Motorola Introduces Android Phones, Social Software 195
ruphus13 was among the readers sending word of Motorola's Android handsets yesterday, along with a "socially aware" application layer called MotoBlur. The Motorola Cliq is expected in a few weeks. T-Mobile is Motorola's carrier partner in the US. A second Android phone will be marketed in other countries under the name Dext. Reuters called the market's reaction to Motorola's announcement "muted." "Dr. Sanjay K. Jha, Co-CEO of Motorola and CEO of the company's Mobile Devices division, unveiled Motorola's Android platform play. ... Key to both of the phones, and key to Motorola's overall Android strategy, is a new interface and application layer called MotoBlur. It's focused on 'a single stream' for social networking features, software updates, messages, syncing, e-mails, videos, photos... The Cliq phone has a 5-megapixel camera, slide-out keyboard, 24 frame-per-second video capabilities, GPS, a headphone jack, an advanced browser from Google, integrated Exchange service, and Google roaming services including Google voice search, access to maps, Google calendar, and more. It also provides one-click access to Android Market and the thousands of Android applications there."
Does it run Linux? (Score:3, Funny)
Seriously, I wonder if this will become at all embedded in corporate america. So far, all I see (and use day/night) are blackberry devices. How long will that last? I'd love to see an android device in my business but have doubts about the adoption rate.
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Android, WebOS, Moblin, Maemo... when are these 'convergent device' OSes going to converge to a single Linux distro?
LSB, we have a new problem for you to tackle!
(oh, and when are we going to see these as desktop OSs?)
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As for an android-based netbook, I don't think there's enough interest. I saw some rumblings a few months ago - http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10297268-1.html - but that's all.
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Maemo seems more 'open' and customisable at this point. Would love to see maemo run on non-touchscreen devices and without any animated effects
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Funny, I looked through the source for this "proprietary" UI, and I couldn't find it - everything is covered by the GPLv2.
Just because it's not X11, doesn't mean it's proprietary.
My best guess: GP meant "nonstandard".
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I don't see the demand for corporate workers to have Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, et al available 24x7.
Yet.
If you can get yer consultant to turn Twitter into a corporate must-have enablement disrupter, then you'll see these in Corporate America.
Of course, around here, we just raise our voices a little bit, and everyone knows our business. No twitter required. Even the tall cubicles can be circumvented with a change in volume, or standing up.
Since we don't get Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, etc here a
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Twitter at work? That shouldn't be.
*cough* tor *cough*
Actually I can tweet (though I usually don't) and use FB from the blackberry. Being a PHB, I'm in an office and removed from my staff. They can yell but I don't hear them. I only can yell at my secretary.
"MotoBlur"? (Score:4, Funny)
Why name your UI innovation in a way that suggest that it makes things less clear? This looks like an interesting phone, but that seems to me to be a weird name for a UI. Also, I'd prefer to sacrifice the keyboard for a thinner profile, given that it has at least as good a screen keyboard implementation as the iPhone.
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The "blur" might be referring to speed. Like how some things are so fast all you see is a blur.
Motorola's great return? (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't say I'm surprised. After the RAZR fad passed and the Q flopped, Motorola had very few alternatives to turn to; Windows Mobile wasn't one of them. This could be their great restart, and I'd really like to see them make a strong comeback into the market.
Maybe they could set another first and make the Android flip-phone (like they did with the MPX200)...?
Re:Motorola's great return? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know about calling the RAZR a "fad that passed". That series of phones, in my experience at least, are very solid phones. Also moderately customizable if you want to get into reflashing them. I still have a V3i I keep in my desk drawer "just in case" my G1 should fritz out on me.
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There are silver linings in the RAZR series, a few phones (V3i and V3x in particular) can be tinkered for FANTASTIC battery life, and they have the largest screens of their cousins that run the same software. With that said: That particular software is total garbage. Most models (my V3i included) don't even support stereo bluetooth audio. I never had to reboot my phone less than once a week, more if I was making frequent use of Java applets. Sometimes the phone would just refuse to transmit any Audio in one
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I think the fad slowed down, because eventually everyone that wanted a RAZR had one.
