How Not to Build a Cellphone 326
Jamie found an NYT story about a new t-mobile Shadow phone which starts off by talking about how Apple is changing the phone game by wrestling power from the carriers, and then discussing what could be a reasonable piece of hardware. And then how it is wrecked by software. The phone has wait screens, a task manager, odd error messages etc. Makes for an amusing read.
everything you need to know: (Score:3, Insightful)
Everything you need to know starts in paragraph eighteen:
And, this isn't even Microsoft's fault! It's T-Mobile's CEO who had the hubris to think he could design this thing just like Jobs. Not.
I think the article actually goes a little easy on the critique of the hardware. I doesn't break any ground. It has too many or too few buttons. The middle ground they took with the Blackberry licensed keyboard was just plain wrong. This phone is just a mess. Apple kinda pulled this feat off, designing a do-everything phone (I kinda disagree, btw), and now everybody else thinks they can do it too. They even think it's the right thing to do (it's not).
But, what were they thinking going with MS Mobile? Wth? Sheeesh... it even comes with a Task Monitor? Yeah, I'm gonna help my Dad with his new phone... "Bring up the Task Monitor... now click on the Processes tab. Now click on the CPU column twice. What's eating up the most CPU? ... That's the central processing unit....
ummm... Okay, now highlight the one eating up all the CPU and click the "End
Process" button.... " Not.
Another place the article "gets it wrong" trying to be kind in his critique:
Wrong! That's not an advantage, that's insane. At least, I can't remember the last time I was looking at my cellphone thinking, "Damn, I wish right now I could open up a Word document!", not even if one was attached to an e-mail.
I'm still waiting for the phone that sounds and works like a phone.
Bit of trivia, speaking of phones... Know what the little graphic on the Sprint logo stands for? Didn't think so. It represents a stop-motion pin dropping. Remember when Sprint's commercials were about phone call sound quality and how it was so good you could hear a pin drop? Didn't think so. Please, oh, please, let me hear the pin drop again!
Mystifying (Score:5, Interesting)
Why does everyone say this as if it doesn't exist?
I suspect it is because they want their posts to sound as though they possess some real down-home 'Murrican wisdom. Jesus. How [cnet.com] many [cnet.com] counterexamples [cnet.com] do [cnet.com] I [cnet.com] have [cnet.com] to [cnet.com] find? [cnet.com] All of these are "phones that look and act like phones."
Moreover, why is ANYONE "against" convergence? Seriously? Do you really WANT to be carrying around a camera, a phone, a PDA, and a laptop?
Wrong! That's not an advantage, that's insane. At least, I can't remember the last time I was looking at my cellphone thinking, "Damn, I wish right now I could open up a Word document!", not even if one was attached to an e-mail.
Yesterday, when I got an email from my advisor. Thankfully, I had my iPhone at the ready and it was quite capable of opening the document. I was able to answer her question immediately and it made me look like I was really on top of things. I guess that makes me "insane."
Re:Mystifying (Score:5, Insightful)
Because they want a good quality camera, phone, PDA, laptop, etc. not a all-in-one gadget with a mediocre everything?
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Moreover, why is ANYONE "against" convergence? Seriously? Do you really WANT to be carrying around a camera, a phone, a PDA, and a laptop?
Because they want a good quality camera, phone, PDA, laptop, etc. not a all-in-one gadget with a mediocre everything?
Precisely. My phone is my link to the outside world (calls, text and tethering via bluetooth) but I take my pictures with my camera, keep track of appointments and contacts with my PDA (along with using it for GPS) and surf the web etc etc etc with my Thinkpad. My laptop can and will always provide a better internet experience than a device with a weaker processor, less storage space and a ~3" screen. Simple physics inhibit a great-quality set of optics in a reasonably sized phone, and stupid carrier lock
Re:Mystifying (Score:5, Insightful)
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Tried Nokia N800? (Score:3, Informative)
O
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a.) A phone with all that doesn't prevent them from buying a camera, pda, laptop, etc.
b.) If all you have is your phone... and let's be serious, nobody's going everywhere carrying a phone, pda, laptop, camera, video camera, psp, etc.... then a cell phone picture is infinitely better than a 0 x 0 picture. A slow net connection on a small screen is better than a 0kbps connection on a non-e
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If the phone has wi-fi and a decent SSH client, I won't mind any PDA-ness. But I don't
ever feel the lack of a laptop, anyway, and just use the phone to be reachable
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I could care less about taking pictures.
