Google issues custom unlocked phones ahead of rumored Jan. launch - Page 5

Symbian is absolutely horrible to work with. And WinMo is nearly non-existent at this point.

Currently the Apple ecosystem (unsurprisingly), is the ideal, with a few caveats the vast majority of user and devs can live with well enough.

Would you accept a posting from the forum?

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...e_by_2012.html

If not, I can pull up many other postings.

That doesn't include Search, Music, Video, Books and everything else Google has their hands into these days.

Accept it, or follow Quadra's theory. Although looking at both postins I'd say you were born form the same Apple seed.

Quadra is anything but objective. And please don't try and subject your analysis on me. It just makes you sound like Quadra and the way it was phrased it was no joke. He compared the iPhone to Jesus. That is just wrong.

He needs help in a very serious way.

Spoken by someone that doesn't own one.


It doesn't have to be brighter if it's simply reflective, like the display in the iPhone. It's how it's readable an not totally washed out in full sunlight. Not ideal, but you can at least use it.


That's a pretty significant shortcoming unless you are going to stay indoors forever or only go outside at night or on a cloudy day. While I don't dispute OLED screens are gorgeous in subdued lighting, they are still pretty expensive and unless there has been a stealth update the blue still doesn't last that long causing some pretty bad color shifting over time.

Enjoy it while it lasts. When the technology has matured, you can guarantee Apple will adopt it - but certainly not to just be a checklist feature on some list.

And by your very technical analysis you've tried all of the mobile devices that you are considering not worthy of your Jesus Phone?

If not, then please leave the comparison to someone that doesn't pray to Apple.

By the way, according to the spreadsheet shown in 2012 Symbian will still lead the industry.

The iPhone to the mobile industry was like Jesus to the apostles.

Absolutely. It's true.

You need serious counseling. Your comments are disturbing to say the least.

Dude innovation does happen by theft and with ingenuity. Just ask Steve Jobs who stole from XEROX. What completely new product has Apple invented? Zero. They just improve on products that already exist in one form or another. Of course cell phones are gonna look alike. Just like all TVs look alike. How much different can a phone be made? And some of you need some reading comprehension courses. The article states the phone doesn't have a PHYSICAL keyboard but a VIRTUAL one.

Awww, both techstud and extremeskater banned within a 2 day time span.

Guys, who really cares? Android is nice to have in our market where Linux based phones never existed. That OS has a nice share overseas.

All I care is seeing WinMob die (and that was the only real goal of Android, not to ever take over Apple). Seriously, it's the worst OS ever made. The billions MS loses each year on it confirms that view.

Please, educate yourself better than that; Apple never stole anything from Xerox. They took a 16,000 concept from Xerox, paid them in the form of stock to legally turn it into something marketable, a $2500 computer called the Macintosh that people could actually buy.

Think about what Jesus might have meant to his apostles, assuming there is *some* historicity to the figure of Jesus. Now think of what the iPhone meant to the mobile industry. It was a complete sea change in almost no time at all. A profound transformation.

What's the difference whether I reference Jesus or some other influential figure or object? It's obviously an exaggeration, but the exaggeration illustrates the point.

Jesus is holy and central to Christians. In some other faiths he is simply a prophet. For Hindus, for example, he was at best a great inspiration for social teaching, but many would question his very divinity. Pay attention to the underlying comparison as it might relate to tech and leave Christian morality out of it. it's a harmless but very apt comparison. No, the iPhone isn't divine, LOL, but it did inititate a profound transformation of the mobile industry in almost no time at all.

ATT gives you a 5GB cap. Realistically you can only reach that limit if you are tethering, and their TOS says you need to pay extra for that. Really, only T-Mobile encourages tethering. This is not an issue with the iPhone so I don't know why you'd bring it up. You aren't exactly better off with Verizon or Sprint (I don't remember if Sprint is still lax on tethering but nobody wants to be a Sprint customer).

