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Alienware Planning Android iPhone Killer?

Posted by CmdrTaco on Sat Feb 16, 2008 09:20 AM
from the competition-means-better dept.
Cellphones
meteorit found a story about rumors of an Alienware phone based on Google's Android phone OS. As Dell has a history of bombing with handhelds, it would be interesting to try the Alienware brand instead. And I'm not exactly sure where they get off claiming that their drawings are the first pictures of the thing. Cheesy renderings designed explicitly for your website are not quite pictures of a product... they are artists impressions.
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Submission: Alienware about to launch cell phone? by meteorit (1161245)
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  • Anyone else think... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 16 2008, @09:23AM (#22445096)
    ...this thing looks more like a creepy, Gigeresque sex toy than a phone? Sil [wikipedia.org] would be pleased.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by MikeUW (999162)
      Based on these fictional images, it looks like this thing will just be uncomfortable in general. The grill things will probably break at some point too, and AC mentions, waste space. I don't see how this thing has anything to do with the iPhone. The fact that it will be based on Android is somewhat cool. But otherwise it's physical design/functionally looks like just about every other modern cellphone, and as I understand it, the physical design/UI is what really makes the iPhone most distinctive.

      • Re:Anyone else think... (Score:5, Informative)

        by Vexorian (959249) on Saturday February 16 2008, @10:09AM (#22445394)
        If I understand it these are just rumors and the images are all invented and not from alienware itself, in fact it looks like it is more of a CNP of the alien ware case to look like a cell phone...

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by i4u (234028)
          exactly it is just a rumor without a source and fake photos. congrats to the webmaster on getting this story slashdotted. Oh, have you heard about the Coca Cola iPhone killer? It looks like a soda can.

          • Oh, have you heard about the Coca Cola iPhone killer? It looks like a soda can.
            Have you heard about the Starbucks keyboard? Well thanks to you, I now have one.

      • Re:Anyone else think... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by frdmfghtr (603968) on Saturday February 16 2008, @10:46AM (#22445614)

        I don't see how this thing has anything to do with the iPhone.
        That's because it doesn't have anything to do with the iPhone. The iPhone isn't even mentioned in the linked article.

        However, "iPhone" in the headline attracts more attention.

    • Re:Anyone else think... (Score:4, Funny)

      by ATL_gadget_grrl (1122351) on Saturday February 16 2008, @10:26AM (#22445492)
      I defy you to find me one woman who would carry that thing...
    • And free minutes will start at 11pm. It's brutal.

  • iPhone killer? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by timeOday (582209) on Saturday February 16 2008, @09:26AM (#22445106)
    I don't think the iPhone has attained the status that any new smartphone must be considered a competitor first and foremost to it. Especially when, as in this case, it's a completely different styling concept. I do see iPhones here and there, but by far most people still use other cellphones, so I do not think the iPhone merits a reference in the title of every story about cellphones.

    • Re:iPhone killer? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jacksonj04 (800021) <nick@tn-uk.net> on Saturday February 16 2008, @09:52AM (#22445288) Homepage
      I was just wondering that myself. Other points, from the article:

      It would have the striking design to make an impression in a mobile market dominated by fashion phones...
      Eh? It looks like something you get free in a cereal packet. Wasting half the form factor on a pointless grille != good design.

      ...it would instantly be the coolest phone on the market thanks to the popularity of the Alienware brand...
      No, it would be bought by a few die-hard Alienware fanatics who don't mind trading features for silly design. It looks like it's got relief details on that fascia, they snag in your pocket. This is not a cool design, no matter how many blinky lights it has.

      ...it would have the marketing muscle of Dell behind it to push it beyond its established niche and into the mainstream...
      It would have to play on the Alienware brand which at the moment, at least in tech circles, has connotations of overpricing. For Joe Public, I doubt they would see the point in this phone because it would have the 'Gaming' association of Alienware.

      ...and it would be the mobile gamer's dream, just as video gaming on mobile phones is starting to enter the picture.
      I don't know how they work this out. Video gaming on mobile phones isn't starting to enter the picture at all, because most people only want their phones to play idle games of Snake on at most. Hardcore mobile gamers would want something easy to play on, the design of this doesn't look to offer much hope of that. More intense gamers wouldn't care for the tiny screen and poor quality graphics, and to make it even stand a chance at reasonable gaming it would sacrifice loads of battery. Perhaps that's why it has the grille, it's to fit a huge battery pack behind.

