just cuz I host the after show. Like, we actually made a very aggressive deal with USA to be editorially independent. Cuz I was like, I'm not just gonna like, do your thing. Um, this season, last season, pretty slow. This season, really fun. So, if you're watching Mr. Robot, uh, watch our after show, cuz we're doing that. And then, we have a whole range of podcasts from the Vox Media Podcast Network. I will not name any of Ezra Klein's shows, but they're available. But our friends at Recode, great, great shows. Lauren Good, who's on the show all the time, one of our senior editors. Next Level's coming back.

• 1:06:26Speaker 03

  Next week?

• 1:06:27Nilay Patel?

  Next week. She'll be on the show. We'll do the weekly segments with her, starting when Next Level starts. But her show, Too Embarrassed to Ask, with Kara Swisher, available. Kara Swisher hosts Recode Decode. Peter Kafka hosts Recode Media. If you're a media nerd, must listen. All that's on iTunes. Rate it, review it. I gotta say, I can't stop plugging your show, Ash. Why'd you push that button? Great reviews on iTunes, in the new and noteworthy number one trending podcast. This show's a real piece of garbage. That show's great.

• 1:06:56Speaker 04

  We're a sinking flagship.

• 1:06:59Nilay Patel?

  No, we're still there. We're doing our thing.

• 1:07:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, but we're sinking.

• 1:07:02Nilay Patel?

  The other boats are growing up. Is that what boats do?

• 1:07:06Speaker 04

  If you're not floating, you're sinking.

• 1:07:08Nilay Patel?

  If you're not first to... All right, that is our show. A real calamity of a show, as always. Please send us more questions about the iPhone X. Watch the review. Read the review. Please, God, keep reading the internet. Cuz words are important. We can't do this with just emojis. But maybe, maybe we'll just transition. We're gonna pivot this show to emojis. All right, that's it. Goodbye, rock and roll. Paul. Promo code. Mmm. That's what Dieter says.