Touch screens on desktops/laptops are absolutely a gimmick. Where's the advantage? Typing is faster on the keyboard, and UI interaction is faster with a mouse. You would need extremely radical software innovation for touch screens on desktops/laptops to be worth squat, and it still wouldn't make up for the ergonomic disadvantage of having to suspend your arms all day, or in the case of a tablet, look even further downward all day. Where did all the tablet PCs go that were all over the place years ago?

Touch screens make sense for ultra portables because you can't carry around a mouse and keyboard. Additionally they have only seen mainstream success since capacitive touch screens eliminated the stylus.

Apple didn't milk the G4s. They were waiting for IBM to come out with new notebook solutions, and IBM came up short. They had to be hesitant - you can't just switch your whole platform without being sure about it being the right choice. The Intel switch was something that could have screwed Apple if not done correctly and smoothly. If it took a 6 month wait and IBM reached a breakthrough, we could still be seeing PowerPC Apples today.

I do wish that Apple's hardware was more competitive. I can also see why Apple doesn't want to destroy their profit margins like the rest of the PC industry by competing solely on spec/price value. When you compete on perceived value and on perfecting the little things that make the experience unmatchable, you don't need to be on the same level as your competitor.

I see an awful lot of jealous Verizon customers, Google geeks, and Microserfs posting here, and not much meaningful content presented. It would be very interesting if people were required to disclose their conflicts of interest... and did so truthfully.

no conflicts to disclose here.

Microsoft became what they are by bullying vendors into charging for DOS and then Windows on every PC they sold whether the user wanted it or not. For that they were tried and convicted as a monopoly - and yet it's the engine that still powers them to this day.

Google gets no such default revenue from phone manufacturers for Android. It will be interesting to see if they continue to fund it from their web based ad revenue and for how long. At least it doesn't have a beta tag...

Maybe this will be the first Android phone that can use more than 256 MB for apps. Or won't be so slow that it lags when scrolling the home screen like the Droid. Or has an actually usable on screen keyboard. Maybe even multi-touch that does everything that Apple's multi-touch does and isn't dog slow. How about a workable process for syncing everything including multi-media? No Android phone to date has had any of these things. So pardon me if I don't get too excited about yet another Android phone until Google cares as much about their smartphone OS as they care about search. it is amusing that people seem to think because everyone and their brother is announcing Android phones that sheer numbers will overwhelm the iPhone. Didn't work for Windows Mobile or Blackberry who had many years head start. Maybe the day will come when Android is as good as the iPhone OS/hardware combination but it's going to be awhile yet before we see that, if ever.

wow when you try to convey a piece of technology to a religion is when you know your a hardcore fanboy at the core.

lol. The guy should go work for macdailynews.com

But ya, the guy is extremely disturbing.

I don't know if it's been linked to yet, but the WSJ is saying that Google will directly sell a Google branded phone, made by HTC, unlocked and without a contract. The Nexus One.

Which means, just off the top of my head:

--Either Google will have to lose money on each handset or sell it for quite a bit more than people are used to paying. Yes, I know subsidization is a false economy, but the average consumer is unlikely to see it that way, especially if they still have to pay the same amount on their monthly bill. The upside of not being under contract isn't a huge selling point, IMO, for most folk.

-- Google will now have its Zune moment, where it is suddenly in competition with its hardware partners. If the Nexus One is a huge success, that's a pretty big problem, if it's not, it's just status quo, so I'm not sure what the upside for Google is. Maybe they just want to get a reference platform out there, but it's a pretty risky way of doing it.

-- And, If Google really wants the Nexus One to be a huge success, they need to make it better than the competition, which includes those very hardware partners. Since they wrote the OS, any improvements they make will be regarded as improvements to the OS that they are withholding from those partners. If they don't withhold such improvements, then the Nexus One won't really have any way of distinguishing itself from other Android handsets. To the extent that improvements are a matter of integration with the HTC hardware, HTC has motivation to copy any such integration, again negating any competitive advantage. I don't see a good way out of this bind.

