 Here we are, Think Tech, Jay Fidel, Think Tech Talks today with a wonderful person who is with Verizon. This is Michonne Reyes, she's the Solutions Manager at Verizon's New and Improved, just moved in a few weeks ago, Pearl Ridge Store, and she's going to share with us the release, which is hot copy of the new Pixel, Google, phone, wow, welcome, yeah. Thank you for having me. So, first, can't you say Google Pixel phone, all of a sudden, out of left field, now this is, you know, we had iPhone, obviously, the 800 pounder, and then we had Samsung, the one that blows up, which I love, which I have one, here somewhere, there's my Samsung, showing them up my level of commitment, and I also want to say that I am committed to Verizon for a long time, okay? I'm one of your customers, so, and I believe in Verizon. And then out of the blue, here comes Pixel from Google, which, you know, that's kind of a 900 pound gorilla, isn't it? So what's going on? Well, it's really exciting to have Android or Google have their own phone, people want Android for Google especially, the really cool thing, and I think that all the reviews that are going on right now, big, big people talking about it, got the Buzz feed, we got the Wall Street Journal, they're saying nothing but good things about this phone. What's really appealing, of course, is it's Google only, you have unlimited storage for your pictures and videos, like the cloud, the Google cloud, Google will provide you with your own storage, so you don't have to worry about running out of pictures, you don't have to worry about having to load it onto your computer, running out of space, stopping in the middle of a photo, right? Yeah. You have the ability to do a face-to-face talk with both iOS, Apple and with Android, so you're not limited to just FaceTime on your iPhone or just the Tango or whatever feature on your Android. This is Google's program, but it envelopes the other ones, is that it? Correct, and it's only on the Pixel, the Pixel and the Pixel Cloud. So the Pixel is more Pixel, they must have named it because they have more Pixels, what's the story? Clarity of your camera screen, the picture quality, you got 12.3 megapixels on the rear and eight point in the front. So when we take our selfie picture later, it'll be just like we use the rear-facing camera. I can hardly wait. Yeah. We're not going to stop the show just to take a selfie, that's tacky. No, later, right. Later, but people, I promise. Okay, so you're using it, this is one, this is it. It's being loaded now, but there it is, you see it? That's it, that's the Pixel. It's about the same size as my Samsung over here. Okay, I got a case on my Samsung. This is no case on it right now. No case. And it's about the same weight. Actually, maybe a little lighter, I think. What else about it? We got three colors on it. They call it quiet black, very silver and really blue. So you got... This is the... Very silver. Very silver. Yeah, it's not black, it's not blue. It's very aesthetic. There's no button on the bottom. Right? NB on the bottom, nothing there. Not like Apple and not like Samsung. Right. So how do you operate it? It's all your touchscreen here, right? It's all on the screen. All on the screen, you get your slide up for your applications there. Oh, okay. It's fast. It is fast. You don't have a lag on there. Now you're not on wireless right now, you're on the system. We're on Verizon's 4G LTE network, which is actually what makes the Pixel perform the best, which is why it's exclusive to Verizon Wireless. Explain that to me. So Verizon has an angle here. Verizon is the best 4G LTE for this phone. Right. Why? You need it to be able to process fast. You need the cameras. You need your upload speeds and your download speeds. Oh, yeah, you do. You don't want a lag, especially if you're taking pictures across the country and you have to load it up and put it in. So is it automatic that it goes to the cloud? You can program it to where, but what stores all your pictures and your video for the unlimited is through Google. Google is the one that will store your unlimited storage of pictures and your video. Well, I have to affirmatively send it up or is it go up automatically? That I will get back to you. Okay. It's a brand new phone. I don't expect, you know, no experience. I have no experience, but I will have experience. I'm going to try one out when I try one out. I want to see how it works because I may change the phone, but not Verizon. Thank you. I'm going to be with Verizon. Yes. Okay. What about the battery? The battery is so important. You know, it's like, I'm a pilgrim. You know, I'm on a pilgrimage trying to find a long life battery. I haven't found it yet. What about this one? Well, if you needed to do a quick charge on it, you can get seven hours of battery life in just 15 minute quick charge. The port's a little different. It's a Type-C charge. So if you look at