    • Re:iPhone killer? (Score:5, Funny)

      by aplusjimages (939458) on Saturday February 16 2008, @10:09AM (#22445388) Homepage Journal
      I think they mean it's literally an iPhone killer. You see this isn't just an ordinary phone. It's what a ninja would be if it were a phone. These ninja-phones, if you will, act as your everyday phone, but when in close proximity to an iPhone the ninja-phone transforms into a ninja star or katana and literally kills the iPhone and it's owner. So you see it is the iPhone killer.
    • You don't have an iPhone do you? Poor SOB. Someday you will... just keep saving your pennies and you will know the glory of the iPhone.

    • Re:iPhone killer? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by johnpaul191 (240105) on Saturday February 16 2008, @01:28PM (#22446586) Homepage
      The iPhone is important because it made the smartphone concept mainstream. Tech nerds aside, before the iPhone it was common to see business people with Blackberries. There was some sort of stigma from that masses that they could never escape the office because they were always in touch. The iPhone somehow succeeded where Palm failed to..... make a smart phone seem really freakin useful and fun. Let's face it, Palm took the basic handheld they have been selling for 10+ years and added a phone to it. Windows Mobil phones are just Microsoft's version of that, and again often an extension of the office. The iPhone may have the best mobile browser out there, and that matters. I can't tell you how many times we will be out to dinner and randomly want to look something up online. It's always the iPhone that has the best browsing results.

      I know a lot of people that freelance, and want/need email and some sort of web access in their pocket. The Treo still seems to dominate that world, but maybe it will change? These are people picking out their own phones and paying for their own plans, not issued by work.
      *Most* iPhone owners i know are new to a smartphone. The second biggest group are people that upgraded from a Treo.

      I write this as a Treo owner, and a Mac user.... but if the iPhone was CDMA, i would probably own one. The iPhone's Safari is the app i want more than anything. Having a Verizon/BREW Treo it does not seem like i have 3rd party options for browsers that are anywhere near Safari (operamini doesn't run on my phone).

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Skruggs (838610)
      I couldn't disagree more... I see iPhones EVERYWHERE and given the amount of talking people do about them, I think it's fair to say it's the ONLY thing people currently compare against. Palm? Dead. RIM? Alive but really a totally different market. Symbian? Boring. Windows Mobile? DOA. The proof to me was last week on an airplane to California. In a row of 5 seats, 4 of the row occupants had iPhones out during the flight (including me)

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by drinkypoo (153816)
        I have yet to actually see an iPhone in person. Outside of the rat race of the cities where if your phone isn't cool enough girls won't talk to you, no one gives a squashed shit about it.
  • 1. liquid nitrogen very cool 2. fire very not cool 3. alienware cool 4. dell not cool 5. slashdot always cool

  • Eat up Martha (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 0xdeadbeef (28836) on Saturday February 16 2008, @09:43AM (#22445228) Homepage Journal
    As Dell has a history of bombing with handhelds

    So does Apple, fool.

  • iPhones not "the" phone to beat (Score:3, Insightful)

    by webmaster404 (1148909) on Saturday February 16 2008, @09:46AM (#22445246)
    I really don't think that now the iPhone is the phone to beat. Most people I know have a RAZR or similar, while they would like an iPhone as most people would, the $600 price tag plus dealing with AT&T makes them not buy one.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Tony Hoyle (11698)
      It could become so though.

      The ipod wasn't the mp3 player to beat for years... at the beginning it was OSX only, then it got windows compatibility but was still a hideously expensive geek toy. That's about where the iphone is now. Look what happened - It got colour, it got video, the design was refined, it got more capacity, then followed the ipod mini(? forgot its title), nano, etc. all came out, the price plummeted then everyone got one.

      Following the same track - get 3G, more capacity, decent camera, may
      • I fully agree. The cell industry has had it's ass so far up there for so long, it took Steve Jobs to show them how screwed up they are. The only threat IMO to Apple dominating smart cell phones the way they dominated music players is Google's Android, which currently is far far behind, and Steve Jobs keeping his head in his own ass to boot. Steve can make an advanced and desirable product, but he can't compete against open platforms any better than he competes against Windows/IBM PCs. If Google offers a
      • The ipod wasn't the mp3 player to beat for years...

        Uh, no - the iPod was the player to beat the day it was announced. It was the first player to use 5 gigabyte 1.8" hard drives while everything else used tiny amounts of flash memory or used big and heavy desktop hard drives. It also used a 400 Mpbs Firewire interface while everything else used 11 Mbps Usb 1.1 or even parallel. Combine that with a good interface and good integration and you had a product that was far ahead of the competition.