When MS decided to dump "Plays for Sure" and make the Zune, they made something new that none of their partners had. Google can't do that. Not sure how this plays out.

Ugly phone.
They should have got Motorola to design it for them. Motorola can pull off some neat designs.

Then I guess you will miss the party...

Teckstud and Extremeskater banned. Now I see people replying to troll #3. How long before he gets banned?

If that's actually a shot of the final design of the real phone, the slight taper and silver bottom give it a 70's "modern" look, to me. Like a prop from Space: 1999. But who knows, maybe retro futuristic is the new brown.

The funny thing is, is that nine times out of ten the "MDN take" is spot-on, no matter how hyperbolically it's worded. Then again, it's bloody easy to trash MS and anything not Apple because Apple usually makes it so easy. As does the "competition."

If like my Motorola Ming there is nothing on it preventing me from tethering on Att or T-Mobile and is the same hardware as the "Bravo" or "Passion" I'm sold. A $550 for that kind of phone would work for me.

Problem is, all the unlocked google phones do not work in the states. Sure you can buy a mytouch w/o a contract, but T-Mobile still requires a data plan for it, why I don't know.

I sort of doubt that, say, Verizon is going to let you run your Nexus One on their network without getting a data plan out of you. Or allow tethering without additional fees.

Except that such a thing was never done. Unless you're speaking in general terms.

FAIL

The Mac was already well under development.

Apple paid Xerox to visit PARC, mainly to get Steve on board. Funny definition of stealing if you pay for something.

You might want to get your fact straight before posting in the future.


You might also want to brush up on your logic and critical thinking. Xerox had potential products, but they failed to have the ability to turn them into something commercially viable. Having an idea is not innovation. Making something of it is. Until you grasp that simple nuance, you will continue to be frustrated in your lack of understanding of Apple's continued success.

The iPhone. Apple invented this particular implementation of a mobile device.

The first home computer with a GUI.

Firewire.

The mouse, as we know it today, or of the 90's at least. The universal design of a "rubber-coated ball-bearing, orthogonal pinch rollers, and optical disk encoders" was developed by Apple for the Lisa and Macintosh project. It bears little resemblance to Englebart's mouse or the Xerox mouse.

There are probably more . . .

Tricky thing, this word "invent":

invent |inˈvent|
verb [ trans. ]
create or design (something that has not existed before); be the originator of : he invented an improved form of the steam engine.
• make up (an idea, name, story, etc.), esp. so as to deceive : I did not have to invent any tales about my past.
ORIGIN late 15th cent. (in the sense [find out, discover] ): from Latin invent- ‘contrived, discovered,’ from the verb invenire, from in- ‘into’ + venire ‘come.’

Apple's hardware is competitive for the segments they compete in. Sometime even (Gasp!) coming out less expensive then comparable hardware from PC manufacturers.


You don't want them to be competitive, you want them to play in the low margin high volume bargain segments. That's not an are they wish to compete in, for the very reasons you outline!

With the negatives you outlined, other then selfishness why do you wish for them to be in such an undesirable position?

Like the furor over netbooks - it makes me ill listening to the "digerati" gush about them. And then start to rattle off all the upgrades they do to them. By the time they are done, they could have paid the same for a "real" laptop that would have much better performance. But that initial price was low!

It's a suckers game and Apple is too smart for that, even if other manufacturers and even consumers aren't that smart. Netbooks are a fad. They are a good second computer, but there are people out there who can barely get by with one computer. The market for two computer per users is pretty small - and the iPhone and whatever it's successor this summer is going to start eating into that demographic pretty hard - and it will do it with a higher margin then netbooks. Not going out on much of a limb for that, either...

Isn't there some sort of internet penalty for using logic on a forum?