it, it's a little different. Either way? Yeah. You don't have to worry about it in the dark, right? When you plug it in. I always do it wrong. I always get it wrong, you know? Yeah, you know. When I put my USB in the same thing, always backward. Backward. And we do get a lot of people coming in with a broken port, and they're like, I don't know why. We know why. Now you don't have that problem. So the Type-C seven hours gives you, I mean, I'm sorry, 15 minutes of charge gives you seven hours of battery. What about 100%? What will 100% last you? Like, how long will it take, or... How long will it take, you know, ordinary use at 100% full? I'll get back you on that. Yes. It depends on what you're doing on your phone is what it is. You're watching your videos if you're taking your pictures. Yeah, well, you know, video was really important. I was telling you before we started, you know, that I used the Samsung to take professional video that streams, like on OC16, that we can use here and think tech streaming to our system. And I want to be able to do that, too, on my Pixel. My Pixel sounds like it's got more pixels, so that might be a better bet for me. Your resolution of your camera on your Pixel? Yes, of course. You can take pictures with the low light, bright light, cat shots, and the smart burst. So your functions of your camera are definitely a big plus with the Pixel. Okay, now, you know, I know I have Android, and I know on my Samsung, Samsung does not make Android. Google makes Android. And I expect that the Pixel phone is going to have the Android operating system, right? Well, you have the Google operating, which is what functions the phone, but it's similar, right? It's not the same as the Android system, say, for Samsung. Correct, it's Google. The Google part of the Android is what the people like about Samsung. So now you have Google exclusive, just Google everything, Google, and Google phone. Yeah. Make the right network. So I saw how fast it is, and it looks similar. It's very colorful and crisp and all that. Exactly. Anything else you can tell me about the operating system? Let's see. Well, so you have your Google Assistant, right? So everybody would like to have a personal assistant. Now you have your phone that has your assistant. Your Android does it already, too, but now you have it straight with Google. Okay, Google, remind me about my appointment tomorrow. You can just press your home screen button, and it'll take you straight there. Okay, Google, add milk to my shopping list, and you do it all, touch of a button. You don't have to go through it, right? It'd be better. I would like to say the speech part of it is a lot better. Sometimes when we compare the two, the Pixel Google phone will actually hear you a lot better. You don't have to repeat yourself or delete. Oh, I like that, yeah. That's what we do, like. There was an article in the MIT Technological Review two or three days ago about how speech recognition is really going places. And one of those expressions is in the Amazon Echo. You've heard of that, yeah. Where you can do amazing things, and now Amazon came up with this thing, the Fire Stick. So what's happening is more and more of the speech recognition. So you expect Google to be right up there at the edge of the envelope. And that's exactly what it is. Understand everything you say and respond to you. I want to talk to my phone. I want my phone to give me therapy. My phone to tell me everything I need to know. Yeah, and you want it to be able to understand your language. If you're from Hawaii, you speak Pigeon. You have a different language. You have a different ethnicity. You have an accent. You want Google to hear you. It's been getting a lot better. That's exactly right, Michelle. You know, really, because speech recognition is more than the sounds. It's the context. So you have to be very smart, artificial intelligence in order to know what I've been talking about. Therefore, you can figure out what I'm talking about now. And when you click into, say, Pigeon, or any language, any accent, that's what they got now. And if you have the cloud working, right, if this thing is living on the cloud or touching the cloud, you know, you can get smarter and smarter and smarter. I would expect nothing less from Google and Verizon. Okay, what about all the other functions? What about apps? What about apps? Okay, so it will work on the Google App ecosystem because it integrates through Google. So if you're already using Google for a lot of your other things and your computer on your different wireless devices, it's all going to be integrated with your Google Apps. So also, if you have Android Apps, you should be able to do it on there, too. Oh, okay. I guess in that case, when you're asking about that Android with the Google Apps, most of them are Google Apps, and so therefore you'll be able to have those same apps on your Pixel and Pixel