        Now everythin

  • Yet another Killer (Score:5, Informative)

    by tigheig (546423) on Saturday February 16 2008, @09:46AM (#22445248)
    If you read TFA you find that it's not even a rumor, it's entirely speculation based on the purchase of Alienware by Dell. It states that the argument for the Alienware phone is "overwhelming" based on the fact that the author thinks that Alienware is cool and is well known outside of us build-it-yourself PC geeks. TFA is accompanied by something labeled "First Pictures of Alienware Android Cell Phone" that is actually a GIF mockup drawn by a staff artist based on what they'd like it to look like. So now the Slashdot "killer" label is being applied to products that not only don't exist yet, but for which there's no objective evidence that anyone is even thinking about. Can we retire the "killer" now? It's become parody.
    • looks more like a GIF mockup drawn by an unsupervised intern than like a GIF mockup drawn by a staff artist.

  • Butt Ugly (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Telvin_3d (855514) on Saturday February 16 2008, @09:47AM (#22445258)
    That may be the ugliest piece of hardware I have ever laid my eyes on.

    As for an iPhone killer? Why is everything these days an iPhone killer? This abomination does not compete with the iPhone in any way. Completely different design (if you can call it that) aesthetic. It's not based on a touch screen. Any mention of an iPhone killer exists only to drive people to the site so they can have a look. If the title was 'Dell subsidy designs cellphone, beats it with ugly stick' they would not get as much traffic.
    • As for an iPhone killer? Why is everything these days an iPhone killer? This abomination does not compete with the iPhone in any way.

      I think what they mean is:
      1) place iPhone on desk
      2) hammer iPhone to death with Alienware phone
      3) ...?
      4) sweep up the mess

      I can't see where "Profit!!!" fits in here.
      • ...in the market of "13 year old boy's imaginations".

        I was thinking maybe they should add something that looks like a jet intake, a sub-woofer, some neon underglow, flame stickers on the side, and maybe some spinnaz.

        I am pre-emptively naming it the Dell Alienware AREA 51 EXXTREME XENOMORPH. Its default ring tone would be "Crawling in my skin" by Linkin Park. I hope it has Myspace Mobile.

  • bombing? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by llZENll (545605) on Saturday February 16 2008, @09:48AM (#22445260)
    "Dell has a history of bombing with handhelds"

    The Dell Axim series was one of the most popular Pocket PCs in history, I would bet they sold several times more Axims than Apple has sold iPhones.

    The highest powered Axims released in the later years of the series was more powerful and feature rich than the iPhone. The x50 had VGA, touchscreen, wifi, BT, SD/CF, IR, 620mhz CPU, over 6000 software apps, and came out in 2004.

    If Dell was serious about releasing an iPhone 'killer' all they would have to do is resurrect their x50 and add phone support and it would be better than the iPhone except for the interface. After releasing 6 PDA models they have the knowledge and experience to easily do this. Its probably only a matter of business contracts with the mobile carriers that is holding them back.

    • Re:bombing? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by natrius (642724) <niran.niran@org> on Saturday February 16 2008, @10:01AM (#22445338) Homepage

      If Dell was serious about releasing an iPhone 'killer' all they would have to do is resurrect their x50 and add phone support and it would be better than the iPhone except for the interface.

      The interface is the device.

      • Re:bombing? (Score:5, Informative)

        by p0tat03 (985078) on Saturday February 16 2008, @10:59AM (#22445704)
        Mod parent up. This is something that people in the tech field gloss over FAR too often. When it comes down to cell phones, laptops, and all of these consumer electronics, the feature sets of each device is all about the same (bluetooth, WiFi, yadi yada, it's all there)... The only thing that the user interacts with that is DIFFERENT is the UI. The UI *is* the device. It is why Apple has succeeded, and why Motorola is desperate to rid itself of its mobile division.
    • After releasing 6 PDA models they have the knowledge and experience to easily do this.

      You are assuming that the knowledge and experience hasn't been lost. If companies get out of a market or bomb in a market, the team is usually not kept together. Most likely, the teams that created the handsets in the past are either not with the company any longer or are in different groups. Every company I have worked at that got rid of a product from its portfolio was totally unprepared to do anything with the ma

  • I thought Android is a platform (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bogaboga (793279) on Saturday February 16 2008, @09:53AM (#22445296)
    Indeed, Android is a platform. Just googled it up and came up with this link: http://code.google.com/android/ [google.com]. It says in part...

    "The Open Handset Alliance, a group of more than 30 technology and mobile companies, is developing Android: the first complete, open, and free mobile platform."

    But the title suggests that there is an Android phone which will be killed! Android is a platform just like Linux, and Alienware's device will be based on the Android platform. so to me, this development will perpetuate Android instead of killing it.

    It's like saying..."Bogaboga Systems is gonna come up with a Linux killer which will be based on Linux!" This does not make much sense to me.