Excellent point and well made. And still flying over the heads of the usual suspects in these forums \

It's all controlled via firmware on the phone. My Ming (unlocked and non carrier firmware phone) on the old MediaNet plan allowed tethering at $15 a month. It still does if I want it to. It is against the TOS, but if you don't go overboard with it, they won't know.

On iphone's though, they got around that issue by profiles and itunes. Its so lame that by default tethering on them is disabled, even on unlocked iphones by firmware 3.1.

It used to me even on Att that you could buy a WinMob phone and needed a data plan only for a month and could cancel it. Now, on the new HTC winmob 6.5 phone, you have to have a data plan, period, on the new phone, or they cancel your service. My friend got around that somehow via a hack or generic firmware or something.

It's nice having data access no matter where you go, but I don't need it, and wifi suffices most of the time. I just want a nice device w/o the stupid data plan.

The trouble with a Nexus One, though, is that is will be an extremely high profile phone. Verizon or T-Mobile aren't going to be very happy with their "partner" selling phones that circumvent their data usage policies, and are likely to be keeping a very close eye on customers using such phones.

One of the worst things that could happen to any carrier is to get a whole bunch of unlocked phones on their network that invite intense data usage but don't pay for it. Which is why it's never going to happen.

Which is why, again, I don't see a huge upside to this model, or the whole geek fetish for unlocked phones (at least in America). All it gets you is the ability to switch from Verizon to T-Mobile and back whenever you want. You still pay the same monthly rates, and you don't get the subsidy. What is the advantage?

Back when I got my Ming:

1. It offered features that nobody had, and was the best Motorola phone for the money at the time. Nothing like it was in the US.
2. No stupid carrier branding or ringtones.
3. No stupid carrier pushing firmware updates to it to limit features. My previous phone lost the ability to properly bt its address books in bulk around a year after I got it. It allowed me to easily xfer my address book to another phone. Later on the feature disappeared. Hard reseting the phone didn't help.
4. They can't force a data plan on you, and the data plans that you can add are either cheaper than the usual $30 plans they throw at you for subsidized phones.

Just because it is unlocked and allows tethering doesn't mean much if you don't hit the data limit. On say T-Mobile which it is 10GB (and they only throttle you, not limit you). They still get the $30, and for twice the amount it costs from the old $15 Att media net plan, THEY BETTER allow a higher amount of data.

Don't do stupid stuff like P2P/bittorrent, run a server or try to use it 24/7 and stream continuously.

Here is also perhaps why I got away with tethering with an unlocked device: so few people do it or can do it so it doesn't cause an outright ban. It's only when everyone does it will it cause issues.

I've used 6GB of data on my home cable connection. That's 3 computers + VoIP. People who do that on a phone without tethering are crazy.

Oh, and you can really just easily switch from one SIM GSM provider to another. Getting an unlocked phone with CDMA makes much less sense, unless it is a super rare CDMA+GSM+WCDMA+HSDPA.

Mmmm, HTC Hero has a trackball and it's very comfortable use it. Doesn't imply that the touch screen is bad as you're saying.

I like how can anyone can comment anything without knowing nothing about it.

Don't own one, but have used my 3 roommates' iPhones outdoors plenty of times. I have to turn the brightness all the way up or angle the screen a bit to keep it from being washed out. Usable, yes, but obviously not ideal if I have to do it all the time. The simplest thing is to obviously just give the screen some shade.

The point I wanted to make was that you're passing judgement on a new phone by looking at the first generation of passive-matrix OLEDs. The latest versions of AMOLEDs (for phones coming out in 2010 and I suspect the Google phone uses) have improved performance over the PMOLEDs. AMOLEDs use the same TFT technology that's in an LCD display to boost the brightness. There are a lot of pluses for AMOLEDs over traditional LCDs.

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/oled3.htm

A video I found of a Samsung AMOLED screen. At the end, it shows off a bit of outdoor readability.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FICAHsE_enE

You may say "but that's not in direct sunlight!". Yes, it's not. It's essentially the equivalent of angling the screen away from direct sunlight. Something any normal person would do.