In the slim phone market I think the RAZR really beat the crap out of the competition.
Then like always, you get bored of your current gadget and want a new one.
I had a RAZR and loved it, then my work offered to buy me an iPhone.
The iPhone is cool for listening to music, and facebook, etc. but sometimes I miss the simplicity of having just a really well designed slim phone.
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Engadget has a comparison of all the Android devices to date and they all are very similar at the moment. I guess it's good news to some extent as it means the apps don't have to cope with different screen sizes or even different CPUs.
But at the same time, why bother with Dalvik if they were going to all target the same Qualcomm/ARM chip at the same frequency? They could have just used gcj and compiled to ARM...
Hopefully this is going to change and the manufacturers are going to come up with exciting Androi
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But at the same time, why bother with Dalvik
They are not all targeting the same chips or even CPU.
Android now runs on or is in the process of running on X86 and MIPS. Additionally, alternate ARM-variants (non-Qualcomm CPUs) are also in use for Android phones and devices. With the release of the Android Native Development Kit [android.com], you can officially target specific CPUs with native code but it creates additional work and headaches for developers. Not to mention, when the market is upgraded to become NDK aware, a
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Actually Engadget seems to really like it. I hear that it will be "free" on T-Mobile with a two year contract.
This really good be a great phone. Motorola phones are well made and usually have great call quality. The only thing wrong with them right now is that they tend to be boring.
Re:Motorola's great return? - Not likely... (Score:5, Interesting)
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I completely agree. I always felt that every new Motorola phone after the RAZR was...a derivative of the RAZR (or something like it). I wish that they had spent more time improving the firmware on these devices, or, at the very least, spending time on making other phones people would actually want.
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Would you mind elaborating on this? I'm not familiar with the Razr and after reading the Wikipedia article about it, I don't understand what made it stand out. It seems to be the same as any other phone out at that time, near as I can tell.
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I'm with you - this could be a winner. I owned a RAZR - for one night. I bought it at 4pm, hated it so much that I decided within an hour to return it, and took it back the next day. The software sucked. BUT THE HARDWARE WAS AWESOME. It was slim and light and comfortable and felt like it was built like a tank - in fact, it was the most solid feeling cell phone I ever used. Later, I owned the Motorola branded "hip-top" phone using the Danger software... I didn't love the software and eventually replaced it w
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I owned a RAZR - for one night.
I'm with you on that. I bought a RAZR because it was strongly recommended to me by co-workers. It was the worst phone I ever owned. The sound quality was horrible and it was plagued with all sorts of oddities. The battery never really fit properly and it would turn it self off from time to time. Navigation would tedious and painful. Settings were all over the phone. Even worse, reception was simply horrible! The only thing nice about the phone was the form factor.
But I have ow
Motoblur (Score:2)
Also a social network specifically only for users of their phones starting from that model could not end being a so good idea, specially with already widely used social networks with mobile clients (i.e. facebook) and probably future ones (i would bet that Google wave will have an andro
Comment removed (Score:3)
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Re:Get these on Verizon!!! (Score:5, Funny)
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Say what? There's already one coming: (gizmodo link) [gizmodo.com] in a month [androidandme.com].
Open handset alliance has members of basically every phone provider, so don't think that a singular google phone will, nor will have to, take over the iphone. They'll simply have one to fit every person's preference, unlike the iphone.
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Agreed. Google also needs to buckle down and make their own damn hardware. The OS is nice, the alliance is nice, but the fact that different phones all support different features of the OS leads to market confusion. If Google made a smartphone, their brand alone (sitting at the forefront, not a footnote to Motorola) would get a lot of people interested. My experience leads me to believe that they'd do a good job with the hardware interface, even if it just ended up being an iClone.
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Has anybody in the Bay Area been on AT&T both before the iPhone, and after? How did the quality of the network change?
My point is, people keep claiming that the iPhone is beating the hell out of AT&T's network, especially the data service. As a long-time Verizon customer, I love the service, and I'm curious whether a really solid smartphone would kill Verizon too.