    • Am I missing something, seems like it's saying that the Android phone is could kill the iPhone??
    • Reading comprehension skills = -1
      The title says it correctly. AFAIK, the iphone doesn't use Android, so to take your point of view would be foolish. If there was an article that said "Ford plans 500bhp Ferrari killer" would you take that to mean that the ford was designed to kill 500bhp ferraris or that it had 500bhp that made it the ferrari killer ?
      Or "NASA plans 21st moon shot" would of course mean that NASA are planning to go to the 21st moon !

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anpheus (908711)
      You parsed the adjectives wrong: [[[[Alienware] Planning] Android] [iPhone Killer]]. Last two words are a noun phrase, Android is used as an adjective describing said noun phrase, and then you have the verb and subject.

      Easy mistake to make but you shouldn't be modded insightful for pointing out the grammatical reason the title sucks. Then again, given when you posted, you would have gotten modded redundant for calling out the Editor for calling a fictional and unsubstantiated device with crappy drawings an
      • Agreed. I wonder whether the editor could have re-phrased the title to avoid confusion. What about inserting the word "based" after the word Android? I think this is part of good editing skills.

  • iPhone killer (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ptomblin (1378) <ptomblin@xcski.com> on Saturday February 16 2008, @09:58AM (#22445324) Homepage Journal
    I'm hoping for an "iPhone done right", and this aint it. By "iPhone done right", what I'm looking for is something that will replace my Treo and my iPod. I definitely like the real keyboard on the Treo - the touch keyboard on my wife's iPod Touch sucks. I also like the fact that the Treo has cut and paste, so I can trim down the quoted part of email. And it's compatible with my Palm apps. But the iPhone is multi-tasking, has a much better web browser, and would mean I don't have to carry around a separate iPod. If something could combine the virtues of both, I'd be right there in line.

  • Touch sensitive keypad! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Aaron Isotton (958761) on Saturday February 16 2008, @10:04AM (#22445358)
    Oh my god! It even has a touch sensitive keypad! Now that's unheard of!

  • fugly (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ZipprHead (106133) on Saturday February 16 2008, @10:05AM (#22445360) Homepage
    How is something this ugly going to be an Iphone killer?
  • I wouldn't carry that thing around. I like the idea of the slide open changing the screen contents. But the Iphone has a nice big screen, any killer will have to find a way to have a big screen or someway of compensating.

  • Bleah (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Quiet_Desperation (858215) on Saturday February 16 2008, @10:50AM (#22445634)
    So nearly half of its structure is junky looking "futuristic" plastic just for looks?

    If they got rid of hat and just put the keyboard there, they wouldn't need a failure prone moving slider part.

  • All it needs is a Flowmaster.
  • Alienware is "the trendiest tech company in the world" according to the article.

    Would someone care to explain how this is so? I would say that Apple takes that title.
    Though, if not Apple, certainly not a company that very few people have heard of. What
    percentage of the PC buying market really knows who Alienware is. I work for a tech
    company and would bet less than half of the people there would be familiar with the name.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by p0tat03 (985078)

      Not to mention Alie nware can't make a cell phone if it meant their life. They can barely make laptops (the build quality isn't very good), and their case designs are generics from Asian suppliers, modified slightly to give it that distinct Alienware style at the top. I don't believe they have the engineering expertise to build a mobile system from the ground up - not when their status is merely a (substandard quality, overpriced) systems integrator.

      Hell, the iPhone's only *real* advantage is its incredib

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by usrusr (654450)
        Alienware couldn't, but Dell could. And besides, they could do exactly the same thing with phones they do with cheap computer cases, china has plenty of noname gadgets makers that can supply "phone blanks". It still does not matter at all, because Alienware as a brand does not really exist outside of the basements of a few rich parents. In comparison to Alienware, Apple is mainstream. And in the market of mobile phones, even Apple is still midget, despite of the biggest hype ever made around a piece of elec

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by p0tat03 (985078)

          I think mobile consumers have proven themselves savvy enough not to buy substandard "phone blank" devices. Why is Motorola in the rut they are in now? Well, years of making substandard devices (hardware quality was fine, software was not) that had no ergonomics physically nor mentally. They thought they could ride on their brand (which at one time was THE most powerful in the market) with mediocre phones. Consumers knew better.

          For anyone to break into, or even survive in, the mobile market, they need to b

    • completely agreed.

      They were cool-looking like 5 years ago when everyone had beige boxen.

      My cases have been lian-li since 2000 and I haven't looked back.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by TheRaven64 (641858)
      It's exactly the reason that so many 'iPod killers' have failed. You start with the iPod and say to an engineer 'make a better one of these,' so the engineer goes away, lists all of the features that iPod doesn't have, and starts adding them. Along the way, marketing gets involved, and adds a few more features (which probably don't integrate well with the existing ones).

      After a year or so, they come up with something that is bigger than the iPod, but has a load more features. They ramp up the hype mac

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