The LG Prada was announced very close to the iPhone?s announcement. The iPhone was annoucned on January 9th, 2007, whilst the LG Prada wasunoffically announced (I think) on December 15th, 2006. I think the official announcement came a week or two after the iPhone was announced. I don?t know if there were any screenshots of the Prada?s homescreen?s back in December. Unless one company has spies in the other?s camp there is no way that either copied the HW or UI of the other.
I agree. What I recall is that I wasn't able to find found any pictures that were released more than a couple days before the iPhone. One thing I just found that I didn't realize then was that it's a side slider with a physical landscape keyboard. There are a lot of details that simply aren't similar at all, the people that claim copying there weren't paying attention to the time line and aren't paying attention to the numerous physical design differences. It looks like it was never made available in the Western Hemisphere either.
I hear the nice thing about the pre is that you can do things like listen to pandora and surf the web or check email at the same time.
I use my iPod while surfing the web and reading mail, all at the same time. The iPod works in the background while my mail gets pushed to me in the background and webpages load in the background if I leave Safari. And of course my SMS and phone is still working in the background, too.
I don?t use Pandora, but I know people that do. For all the screaming for background apps on the iPhone, music streaming is the only one I hear mentioned. Too bad Apple doesn?t allow the iTunes music streaming to work from the iPod app. That would seem to alleviate the biggest gripe for not having 3rd-party apps run in the background.
I?ve also see the Palm Pre and G1 slow down considerably with background apps running. I think that ?not the battery? is the primary reason Apple doesn?t allow 3rd-party apps to run wild. The 3GS now has plenty of spare memory and the processing power seems more than sufficient for them to allow a select number of background apps, but this is a tricky, logistical issue, as well as a coding issue. They can?t just make all apps you access start running in the background. My 3GS loads all my normal apps faster than when i had 5 apps running on a Pre.
This is a lot like copy/paste on the iPhone. This takes time and coding to make this work right. People seem to want it so every app opens up and stays open and then have Windows-like Task Manager to kill them. The Pre is set up to have the apps easily closed when you are in them, but the iPhone uses the Home Button while ?smartly?choosing which apps need to maintain processes and which don?t. They?d need to devise a way that you turn select apps on to run in the background. Perhaps from a Preferences list like you choose which apps will run Push Notifications. Would this require an approval process and changes in the SDK for developers to optimize for this feature so that resources are minimized somewhat while running in the background? Would there have to limits set to number of apps running in the background or how much RAM they can use so that your foreground app is not negatively affected?
The guy that wrote Box Office blogged about coding his app for Android is more difficult because of the background app. if your app is in the foreground and there is a background app stealing your resources you need to adjust a lot in your app to make to run sufficiently. Even then, people may think your app is just crappy or that the phone is crap because they don?t consider what they can?t see.
Pre sales fell from 200,000 units in June to 100,000 in July. Looks like they'll slide even further thsi month. And should this occur, we'll see more price cuts and Palm can say goodbye to its margins.
Palm is sucking wind right now. I wonder if they'll make it to 2010. No new phone for Christmas, their apps suck and there are hardly any. Where are all the WebOS developers?
Palm is sucking wind right now. I wonder if they'll make it to 2010. No new phone for Christmas, their apps suck and there are hardly any. Where are all the WebOS developers?
I was recently in China and they have TV commercials and street signs promoting their own 3G phones... I don't think too many people there would want a go backwards and get 2G, when they have 3G phones. Just my thinking.
I was recently in China and they have TV commercials and street signs promoting their own 3G phones... I don't think too many people there would want a go backwards and get 2G, when they have 3G phones. Just my thinking.
That is not how the mobile network market works. The US had one of the first commercial 3G networks in the world, although it was not widespread and while shortly thereafter some 3G-capable phones did filter in, people didn?t immediately jump to 3G devices. The original iPhone was EDGE while AT&T did have a 3G network in major cities. Even now, most people in the US are still using devices that are 2G capable only. Even when all US phones move to being 3G capable the majority of cell phone users won?t be paying for a data package, thus making the most important aspects of 3G moot.
China is no different, but it is on a larger scale. China Unicom and China Mobile, their largest network operator each received licenses at the beginning of this year for a 3G (UMTS) and 3G (TD-SCDMA) network, respectively. China has about 1,300M people, China Mobile has 480M subscribers, and yet they only have 1M 3G users as of 1.5 months ago. To put that into more perspective, China Mobile added over 7M subscribers in December alone.
3G will grow, but it takes time and money for implementing and then time for adoption to pick up. China is much like the US in there diverse mobile technology and by the shear number of towers to cover the country while also needing to support a great deal of users in congested cities. Many European countries just don?t have that logistical problem like these large countries with a spread out populace have.
Now that the 3G licenses have been granted and towers have been put in place in bustling areas the 3G phones will start selling more rapidly. Another perspective comparison is that AT&T was a much more developed with 3G when the original iPhone was first announced.
LOL! Does this mean the Pre is a flop? I believe so. Look at the massive hype about da Pre that has died down.. The 3GS still commands that hype with 3 iPhone iterations..