I don't remember hearing constant bitching about AT&T's network before the iPhone became widely popular. Just sayin'
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I use an Android device on Verizon now (HTC Touch/XV6900). Its fine for the built in Google apps, but the Android Marketplace has thousands of apps that were obviously designed for 1 device, the G1. with all the screen clipping issues and resolution issues, most of these apps are just plain junk. And if they ran it on Verizon, I'm sure Verizon would do all those great things they are know for, such as locking down the GPS functionality to only work with VZNavigator. Android has the feel of a cobbled togethe
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Attention! Verizon has already announced at least one Android phone will be available this year. Leaks suggest Verizon will have one to three phones on network, this year. If only one shows this year, expect more Android offerings on Verizon from the first and second quarter of next year.
Verizon has been begging Apple for a piece of the iPhone pie for a while now. Each time they get the middle finger from Apple. Android is thought to be Verizon's F-U reply. Most are expecting Verizon to push Android very ha
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Sorry, Redesign the radio. Preview, preview preview then post
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It depends.... Is that high-end smartphone free*?
*2 year contract, $50 mail in rebate, $300 early termination fee, and background check required. Please sign here.
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We could swap anecdotes all day. Every time I've gone anywhere questionable with anyone who had verizon while I still had AT&T (I have a cracphone now) if one of us had signal it was me.
I think it's great (Score:2)
Seems like an interesting idea to me. There's no point attacking the iPhone head on, and this niche seems to be a good one to pick up. I know I wish my phone had better notification, and if it looked cool too, even better.
Muted reaction... Duh. (Score:2)
There's a "muted reaction" to these for the same reason Android device adoption has been disappointing.
Tying yourself to one of the smallest two of the "big four" wireless carriers in the United States (don't know if T-Mo or Sprint is smaller) is NOT a smart way to gain widespread adoption.
I would love to give an Android phone a chance for my next phone, but right now it's looking like my next phone (which will replace my current AT&T Tilt) will be AT&T's next WinMo-based HTC device. T-Mobile is NO
very nice, iPhone's days may be numbered (Score:3, Interesting)
Nice thing about the new Android phones is that developers are writing apps with work together with other apps. Almost impossible on the iPhone unless Steve Jobs rids himself of his total control fixation. Give it 2 years or so for this tech to mature some more, get more apps out there and have HTC and others build phones with a lot of storage like Apple does and i'll be junking my iphone 3GS come 2011 when my contract expires.
iPhone is nice even for all it's shortcomings, but Apple's total control fixation is going to hurt it in the long run and leave it as a niche device only for the cult of steve fanboys
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> Give it 2 years or so for this tech to mature some more, get more apps out there and have
> HTC and others build phones with a lot of storage like Apple does and i'll be junking my iphone
> 3GS come 2011 when my contract expires.
Apple is adding features much more quickly than any of the other providers. Yes, it's true, some of those should have been in the first version. But that's besides the point, the issue is the velocity of change.
So the question is whether or not you think the Android platfor
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To clarify that last statement: you talked about a 2 year window, and during the last 2.x years they sold 30 million, so in another 2 I think 15 to 20 million is fair.
So you're looking at a market of 50 million iPhones. That's a LOT of developer interest, both outside Apple and within. If inter-app programming actually adds value (debatable IMHO) then there's every reason to believe Apple can add it within that time frame, and every reason to believe the 3rd party developers would have put it to considerabl
Re:very nice, iPhone's days may be numbered (Score:5, Insightful)
The sad thing is, Apple is repeating exactly the same mistakes it made in 1984/85.
Back then, Philips and Sony came to Apple and asked about licensing MacOS. Jean-Louis Gassee told Jobs that Apple was so far ahead, the others would never catch up. So they kept an ironclad control over the Mac OS. And the entire rest of the industry went with DOS, and then Windows... and even though both were inferior, with Apple vs the entire rest of the industry, the end result was inevitable, and Mac OS became a tiny niche product.
Apple may be able to beat RIM at the smartphone game, but they'll never beat RIM, Nokia, Motorola, HTC, Samsung and Sony together, not in the long run. The iPhone will become the niche, and Android will become the 90%.