Also, seeing as how most people these days spend the majority of their days inside a building, the problem you raised suddenly doesn't become a crippling problem anymore. Combined with the much better outdoors performance now, AMOLEDs are pushing LCDs the way of CRTs.

As for the blue color degradation, the PMOLEDs do degrade over time, but I believe it was over the course of some 10 years or so. Chances are, you'll most likely have replaced your device with a new one long before you notice the problem. AMOLEDs do not have this problem to the same extent, or not at all. The "stealth upgrade" you call it has been done.

The latest versions of AMOLEDs are hardly a "checkmark feature" anymore.

The Google Phone, it's retro futuristic like poooo !!!!1!1!111!!!!1!!!

Ha ha. No way. Google gets the net and I think this is just the begining.

I think this is going to be huge. anTs nearing Ten year AT&T subscriber that jailbreaked his phone only a few months ago due to Apple pull GV mobile, I can say without a doubt, it rocks.*

Plus if you put the member on AT&T's A list, all call are free. How cool is that. Getting transcibed emails of voicemails, if you send someone to vm, you can listen in and jump on if you want. OT My dad still thinks voice mail is like an old fashioned awsering machine in that I can hear him. Anyone have family like that. Grin.*
Anyway, you can set up groups, make all phones ring if certain people call including landlines. You can send some right to voice mail. And GV Nobile is like 1/1000th of what you can if you jailbreak. *Ironically. If you unlock, it has a better resale Vaule then a two year old mbp, Apple did that we all the price cuts, dropping pro care tied to one to one and Pro training vs iLife, email Photo trauners now *all the pros are gone *geesg.*

There used to be a time you could buy a MacBook pro and get nearly the same price for it. *

Anyway, rambling. I think Googke knows what they are doing and will do very well and will give smart phones a new meaning changing graphic files on the fly, *PDFs without PDF reader like with preview, open pages and word docs *without the *app, will suprrutilize the name "Google" as eveyone knows it.

I say big DEAL deal *thev, with devolper likes those turned away and those that work for the app store. Of course it will play flash and that box so you can watch dvr programs on your phone and then some. Maybe Google/Samsung TV's, grin. No commercials and a musicstation with videos and indie bands. *

It's the future man. The network are toast. Plus google
really knows the web business model.

In time, we, the consumer, win. No wonder they never sold - think of the revenue they would make if they come up with a home page.
Peace*

The Jesus phone was coined as a rumor from Ken podcast mac something. Used to be into it big time. Anyway the point is this ischia Apple gets FREE PR. they leak a rumor and it's talked about for weeks and weeks. It's apple spin machine leaking on purpose. This is why when a new rumor comes out BEFORE the holidays, it's squashed the next day directly from Apple as to not affect sales. Where is Phll the otherb1000'rumors.

Spin and free pr people. Take off the rose coloered glasses.
Same reason younsee something beating apple the next day there is a report on customervsatisfaction. Lol. So transparent.
Typing on iPhone. Sooty about spelling and grammar. Peace

iMacs. Desktops that are not upgradable are not desktops.
Apple needs A midrange machine for prosumer which far outweigh Pros. See Avid buys Maudio and pinnacle. apple needs to get on the ball forbthe up and coming musician, editor l, graphic artist. At the very least offer faster gpu, esata and express slots.

P.

well said actually. innovate don't imitate. iphone is by far the best smartphone for me but there are plenty of irritating things not to mention the choice and limitation of cell phone companies. The are plenty of possibilities for a competing but fundamentally different product. Well RIM already have one at least.

I prefer apple to my horrible windows machines but jeaz they get on my nerves sometimes. Pulling the firewire ports off the laptops and then just putting one on the 15" pro with no express slot. well done guys, plenty of musos will have to look elsewhere then.