Just a slight point here, but this phrase is so completely botched all the time, that I had to say something. I think what you meant to say was, "I couldn't care less about taking pictures." As in, your level of caring for taking pictures is so low already, that it could not get any lower. I think that is what confused the author of the other reply to your post. Either that, or he/she was just being cynical. Of course, maybe I am too.
Cheers. Oh, and if I'm wrong, please tell me so I may correct my
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"I could care less" --> sarcasm, or abbreviated form of "I could care less (but I don't know how)"
Nokia 1100 (Score:3, Informative)
It's the epitomy of minimalism, but it's the only phone I've seen with this sensible feature. Not a xenon tube that needs a battery guzzling capacitor to charge for each shot, either.
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So what? Quality is actually not all that important to the vast majority of the population as you make it out to be. The optics used in cell phone cameras are certainly a lot better then disposable cameras cheap plastic optics yet those cameras were extremely popular before, cameras on cell phones and the price of digital cameras bottomed out. They certainly aren't "professional" quality but very few cameras are.
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Sorry, but the disposable cameras take better pictures than cell phones.
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You can't fit great optics in the size of a typical mobile phone, so the camera is a toy.
Depends on what you mean by 'great.' I have a few friends who take photography very seriously. They use SLRs that cost a lot more than my phone and one develops his own film (the rest have gone digital). For them, a camera phone is clearly the wrong tool for the job. I, on the other hand, just want something that can take a few snaps. The camera on my phone produces good quality pictures in daylight, as long as there isn't much motion, and I can blow them up to the size of my monitor without seeing an
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You can't fit great optics in the size of a typical mobile phone, so the camera is a toy.
False dichotomy, sorry. The camera in my phone has tiny optics, matched to a 2MP CCD, and creates noticeably worse images than my 5MP standalone camera. However, my phone is always on me, has very low form factor, and 99% of the time the images I can take with it are just as useful as if I'd taken my much bulkier camera with me as well. I wouldn't publish them in a magazine, say, but for looking through weekend snaps on my computer, my phone is just as good and, as it's always on me, is a clear winner in t
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Heck, I went out and got Google Maps, and an SSH client. People look at me like I'm clever when I drill down and tell them their house is the third light down, not the second. My co-workers aren't in awe any more when I reboot my web server, they are in awe when I can run a macro and suck up the latest patches. And keep them up to date on World Series score. And this is just a BlackBerry.
As soon as I begin wishing for
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Because the vast majority of the time, in the best case, you end up with a device which is a mediocre camera, a mediocre phone, a mediocre PDA, and a mediocre laptop.
In fact, most of the time you get a really expensive device with a crappy camera which takes poor quality pictures and you have to select through several menus, so it takes longer to take a picture than
Re:Mystifying (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, I still miss my Psion Series 3.
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No. I have no desire whatsoever to carry around a camera or a laptop. I carry around a phone (Nokia 3310 - a real "phone only" phone) and a PDA, and wouldn't want to trade them in for a single device. The only advantage I can see is that I would have a spare pocket, but when I weigh that against the disadvantages of being unable to speak on the phone and skim through my calendar at the same time, running down the battery on the
Me, Too! (Score:2)
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Moreover, why is ANYONE "against" convergence? Seriously? Do you really WANT to be carrying around a camera, a phone, a PDA, and a laptop?
Sort of. I always have the phone. If it did limited PDA stuff, like email and calendar, that'd be okay, but it had better be a good phone and always available. I have 2 cameras - a casio that works great for quick photos and a DSLR for serious stuff when I want to engage in geekitude. Laptops stay in the car or the hotel on vacation.
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A phone can never replace a proper camera, as you will never get the same quality and that really matters to anybody who cares about pictures. I can barely tolerate the quality I get out of my Sony camera, and it is pretty much the smallest available camera out there. It is still bigger than most cellphones. Optics take up space. If I know there will be something worth
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No. I don't want to carry any of that stuff, except a phone. I want my phone to make phone calls and have only hardware for making phone calls with a long-lasting battery. This makes it as small as possible. This is also the philosophy behind Unix small utilities that do their job very well.
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I'm not against convergence. But I am against voice/sound quality of phones today being absolute crap compared to what our technology is capable of. Why do cell phones still sound like crap even if I pay $600 or more for a phone?
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Of course, that's far less sensationalist and fashionable to complain about than whining that Apple delivered the future of mobile phones at a consumer price.