It's about time... (Score:5, Insightful)
Disclaimer: I work for Motorola. I'm giving up mod points to post this, as I think some people would consider it a conflict of interest if they knew.
That said, I've been long awaiting this change. I like the feature set - it approaches a consumer class camera (5 MP, 24 Hz video). It looks very functional, very usable. I'm not usually one to get excited about phones, but this looks quite good.
I've heard a lot of people bemoan the proprietary state of cellphone systems. Well, here's your chance to buy a Linux based phone, and show the manufacturers what you *really* want.
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Sounds good. I'd like to do that, with a few qualifications. I need to be able to buy an unlocked one for ~ $300 and be able to modify the OS and applications on it. It has all of the other qualifications.
Do you know if they'll provide an unlocked one?
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The stand-alone version is $400 from what I understand. Seems pretty reasonable.
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I like that it has a real keyboard but I have strong reservations about giving all my account details away. Plus, I like that the services are separate. It solves the whole Mom-saw-my-drunken-photo problem.
I'm underwhelmed by this announcement...
Any word on battery life? (Score:2)
One of the common complaints about the G1 was that, while people liked the phone, they decided the battery life was just too short to be useful. How does the cliq fair in this department? You can have great features, but if the battery dies in 2 or 3 hours, no one will care.
Also, IIRC, another common complaint was no standard headset jack (I guess you could use a headset, but it had to plug in through USB port or some proprietary port or something, or else use BlueTooth). Did Moto learn from the HTC mistake
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One of the common complaints about the G1 was that, while people liked the phone, they decided the battery life was just too short to be useful. How does the cliq fair in this department? You can have great features, but if the battery dies in 2 or 3 hours, no one will care.
This is a myth and absolutely not true. It has not been true since Android 1.5 was released. Battery life is fine for all available Android phones. If the G1 has a battery life too short, then so does the iPhone. If you run the G1 with a
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If you're so ego-obsessed that your tweeting sessions go on for more than a day without sleeping, the battery life of your phone is the least of your worries.
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My original one lasted a couple days with regular use, talking all my push gmail, gtalk and everything else.
That's not that bad. I eventually bought a third party upgrade battery for it and it lasted 3-4 days. That would be nice to do on the iPhone.
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Well, I hope you (Motorola) can put a bit of fire below Nokia's and Samsung's asses again... you know, for a better market. :)
Did you hear someone scream something like "eye foam"? ;)
No?
Me neither.
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I am quite interested in this phone now. I have been considering an iPhone, but they are still pretty expensive and I don't like the idea of having to install iTunes and not being able to use SD cards to expand the storage, or even replace the battery easily.
Android is very attractive because it seems to be more open than the iPhone OS and Google allow apps that Apple reject, but until now all of the available Android phones have been pretty average. The iPhone 3GS has a pretty good camera, so let's hope th
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Perhaps he should have said "approaches a usable resolution..."
Still, the point is valid. A 1.2 MP camera is really useless. 5 MP is pretty reasonable.
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Still, the point is valid. A 1.2 MP camera is really useless. 5 MP is pretty reasonable.
Er, no. Any camera with a lens the size of a pinhead, no flash (or a feeble LED flash) and lousy ergonomics that make it hard to hold the camera steady while pressing the shutter is useless. Adding pixels doesn't help - smaller pixels = less photons hitting each pixel = lower sensitivity = more noise and slow shutter speed = blurry and/or underexposed photos. Plus, the resulting photos are getting too big to send quickly over the mobile network.
The megapixel wars on camera phones is just dumb: much better
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You forgot to mention one big feature all these camera phones are still missing: optical zoom!
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You forgot to mention one big feature all these camera phones are still missing: optical zoom!
While you're at it, why not a flash shoe, filter ring, tripod mount, cable release, SLR viewfinder and a massive phallus-substitute telephoto? And a slave to carry it all for you.
Alternatively, use a camera for any half-serious photography (its not as if you can't get a camera the size of a deck of cards with a 12x optical zoom these days) and reserve your phonecam for capturing blurry photos of drunken friends and insurance snaps of the ensuing car wreck, as nature intended.