XL. Okay. Well, I mean, am I going to be okay? I mean, if I switch, and in the second part of the show, I want to ask you about what happens when I switch and how do I switch? But if I switch, will I be able to use those same apps and will it come up automatically? Will all my apps come up and will I be able to get them all, or is this some of them? Well, your Play Store is operated through Google, right? Your Google Play Store? So it's the same Play Store. Correct. So you switch for the same apps? Exactly. Oh, wow. Okay. And does the processor faster than the others? They don't go by gigabytes. They go by GBs. They go by GMs. I'm sorry. So it's a Snapdragon 825 processor with 4GM RAM. Usually we go by gigabytes, and now it's GMs, so it's different and faster. It's different. So you know what it sounds like? I'm just sort of... Like a dragon? Yeah. Connecting the dots here, but it sounds like this is a little disruptive and that Google is pushing it in order to come up with a new idea. Across the bar, you mean? Yeah. Right. And then after a while, the other guys will have to follow some of the innovations that are in this phone. Here, this one. That is true. This pixel. Okay. So why did Verizon get this gig? I mean, it could have gone to, not to mention your competitors, but it could have gone to T-Mobile. It could have gone to AT&T. It could have gone anywhere. Why did you get it? Well, see, the biggest thing is Verizon's 4G LTE network, right? You need to, in order to have a beast of a phone that we call it, that can do all these fast speeds, process, nice camera, stream list, everything, you need to have a fast speed and a really good network, which is why we were able to pair with Google because of our network. We find, and also all the reviews of everybody using the pixel right now, they find that it runs best. It will be best on our Verizon 4G network just because you need to have that stream, fast speed to do everything that the phone can do and for it to function. That means faster. That means faster. Faster, best, faster, quality, resolution, no buffering, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, that's major. So does that leave the other guys in the merch? Are they going to be able to catch up with you? We will see. Good answer. I like to just, you know, let it speak for itself. Let it enjoy it for the moment, see what happens. Yeah, enjoy the phone and if you want it working its best, that's why you'd want it on our network. So what are you doing the rollout here? I mean, are you in the paper a lot? Are you on all the BuzzFeed kind stuff? There were things in BuzzFeed. There were things on Wall Street Journal. Everything's all good news. There are some things where you can get straight through Google, put it on Verizon's network and, of course, that's how we'll make it work best. And just the biggest key points on there and what people like about it most don't have to worry about your storage space. Google helps you with all that, right? And so this phone's awesome. Okay, all right. Before we go to the break, I can tell you that our senior production engineer, Zuri Avender, has some questions and I hope she'll come online and ask you what the questions are. Zuri? That was unexpected. Why should I get the Pixel instead of the newest iPhone 7? Okay, question. Why should I get a Pixel, a Google Pixel instead of an iPhone 7? I mean, they just came out. Why don't I just go to the iPhone? You carry the iPhone, don't you? But you love your Samsung. I do. You like the Android and you like the Google part of it. So take it up a few notches with better camera, better battery, more storage, still have Red's network. And for those friends that are on iPhones, you can still FaceTime them through dual. Okay. That is why. All right. Well, you know, they say that Android, the operating system, which one of the reasons I like it is it's very flexible and you can make a lot of changes, a lot of settings. Customize it. Yeah, you customize it and so you do what you want more than the iPhone, which is really not as customizable. It's sort of your basic phone and it doesn't let you change a lot of stuff. Correct. Okay. Where does Google fit in all of that? Is it also very customizable? Yes. You'll be able to do all your customizing, which is, yes, similar to your Android because it's Google-based. So you have your open market with your Play Store. You can make your changes. You can play around with widgets I'm seeing. It keeps flashing at me. That's the demo mode. I do apologize for that. That's okay. That's what makes it appealing in our store. It's appealing to you right now, too. Omo. But that's what it is. All right. Okay. Should I worry about these days about viruses and stuff on these phones? You know, because the iPhone and Apple and the reputation is that we don't worry about viruses for those, well, for Apple products in general. What about Android? What about