The Great Google gPhone Myth [roughlydrafted.com]
Pundits have seized upon rumors of a new mobile phone product from Google as their golden ticket for bashing the iPhone. The "gPhone" is the perfect foil for fe
Re:Mystifying (Score:4, Insightful)
Because I just want to cary around a phone. Because I would rather not pay for the other features and have them making the phone heavier, more expensive, more complex and fragile and shorter battery life. Because I don't have or want a PDA, and when I need a laptop, I want a full size keyboard and screen. I only want a camera when I'm on vacation.
If soemeone wants a screwdriver, don't force them to buy a Swiss Army knife.
How exactly? (Score:2)
Or by locking up the phone?
By making sure you have to use a desktop to even activate it by using a music management software?
By no OTA updates?
By bricking it with firmware updates?
By having no real keyboard?
HOW EXACTLY?
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Yes, the iPhone's design does relate a lot to being from Apple.
But no, Apple didn't "lock the phone," it opened up a standards-based web API that is in many respects better than anything on existing smartphones. The iPhone is also only 4 months old, and Apple has promised additional access in an SDK later this winter. Saying Apple locked the phone for development is ignorant. Saying Apple locked the phone to a single provider ignores the rea
Re:everything you need to know: (Score:5, Insightful)
According to the article, it is:
(The 20 key hardware is the same used by Blackberry and Sony, by the way, and generally works pretty well... certainly a lot better than T9.)
But, what were they thinking going with MS Mobile?
For the US market, what choice did they have? Apple, PalmOS, and Blackberry can't be licensed, Symbian is likely expensive and nearly as messy as Windows Mobile. And they didn't have the time and resources to do their own Linux-based system. So, for a smartphone like that, Windows Mobile is the obvious choice for companies like HTC and T-Mobile right now. You can't fault them for that.
With Android, of course, they do... let's hope that T-Mobile is smart and makes that choice. HTC (the maker of the Shadow) is already on board with Android...
Re:everything you need to know: (Score:4, Informative)
have to object to that.
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/6203_204_million_Symbian_OS_handset.php [allaboutsymbian.com]
> nearly as messy
now this is personal opinion but you couldn't pay me to use windows mobile. i've seen every iteration in devices my boss buys and they all have problems that make them completely unusable. battery life, crashes, sync problems.
while symbian could be improved i have no problems using it every day since a nokia 3650 -> nokia n70 -> e61 -> e61i. the current phone e61i is used every day to
* take screenshots when away from my desk to look up errors when i get a chance.
* take pictures of a4 documents so i no longer need to locate a working photocopier for personal records.
* working on long emails that i get 2-3 times a year from a correspondent. 200k+ documents been worked on when on the bus amongst others.
* gmail application allows me to check email with or without wifi. bloody fantastic! i could get push email but i find the concept as annoying as sms.
* video spectacular crashes so that i can email them to the supplier who claims that what i'm reporting is impossible.
* notepad been used for every password username that comes my way. personal code used to encrypt the information before somebody points out that the builtin has none. mind you i know a symbian user who added a python wiki to his phone with encryption so could use that in the future if i really wanted.
* qreader for reading ebooks.
* web browser for when i need to check stuff out and about. i'm on a pay as you go contract so have to pay for every byte but sometimes a few k from google will give all the answers.
* spreadsheets for personal accounts.
* nokia maps for navigation
* still trying to learn python on the little bugger. i'll get there. i'll get there.
* planning on helping http://www.openstreetmap.org/ [openstreetmap.org] map out dublin by linking on a bt gps. will have to see how that goes.
* plugs in as a usb device to a pc or mac so have used it as a thumb drive when necessary.
for me the killer app is taking notes. was at a software conference at the start of the year. loads of people taking notes on laptops over 3 days. and hunting for power supplies at the end of every talk. the e61 (was before the e61i) was slower to type on but the battery lasted the 3 days with top ups from a battery powered charger at night. much more convenient.
if it were that messy i could get none of the above done. it does depend on what you use your phone for though.
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Neither.
It is a HTC phone. This says it all.
Regardless what they are given as requirements they will produce garbageware. It took 1 year and nearly 200 minor revisions of the O2 XDA code load for it to stop crashing. Even after that it was a piece of garbageware. Their recent Blackberry ripoff (Escalibur) when released crashed left right and center several times a day just by being connected to the network. And so on.
None the less, they continue to produce phones for operators for a simple reason - Th
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Wrong! That's not an advantage, that's insane. At least, I can't remember the last time I was looking at my cellphone thinking, "Damn, I wish right now I could open up a Word document!", not even if one was attached to an e-mail.
Dude, that's sarcasm.
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Will this [sparkfun.com] do?