(Android's stunt with scanning
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crank up the sensitivity so people can take shake-free snapshots
For what its worth, there is a free and pro version of an Android application called Snap Photo [thecrayonbox.org] which uses the device's accelerometers to ensure the camera is stable before its snaps the picture. If you don't have stable hands it can take annoyingly long to take a picture but the quality is notably better without undo hand-shake messing with photo quality. But you're right, there wouldn't be near the problem if the shutter speed was faster.
I a
muted (Score:2)
Translation: "No one gives a shit".
keyboard looks like crap (Score:2)
How am I gonna do ssh on that? It doesn't even have number keys. It's everything that's wrong about the Blackberry plus the extra reliability issues from moving parts.
Interesting.. (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm a bit of a Motorola fan, I've used their cell phones for years, but their problem for a long time has been that they produce solid hardware and total crap software.
So now we'll have great Moto hardware with wonderful Google software -- perfect world, right? Except Motorola decides to go and add "MotoBlur" to the Android software, and who knows how much of a train wreck that will be.
Anyways, I'll very much be looking forward to reviews of these devices.
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N900 or this one? (Score:2)
I am looking for a new phone because my existing HTC smartphone (Win based) is crap and doesn't run putty. I need to be able to ssh into my linux servers and do remote work/maintenance on them. I would like to be able to run the CLI tools (irssi, mc, etc..)
I also need the following: Gmail contact/calender sync. (2-way), wifi VoIP
Nice to have: Gtalk and/or Skype
What phone should I get? The Nokia N900, this one, or anything else? I would even be willing to 'give-up' cell-phone usage in exchange for excel
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Once you're ssh'd in, wouldn't you have those CLI tools available?
With the exception of the CLI tools, sounds like you're looking for one of the new blackberries. I use mine to ssh into my servers all the time, and it does pretty much everything else on your list. I've even done some basic vim over ssh, although at that point it's worth it to switch to a laptop.
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I dunno, the keyboard on this one looks really crappy compared to the G1, which is what I have, and even with the G1 and ConnectBot [google.com], vi can be a bit awkward. If ssh support is really important, I would probably look at the HTC android phones or the N900 before this, but my opinion is mostly based on photographic evidence, so if anyone has hands-on evidence that contradicts my speculation, you should probably believe them over me.
Gmail, Google calendar, and GTalk are (of course) well-supported on Android.
MotoBlur (Score:2)
MotoBlur:
In other words, every Blackberry made in the last three years, at least. A unified messages folder - what a novel idea.
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In other words, every Blackberry made in the last three years, at least. A unified messages folder - what a novel idea.
Its not even new on Android: My HTC Hero does all that (Facebook integration in the contacts app, upload photos to Facebook/Flickr direct from the camera app). Bad news is that I got a facebook account mainly to try it out. I already feel dirty...
The year of Linux on the... oh wait! (Score:2)
Interesting, how not Linux dies for getting king of the desktop, but the desktop dies (allegedly) and Linux becomes king of everything else. Phones, settop boxes, netbooks, you name it...
I'm very pleased with the development.
But of course I'll wait for Netcraft to confirm it. ;)
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Yeah, but the downside is that those devices are often DRM-infested (TiVo, for example). In fact, Android is hardly the first popular Linux phone... it's noteworthy because it's the first popular Linux phone that's actually hackable.
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I wish I were as pleased as you. About a month ago I went to look at Linux netbooks at Micro Center. They didn't have any. It turns out that enough people were buying the Linux ones, then returning them on finding out they didn't have Linux, so they were "refurbishing" them by installing Windows and then selling them at a discount. Huh?
(The salesman informed me that the refurbished units with Windows preinstalled still included a Linux install disk...and then I walked away.)
But in the handset arena I suppos
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Troll or not, Windows 2000 is not much more obsolete than Windows XP in my opinion.
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But in truth, all it reveals is a sadly biased study, one which doesn't reveal its sources
So, here's some facts [linuxtoday.com].
LOL. It's funny how you claim that the Net Applications site is wrong because it's a "biased study, one which doesn't reveal its sources" and yet you post a link to a linuxtoday article that just has a bunch of people posting their random speculation with no sources and yet that's where you get "facts".