Google? Well, Verizon has its own Verizon protection. It comes on all of the phones. And also if you do a step further with your Total Mobile Protection tech package, you get a tech coach. So you have an application that you can download that'll scan for you. That'll tell you if there's a threat. So you don't have to worry about downloading any other third parties or having any kinds of hacks. Good. And that's the Google phone or Android or Verizon? Verizon will provide you with the Verizon protection. I knew there was a reason I liked you guys because I really think there's a lot of risk out there now. People do it for fun or nastiness, you know, and we're always at risk. And they leave malware, you know, on every device and so forth. And I want to be protected. And I like you to give me an operating system where I have to think about it. Right. Nowadays our phones are our lives. We put everything on it. We even pay bills and, you know, purchase groceries. That's true. And what you're tapping into is, you know, the enormous functionality of these phones is while we're sitting here, Michonne, while we're sitting here enjoying ourselves. In fact, there are new apps being uploaded to the Play Store and everything else that make them so powerful. Anything big now can be mobile, responsive on your phone. It's incredible. What's happening? Even while we sit here. Yeah. And there's some children that can actually come up with their own apps, right? We're talking about the integrative technology with kids. Bill Hosey was talking about all that, too. Yeah. Scary. It's tomorrow. It's today, right? Okay. So we're going to take a short break unless Senior Production Engineer has another question. Does she? I think I'll wait until after the break. She says she's going to wait. Okay. All right. Please join us at Think Tech, Hawaii. My program is Asian and Reveal. My next program is on November 17, Thursday, 11am. This is Johnson Choi, your host. Hello, ha! How you doing? Welcome to Yvatchitak. I'm here at Gardo the Tech Star on Think Tech, Hawaii. I'm here with my good old buddy, Andrew the security guy. Hey, everybody. How you doing? Thank you for watching. Good to have Andrew here in the house. Please join us every Friday from 1 to 130 and follow us up on YouTube. And remember, as we say at the end of every show, how you doing? Thank you for watching Think Tech. I'm Grace Chang, the new host for Global Connections. You can find me here live every Thursday at 1pm where we'll be talking to people around the islands or visiting the islands who are connected in various aspects of global affairs. So please tune in and aloha, and thanks for watching. All right. We're back. We're live. We're here with Michonne Reyes of Verizon and Pearl Ridge. The crowds are going to be down there. They'll be lining up to see you. It's going to be really interesting. And if I walk in this store and I will, I'll find you. You can run, but you can't hide. And I say, all right, with Samsung, I want to go to the biggest best. I want to go to the frontier on this thing. I want to have what Google has, okay? How does that work? What happens to me? Well, you're going to come into our store. I'll be there, yeah. You're going to be wild because it's new and improved. We just expanded. You'll get checked in so you don't have to worry about being lost and waiting your turn. We'll let you know that they'll have a specialist come and help you. The specialists are the ones that know all about the phones. They can tell you the comparisons and what's cool and everything. Good. While you're waiting, you'll be able to look through all the phones. When you first walk into our store right now, we have the pixels set up on the left side. It kind of has its Google colors. We actually have five or six phones right now for you. You can play with them while you're waiting. Get comfortable with it so you know what questions to ask and what you're looking for. Compare them to the other phones. That way, when the specialist comes to see you, they'll discover and find out what you like about your phone currently. What more you want, be able to connect what we're discovering to the right phone for you. You know a lot about what you want. We know about what we can give you, so that puts you in the right phone. Already, we know you like your Android phone. We know you like the operating system and the customizing, but you love Google about it. That's why we get you into the Google phone. We know you like your camera. We know the battery is important for you. That's why we get you in the pixel. Yeah. Okay. All right. So don't tell me exactly, but tell me in general how the transfer would work. My contract is a lease contract, right? So you're paying monthly for the phone. I'm paying monthly for the phone. The reason I'm paying, you can guess why I'm paying monthly, because I always have to have the latest and greatest and always transfer