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I wrote a couple of articles this summer sitting on a bench in the park with my Nokia 770 and a ThinkOutside bluetooth keyboard[1]. Sure, I could have taken my MacBook Pro, but it doesn't fit in my pocket, and is massively overpowered for running Vim (EMACS, on the other hand, would probably struggle...)
I didn't write my thesis on the device, although I did write parts of a couple of papers. It's great for killing dead time. I can get some work done in the pub while waiting for other people to arrive, w
In the same vein (Score:5, Interesting)
Right, "wrestling power" (Score:5, Insightful)
Come on Google, buy the damn spectrum, open it up, and lets say fuck you to the ass pounding consumers are getting in the US cellular market.
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Haha, that was my exact response to that statement as well. Actually, I think there's a better chance of Nokia ending this madness than anyone. Their N800/N810 holds some great promise. I really wanted to like the N800 but it just wouldn't connect to the wifi at work. It's not exactly a phone, but I will be ke
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Apple gained design control over the device, not contractual control. Your contract with the carrier has nothing to do with Apple (except to the degree that Apple could and should just sell the phones unlocked, but that doesn't solve the problems of cell phone contra
Re:Right, "wrestling power" (Score:5, Insightful)
I am just going to repost what in a post below.
Lets do the math on Apple "wresting power" from the carriers. Carriers typically discount the phone from the retail unlocked price. For example, a HTC Mogul(a 3G phone with a ton of features) has a retail unlocked price of around $550. Sprint sells it for $300 with a 2 year contract. In fact, many companies deeply discount phones to such an extent that you can get $50 BACK with some phones(check on Amazon or Wirefly). The phone manufacturer makes a fixed profit and moves on.
But what did Apple do with the iPhone? It charges a hefty premium(note how they were able to drop $200 off the phone in just 2 months) and makes a nice profit with the price($400 now or whatever) and then makes about $450 MORE over two years from the $60 a month that AT&T charges the consumer who takes up the 2 yr contract. The user gets a nice phone, visual voicemail etc. in return, at a VERY HIGH premium.
After a ton of iPhone articles and about a hundered +5 insightful comments on Slashdot about how Apple will "change the game" and make it better for consumers, that is the bottomline. This is the real reason why Apple hates unlockers and not just because of exclusivity contract with AT&T. For every unlocker they potentially lose close to $400.
Apple did change the game of carriers ripping off customers and ushered in the golden era of carriers AND phone companies raping consumers. All this right under the noses of otherwise wise and intelligent people who seem to have been taken in by the "RDF.
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Apple side on what? We were talking about them having design authority over the device. Whether or not it's a good deal for you financially or ideologically is completely meaningless to the issue being discussed.
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Frankly, who cares where the money goes? If the price is reasonable for the service (I think cell phone service is a ripoff on the wh
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If you want to get google involved, you shouldn't ask them to "buy" a buch of spectrum and open it up. You should ask them to bri...oops...I mean "entice" (is that what the telecom companies call it today) the FCC to do their jobs and define standards with which the general public can fairly share the radio as the FCC should. Wasn't that their original stated purpose? I doubt it was to allow communications and entertainment companies to control how the spectrum is use, which more or less seems to be what th
T-mobile designe something ? Not (Score:4, Informative)
Article in a nutshell... (Score:4, Funny)
This message brought to you by: Article in a Nutshell (TM)
Windows Mobile Classic (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Windows Mobile Classic (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would he "eat his words" about a device he's never written about?
Journalists should not be designers (Score:2)
I'm failing to see how one button to unlock the phone would be any different than an accidental button push in a purse or pocket. Most cellphones I have ever used have unlocked by pressing a "menu" button and then the asterisk button. How is that difficult or annoying? Have we really
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I can't agree more with this statement. I have the same problem on my Motorola Q . The design choices are nearly laughable. There are many inputs in the phone where the edit box will only take a numeric
Cell phones are pieces of shit. (Score:5, Insightful)
What I want:
1) The ability to turn the volume up or down in a wider scale than they give us. If I can't hear someone with the volume at max (usually when they're on a landline), the scale needs to go higher. My phone goes up to five; it should go up to eleven. It's a device whose principal function is the capture and transmission of sound, yet it has ONE thing you can control about the sound: inbound sound volume, in a limited range. This is ridiculous. This is stuff that could be included essentially for free, since it's all software that doesn't take much processing power. For instance, it'd be nice to have some sort of intelligent parametric EQ. Sometimes you get someone on the other end with a sucky headset and it'd be nice to be able to fix it yourself or have the phone do it for you.