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I've seen that same site posted many times to point out how IE's market share is declining.
And yet, it's the same site you used. How's that hypocritical?
If the source says anything negative against the Loonix ideology it must be biased and wrong, but when the same site shows something negative about the market share of a Microsoft product it is unquestionably posted everywhere to show how Micro$haft is dying!
The point wasn't that it was unquestionable -- though I think you'll find similar results elsewhere.
The point is that even if it were true, it doesn't bother me a lot -- Firefox is proof that we're doing ok, and if IE dies, I can write web services without thinking about Windows anymore. And since it's clearly not true, the whole argument implodes anyway.
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Find a third party willing to speak up for it and we will listen.
The site I linked to did cite sources, including zdnet. Unbiased enough?
The larger problem here is that there are some things which it's pretty much impossible to be both informed and unbiased about. For example, it's pretty hard to be aware of the situation of AIDS in Africa without being either a complete religious moron, or being appalled at the Pope telling people that condoms are not the answer. There really isn't a middle ground there.
However, we can't even begin to control for bias without at least c
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For example, it's pretty hard to be aware of the situation of AIDS in Africa without being either a complete religious moron, or being appalled at the Pope telling people that condoms are not the answer. There really isn't a middle ground there.
Right, no middle ground [washingtonpost.com] at all [google.com].
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I didn't dispute Win7 marketshare.
I disputed Linux marketshare.
Measuring a free product by the number of sales is truly moronic.
Re:Muted reaction (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, I've been wanting to buy a smartphone from a manufacturer that isn't a hardware company for some time; can you help me?
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The phone itself looks like it was designed in Taiwan, not by Motorola. Where is the great design team that gave us the Razr? The problem with Android phones isn't the software (which rocks), it's the hardware (which so far sucks big-time). Why would Moto put out another crappy plastic phone with a honking huge slide-out keyboard and tiny battery, when HTC already has that market covered with the T-Mobile G1? Also, T-Mobile isn't exactly the premier partner... why doesn't Verison wake up and get a good
Re:Muted reaction (Score:4, Insightful)
...personal opinion on looks ignored...
it's the hardware (which so far sucks big-time).
Really shouldn't respond to this either as its 100% opinion and not fact. The hardware, while not stellar, is very nice. There is nothing wrong with the hardware. It absolutely does not "suck big-time".
a honking huge slide-out
More ignored...but believe it or not, many actually like to USE their phone which means a physical qwerty is required for this class ("smart") of use. Many are very excited about form and function on Motorola's Cliq. Is it for everyone? Hardly. But neither is the majority, "look at me, aren't I cool", iPhone owner. It boils down to preference. FACTUALLY speaking, only a qwerty provides maximum usability. Anything else is about style rather than function. If iphone-esk looks were all that mattered to phone owners, 95+% (made up stat to make point) of the market would disappear tomorrow. So once again, it boils down to preference. You prefer form over function, get an iPhone or one of the other iPhone-like Android phones (Hero, Galaxy, MyTouch, etc). You prefer functionality over form, then the iPhone is immediately crossed out and you have Android phones or one of the other smart phones (Palm, WinMo) available to choose from. Again, its preference...
and tiny battery
More ignored... Go get WiSyncPlus [gearsoft.mobi] and actually use it, and you'll find your battery life is hugely increased. The simple fact is, the battery is plenty big, as is. G1s today can easily meet or exceed iPhone battery life when run under equivalent loads. And that's the problem, all current Android phones, by far, are under much heavier loads than an iPhone, simply because Android-like loads are impossible, because of Apple limitations, on an iPhone. And with those load limitations come huge application limitations. Again, its preference. What's important to you? Form or function? Once again, function and capability tends to always be Android biased.
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It's all relative. If we hadn't seen such great phones from Moto in the past, and Apple currently, the G1 would rate pretty good (except for the stupid lack of a headphone jack). I'm just disappointed, because I don't want another medium-end phone like the G1, I want a polished thing of beauty and function like the original Razr and the current iPhone.
So, yes, form is important t
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I must admit I expected a flamed response. Thanks for the surprise.