into the latest and greatest. So how does that work? I'm still a Verizon customer. How does that work? So when you do it with a device payment plan, which you're currently on, your plan can't stay the same, or we can upgrade it or change it to what works best if you're using the amount of data you need or you need more. If you need to add a bigger device and say a tablet, we have tablets out. We also have home phones, and we have portable hotspots. So we can customize it all into one plan. As far as how it works with your phone, you would continue to pay a monthly charge. You can get it for as low as $27 a month for the 32 gigabyte on the Pixel. Is that the biggest one? The Pixel XL, that one's going to be a few dollars more. Okay. How big is the XL? That one... 64. 128. No, no, no. Memory space? 128. 128. Whoa. Yeah. So it skips from 32 and goes to 120. It's okay. It's all right. So more than $27 a month for that. For your bigger... Oh, yeah. Yeah, 128. You got a few more dollars on that one. Okay, okay. When you trade in your current phone, though, right now, we have specials going on, so you can actually get up to $400 off the phone. So that will bring your monthly cost down even more. So if you break down 400 by 248, I'm not really that quick at math. Whatever. Right. So you're paying a lot less than $27 a month. Yeah, maybe I'm going to come around and see you. What about my accessories now? You got live cases on there. You got the Daydream View Virtual Reality. Of course, you want to protect it. That's really important. Yeah. You got a screen. I have a screen on Baby over here. I have a screen protector. It's the glass kind. You have this kind of accessory? Mm-hmm. The tempered glass to protect it. Yeah. So that if you get a little nick or drop, it's not going to crack your screen. Right. It's going to crack that protector. Right. Just replace the protector. Okay. But I got to get new charging. You will get a wall charger in the box, which is the Type-C, which gives you the fast speed, right? 15 minutes gives you seven hours. Yeah. You would probably want to get a car charger too. I do see you have your portable charger already. Good job on that. Well, that's because I don't have enough juice in this. I'm always carrying a charger in my pocket already. Now you know. 15 minutes. Yeah. That's fabulous. Okay, what else do I need? And of course you have cases for it, but that's no big thing. Yeah. So that's all I need. No. You want to enhance your performance or your experience with your phone, right? You watch movies or listen to music on there. I do. You'd want a portable speaker. You'd want to have that portable speaker playing to enhance that. Yeah. Bluetooth? Bluetooth speaker. My Bluetooth speaker would I have already would work. It will work. It will work. Okay. So that's, I don't have to actually buy that if I have it already. You don't, or you can gift it and you can get one for someone else. There you go. Yeah. Everybody, yeah. What else? What else do you recommend? What should I consider? Let's see. We got things that will keep your phone smart. Like, okay, if you don't already have homes, security things in your house, you can get like a camera, a Bluetooth camera that you can actually see your. You'll see at your house. Yes. Yes. That's an app? Or is that? There's an app that you would download on your phone that pairs through the camera. Oh, but you get the camera to put in your house and the app connects the two. So you use it for security. You'd use it for if you have pets at home or children at home. Or if you, there's a party going on in your house and you want to be a part of it, which actually would be cool if you had your VR, virtual reality glasses, right? And you can see what's going on. Well, you have virtual reality for this now? That one. Because it's not exactly the same size, but maybe it doesn't matter. Samsung has the virtual reality thing. You're going to slip the phone in there. They do? Does it slip in there too? There's one that there's the Gear VR. They have for them. But also, the Daydream View is the one that Google has. And right now it's actually a really nice fabric that we have in the store when you'll see. It has like a nice fabric. It's a design. It's kind of like an accessory that doesn't look so like a piece of goggles on, you know? You can actually wear it and look kind of cool. So it's not going to hurt me. I mean, financially it's not going to hurt me to, I mean, not much anyway to slip into a pixel. Right now there's a special one on there. And then like I said, you trade in your current phone and you get the deal. You get the view with the purchase of a pixel. Okay. What am I going to lose in this process? I mean, a little time making the transfer. Not if you're having fun in this story or you're not wasting any time. No, that's true. And you'll be there. So no question about that. And we can have that party