The 3GS can render twice as many polygons per second than the Pre. It's a bit more than just the letters that matter. It's like just looking at the clock speed of a CPU, doesn't work anymore.
Long-term, the most telling part of the article is that Dell wants in because of the "much higher margins' in the smart phone market.
Just like they used to be in the notebook market. Where Apple has reportedly cut margins because their making bank on the iPhone allows them to stay as profitable as they grow into these new areas.
However, with Android, Pre, etc., and lots of R&D sloshing around in the world-wide nascent mobile device market filled with many talented developers, unlike mp3 players, lots of "good enough" pocketable digital computer/communicators somewhat on a par with the 3GS are bound to emerge - turning these devices as well into tomorrow's commodity products with razor-thin returns to their makers.
Apple won't get hammered down to a 5% or less share again as they did with PC's - there's no behemoth like IBM many times their size to team up with some new would be MS to crush them for one thing, as Apple IS a monster itself now - but it seems reasonable that they'll face real competition sooner or later and depend somewhat similarly on remaining a premium, innovative maker one or ten steps ahead of the market to keep their momentum (as long as they have that SJ gene in their culture).
And on entering new markets where they'll be far ahead right out of the gate. Whether the "iPad" will be that device or another remains to be seen. I fell in love with the concept from the git-go, but the more I've cogitated on this tweener device, the less sure I am I'd personally buy one.
I visualize a 4G iPhone with a pocketable fold-out bluetooth keyboard (a little bigger than the one on my LG Voyager) as meeting my on-the-go, no bag needed computing needs and an MB Pro (or its next rev follow on) when I need more power.
Maybe the killer tech of the future will be flexible screens that put a 15" screen in your pocket or even Star Wars (the original) mini projection, holographic or otherwise......
Whatever, bring it on, Dell. No one's quaking in their boots in Cupertino over this one, but plenty of room in the pool still.
Comments
The LG Prada was announced very close to the iPhone?s announcement. The iPhone was annoucned on January 9th, 2007, whilst the LG Prada wasunoffically announced (I think) on December 15th, 2006. I think the official announcement came a week or two after the iPhone was announced. I don?t know if there were any screenshots of the Prada?s homescreen?s back in December. Unless one company has spies in the other?s camp there is no way that either copied the HW or UI of the other.
I agree. What I recall is that I wasn't able to find found any pictures that were released more than a couple days before the iPhone. One thing I just found that I didn't realize then was that it's a side slider with a physical landscape keyboard. There are a lot of details that simply aren't similar at all, the people that claim copying there weren't paying attention to the time line and aren't paying attention to the numerous physical design differences. It looks like it was never made available in the Western Hemisphere either.
http://www.mmarket.com/
PS: if the link is up to date, there are 55 apps for the Pre, and they look really bad.
http://palm.preapplications.net/
I hear the nice thing about the pre is that you can do things like listen to pandora and surf the web or check email at the same time.
I use my iPod while surfing the web and reading mail, all at the same time. The iPod works in the background while my mail gets pushed to me in the background and webpages load in the background if I leave Safari. And of course my SMS and phone is still working in the background, too.
I don?t use Pandora, but I know people that do. For all the screaming for background apps on the iPhone, music streaming is the only one I hear mentioned. Too bad Apple doesn?t allow the iTunes music streaming to work from the iPod app. That would seem to alleviate the biggest gripe for not having 3rd-party apps run in the background.
I?ve also see the Palm Pre and G1 slow down considerably with background apps running. I think that ?not the battery? is the primary reason Apple doesn?t allow 3rd-party apps to run wild. The 3GS now has plenty of spare memory and the processing power seems more than sufficient for them to allow a select number of background apps, but this is a tricky, logistical issue, as well as a coding issue. They can?t just make all apps you access start running in the background. My 3GS loads all my normal apps faster than when i had 5 apps running on a Pre.
This is a lot like copy/paste on the iPhone. This takes time and coding to make this work right. People seem to want it so every app opens up and stays open and then have Windows-like Task Manager to kill them. The Pre is set up to have the apps easily closed when you are in them, but the iPhone uses the Home Button while ?smartly?choosing which apps need to maintain processes and which don?t. They?d need to devise a way that you turn select apps on to run in the background. Perhaps from a Preferences list like you choose which apps will run Push Notifications. Would this require an approval process and changes in the SDK for developers to optimize for this feature so that resources are minimized somewhat while running in the background? Would there have to limits set to number of apps running in the background or how much RAM they can use so that your foreground app is not negatively affected?
The guy that wrote Box Office blogged about coding his app for Android is more difficult because of the background app. if your app is in the foreground and there is a background app stealing your resources you need to adjust a lot in your app to make to run sufficiently. Even then, people may think your app is just crappy or that the phone is crap because they don?t consider what they can?t see.
Not looking to good for Palm.
In mid-July less than 250,000 Pres were active.
Pre sales fell from 200,000 units in June to 100,000 in July. Looks like they'll slide even further thsi month. And should this occur, we'll see more price cuts and Palm can say goodbye to its margins.
Palm is sucking wind right now. I wonder if they'll make it to 2010. No new phone for Christmas, their apps suck and there are hardly any. Where are all the WebOS developers?