Keep an eye out for the Galaxy or the Shules (or was it the other upcoming Moto phone). Both are reported to have some nice specs. There are a couple of other models which have been leaked which blow the iPhone's specs out of the water. IIRC, HTC is soon to have a higher end Qualcomm offering too. By year end, world wide, there should be plenty of Android offers which easily excels way past any Apple offering, from a hardware perspective.
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In that case, I will continue to wait in anticipation! I am a big fan of the Android platform. I've just been very disappointed waiting since Nov of 2007 (the original big announcement) until now, still waiting for a leading edge hardware platform. With 75,000 apps on Apple's App Store, Android has fallen very far behind. Also, none of this is Google's fault, IMO. Google delivered the best competitor in phone OSes, and the handset manufacturers ignored it. So far, we only have Taiwan hand sets, and on
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Android has fallen very far behind.
They started out behind. How can they fall behind? With the exception of market sales, Android has met or beat every significant milestone established by Apple and their iPhone. There are now 10,000+ applications available for Android; though I personally believe maybe only 20%-30% are worth looking at. I hear the same thing about the App Store. So technically, that means its far, far harder to find quality applications on an iPhone. Thus far, Android is on schedule, if no
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Where is the great design team that gave us the Razr?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/09/cat_keynes_motorola/ [theregister.co.uk]
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Whoa! Nice link! I guess Motorola is going through the same thing as Sony [icmrindia.org]. I doubt Vista would have been such a wet blanket if Gates had been seriously involved like he use to be. Apple may fade rapidly after that great ass Jobs dies (I'll throw a party).
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The problem with Android phones isn't the software (which rocks), it's the hardware (which so far sucks big-time).
Could you maybe enlighten us? What experience of yours prompted this opinion? I've got a myTouch and the hardware is fine. Actually my one complaint is on the software; so far the Android team has not enabled Bluetooth file browsing services. And even that's not a major deal because there are other ways to do what I need.
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Actually, I hope the myTouch is a big improvement over the G1. I've never played with a myTouch (there have to be jokes to make over that sentence). The bigger screen and lack of a keyboard are features I want. Also, the battery is slightly bigger, but still only a pathetic portion of the total volume compared to an iPhone. I would consider upgrading, but when I found it didn't have a freaking headphone jack, I just couldn't. I'll never again make the mistake of buying a phone without one.
Anyway, since
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Actually, I've got a Motorola phone from Verizon.
It's just so bastardized it's funny.
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HTC will be rolling out a number of Android based phones - in the US - soon. I think they have 4 already.
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Re:Meanwhile, in Verizonville... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Meanwhile, in Verizonville... (Score:4, Funny)
YOU LIE!!!!
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You're supposed to wait until he mentions undocumented aliens...
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Did you say “pubic optio...” No? Oh... OK... :/
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Re:If this was available nine months ago... (Score:5, Interesting)
I would not trust Motorola to maintain the cloud services behind MotoBlur for very long. Neither phone manufacturers nor service providers, in my experience, do a very poor job in follow-through for software and software-based services (Apple, for the most part, excepted; RIM as well.) The strength of the Android platform has been that Google is providing those services, and Google is interested in continuity, long-term relationships with their customers, etc.
Trying to take the Google out of Android and making it a "custom brand" is a confidence-killer for me. The Samsung phone is more promising.
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If the MotoBlur service "goes away" I wonder how customizable this phone would be as a stand-alone Android device. Theoretically you can customize the home screens any way you like and still access your "Social Wonder" sites individually. Besides which, it would avoid keeping all of your credentials somewhere out on Verizon's servers.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And it runs Linux!
There is a modified Android image growing in popularity, for those willing to root their phone, called Cyanogen Mod [cyanogenmod.com]. The developer has incorporated the BFS scheduler [lwn.net], by Con Kolivas. By replacing CFS with BFS, the performance boost and latency decreases is said to be HUGE; contrary to the petty retort by Ingo Molnar, to which I linked. While both Cyanogen Mod and BFS are still actively developed, IMO, they do wonders to validate Google's approach. First and foremost, is the fact it runs Li