you're talking about. Yes. So do I lose anything? Am I losing some of my accessories? Well, you're going to take my old phone. If you want to trade it in, right? Trade it in. But you get to keep your same charger. It's different though. Maybe your charger will work. Well, this charger would work. Yeah. This is a good charger. And then your micro charger from your Samsung will still work on your Bluetooth or any other accessories you had. But as far as losing, you don't have to change your plan. You can keep the same exact plan that you have. So you're not losing your plan. There's really nothing to be afraid of. You're not going to lose your contacts or your pictures or anything because we're going to streamline and transfer everything for you. Google itself saves things and contacts through your Google Drive and through your Google account. So once you load back into your new Google phone, you have it all saved up. So, yeah. So when I come in, you're going to be able to make the transfer of everything on the one phone to the other. I don't lose anything there. As long as you have your logins, which I'm pretty sure you have... Oh, I'm pretty sure I do. ...usernames and passwords, we have other ways to try and help out. But the fastest way is if you have your logins already set up and if you backed up things already on your own. Stop everything. We have a question from the engineering room. I just have to wonder, you know, we're hearing so many great things. Are there any complaints about the Pixel? I just want to hear one complaint just so I know it's a real phone. Is it too good to be true? You can't hear that, but I'll repeat it for you. Zary Bender, who is an inquiring mind, you know, she wants to know if you've had any complaints about the Pixel phone. Maybe it's too early for that. And if so, what kind of complaints are there? What are the things that stick in your mind that may be a problem of some kind? Honestly, it is early for us to get the complaints. I mean, a lot of people are waiting for that time where they can do it or they've ordered it and they haven't gotten it yet. But I'd say the only thing, and this is in general when anybody moves from a phone or operating system is they miss what they're comfortable with. So there is a learning curve if you're moving into something, but we try to make it as comfortable and as easy for you to transition. You got to be open to it. We tell people when they get their phone at first, you know, take it a little bit at a time. It's not something you're going to learn overnight. And if you get overwhelmed, take a step back. You know, don't jump into it right away. That would be the only thing in general that we would get complaints about is if they miss their Samsung function or if they miss their Motorola function or Apple gadget, right? Yeah, so are the lines around the block for this phone? I mean, have you had a lot of action on this phone? Well, let me tell you, when we had it out for a detail only, meaning it wasn't in the story yet, a lot of people were coming and asking to see it. A lot of people were waiting for it to come in on that day. So there was a demand. There were people that were excited about it. Now that we have it in store, a lot of people are coming in to see it. Sure, that always makes a big difference when you actually have it. When you have it, yes. You can close the deal. You see it, you touch it, you play with it, you know. It's like trying on goals. Is it anywhere else? Can I go to Best Buy or? You want to get it. I'm going to say Radio Shack, but they don't count much anymore. Best Buy, can I go there again? You want to get it from Verizon One. So you want to come see it at Pearl Inn? I want to see you. Yes. Okay. So when they come in, my last question, unless this is a really bad one, my last question is, when people come in, you know, when they talk to you, when they get all fascinated with this phone, what are most people looking for? What excites most people? What's the thing that brings them in? Of course, for this phone. Yeah. Google, right? People love the Google. That's why they like their Android. The picture, the unlimited storage for pictures and videos. And their fast speeds for battery. Charging speeds for battery. So you get your battery storage. You got your photo and your picture storage. You got your really nice 12.3 megapixel camera from the rear face. 8 megapixel from the front face. And it's a pretty sexy phone. Yeah, it is. It has a big G on the back. Let me show you the G here. I don't know if you can see, there's a big G on the back. Google. G is one of the popular letters in the alphabet these days. Well, thank you, Michonne. Thank you. It's been great to meet you. Great to talk to you about this. I'm not joking. I'll be down and see you. I don't get the pearl ridge too often, but I'll make a trip for this. Why, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Aloha.