Anyone taking bets on this being successful....
Not me! 'Smart' and 'Dell' don't seem to fit in the same sentence somehow.
Palm is sucking wind right now. I wonder if they'll make it to 2010. No new phone for Christmas, their apps suck and there are hardly any. Where are all the WebOS developers?
They're all feverishly working on iPhone apps.
They're all feverishly working on iPhone apps.
The new hardware reportedly opertes on the 900MHz, 1700MHz and 1900MHz bands, includes Bluetooth
This isn't quite true. Listed in the original doc are the transmit frequencies of the phone, which correspond to GSM900, GSM1800 and UMTS2100.
The uplink of UMTS 2100 is in the 1900MHz range and the uplink of GSM1800 is in the 1700MHz range, which causes this confusion.
It's not a coincidence that China Unicom uses these three standards in its network (GSM900, GSM1800 and UMTS2100)
So don't get excited yet about a T-Mobile USA iPhone...
...only 2G data speeds...
I was recently in China and they have TV commercials and street signs promoting their own 3G phones... I don't think too many people there would want a go backwards and get 2G, when they have 3G phones. Just my thinking.
I was recently in China and they have TV commercials and street signs promoting their own 3G phones... I don't think too many people there would want a go backwards and get 2G, when they have 3G phones. Just my thinking.
That is not how the mobile network market works. The US had one of the first commercial 3G networks in the world, although it was not widespread and while shortly thereafter some 3G-capable phones did filter in, people didn?t immediately jump to 3G devices. The original iPhone was EDGE while AT&T did have a 3G network in major cities. Even now, most people in the US are still using devices that are 2G capable only. Even when all US phones move to being 3G capable the majority of cell phone users won?t be paying for a data package, thus making the most important aspects of 3G moot.
China is no different, but it is on a larger scale. China Unicom and China Mobile, their largest network operator each received licenses at the beginning of this year for a 3G (UMTS) and 3G (TD-SCDMA) network, respectively. China has about 1,300M people, China Mobile has 480M subscribers, and yet they only have 1M 3G users as of 1.5 months ago. To put that into more perspective, China Mobile added over 7M subscribers in December alone.
3G will grow, but it takes time and money for implementing and then time for adoption to pick up. China is much like the US in there diverse mobile technology and by the shear number of towers to cover the country while also needing to support a great deal of users in congested cities. Many European countries just don?t have that logistical problem like these large countries with a spread out populace have.
Now that the 3G licenses have been granted and towers have been put in place in bustling areas the 3G phones will start selling more rapidly. Another perspective comparison is that AT&T was a much more developed with 3G when the original iPhone was first announced.
"U.S. carriers reportedly saw a prototype of the device, only to reject it."
reason?...
Too ugly and surely cannot beat the iPhone...
They're all feverishly working on iPhone apps.
LOL! Does this mean the Pre is a flop? I believe so. Look at the massive hype about da Pre that has died down.. The 3GS still commands that hype with 3 iPhone iterations..
webOS needs some work, but the CPU and graphics in the Pre are the same as the iphone.
The GPU in the Pre is not the same as in the iPhone 3GS.
3GS: SGX535 + VXD (28 million polygons/sec)
Pre: SGX530 (14 million polygons/sec)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerVR
The 3GS can render twice as many polygons per second than the Pre. It's a bit more than just the letters that matter. It's like just looking at the clock speed of a CPU, doesn't work anymore.
Just like they used to be in the notebook market. Where Apple has reportedly cut margins because their making bank on the iPhone allows them to stay as profitable as they grow into these new areas.
However, with Android, Pre, etc., and lots of R&D sloshing around in the world-wide nascent mobile device market filled with many talented developers, unlike mp3 players, lots of "good enough" pocketable digital computer/communicators somewhat on a par with the 3GS are bound to emerge - turning these devices as well into tomorrow's commodity products with razor-thin returns to their makers.
Apple won't get hammered down to a 5% or less share again as they did with PC's - there's no behemoth like IBM many times their size to team up with some new would be MS to crush them for one thing, as Apple IS a monster itself now - but it seems reasonable that they'll face real competition sooner or later and depend somewhat similarly on remaining a premium, innovative maker one or ten steps ahead of the market to keep their momentum (as long as they have that SJ gene in their culture).
And on entering new markets where they'll be far ahead right out of the gate. Whether the "iPad" will be that device or another remains to be seen. I fell in love with the concept from the git-go, but the more I've cogitated on this tweener device, the less sure I am I'd personally buy one.
I visualize a 4G iPhone with a pocketable fold-out bluetooth keyboard (a little bigger than the one on my LG Voyager) as meeting my on-the-go, no bag needed computing needs and an MB Pro (or its next rev follow on) when I need more power.
Maybe the killer tech of the future will be flexible screens that put a 15" screen in your pocket or even Star Wars (the original) mini projection, holographic or otherwise......
Whatever, bring it on, Dell. No one's quaking in their boots in Cupertino over this one, but plenty of room in the pool still.
Can this get to be any more of a blatant rip-off... Or should Dell just call it a dPhone for the final insult??
Nah, it will be called the diePhone....