2) The phone to tell me what the hell it's doing signal-wise. I've been standing on top of a mountain and looking over a canyon at a cell tower (~2 miles distant) and have no signal. Sometimes calls get dropped even though I have four "bars" of signal. Is it a SNR problem? The phone trying to do a tower swap and failing? Who the fuck knows? Give me frickin' iwconfig, please. It's like the Windows boot sequence. Either it works or it doesn't, and if it doesn't, who knows what went wrong. But Windows at least has Safe Mode...
3) A phone that doesn't fucking break. My old phone had a keypad that kept going bad. My new phone now thinks that there's a headset plugged into it when there's not. Sometimes it thinks I don't have a SIM card in it.
4) I hesitate to suggest this since they seem incapable of getting even simple things right, but replace SIM cards with SD cards (they're effectively a commodity now, $20 for 2GB). Poof, instant long-play pocket audio recorder!
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But, like so-called other 'smart' phones, (windows mobile, nokia, palm), you're stil limited in how 'deep' you're alowed to go in accessing the firm/hardware. I suspect this is deliberate, to stop people from bricking the device, and thus being unable to make (emergency) calls, just because they were trying to add the latest 'turn the volume up to 11 freeware widget by team warezlol!!!!' bit of shitware.
The answer to your prayers may finally come with
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God, yes. Every other audio device I own has a scale from "only dogs can hear it" up to "you're going to go deaf if you listen at this volume". There is no, NO reason this should not be the case on cell phones. Sure, it'll eat up battery a little faster if you crank it up all the time, but no worse than any of the other million battery-draining features you know for a FACT that 95% of the phone's users will never use. And lis
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I do completely agree, but only if you substitute SIM cards by Micro-SD or something like that. SIM cards are common practice within the industry; you cannot just replace that by flash (imagine your phone breaking, you have enough experience with that it seems). Furthermore, they al
Re:Cell phones are pieces of shit. (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, and most modern phones (except really cheap ones) have an SD, miniSD or microSD slot.
Motorola Ming A1200 (Score:2)
Re: obBoost (Score:2)
"wresting power from the carriers"? (Score:4, Interesting)
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But what did Apple do
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Sure they give you a discount on a phone. But over the life of the contract you end up paying them a MINIMUM of about $1,200. You can bet your ass they're not losing money over it. I once saw an add for a "FREE Blackberry!" where, if you looked at the terms and contract would actually cost you $2,160 over the life of the 2 year contact. Minimum!
And what does this article, or my post have to do with Apple? I never once mentioned apple. If you don't like what Apple did with the iPhone, DON'T B [thebestpag...iverse.net]
How not to icon the cellphone. (Score:3)
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Hey, that looks just like my first cellphone!
Oh, wait.....
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Windows Mobile is the Achilles Heel (Score:5, Insightful)
I wholeheartedly agree: I received a low-end HP PDA years ago for Christmas. Windows Mobile worked so poorly that I didn't even bother to get the thing replaced on warranty when it broke within two months (battery couldn't hold a charge to save its life).
I already miss the 'antiquated' Palm OS that ran on my Treo. The article was nice enough to bring up a couple of my favorite reasons as to why...
First of all, a cellphone should not display a "wait" cursor. Ever. And definitely not almost every time you change screens, as on the Shadow.
One of my favorites: I run a nearly stock version of WM6 on my HTC Mogul phone, with the only additions being the free version of Epocrates and an SPB Diary application. My phone has a more-than-adequate CPU, yet still lags while switching screens.
Do I need to "wipe and load" my phone to make it run faster? Sheesh.
A cellphone should not have a Task Manager. You should never have to worry about quitting programs because you've used up too much memory.
Amen! I also love how the phone has a knack for running out of memory right when an important call comes in. There's nothing more frustrating than a ringing phone that won't show me the phone screen and where the buttons suddenly don't work.
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This is one of the brilliant things about PalmOS: you can write a program that will run on it _without using any memory at runtime_. Because it can run programs straight off flash, without having to load them into RAM.
OK, so PalmOS has/had a lot of problems, but why are
What an idiot reviewer... (Score:2, Interesting)
Foward your email to Gmail (Score:2)
I had hopes for the shadow too, ditto the blackjack. Some of the other directors at work talked me into a AT&T 8525 [cnet.com] and despite all the hype it sucks too. It's a freaking brick, especially with the extended life battery , a lousy phone that you can't dial by feel and a crappy web browser.
Is it too much to ask for a phone that I can fit in a front pants pocket, dial by feel with hard buttons and that can also sync to Outloo
How about another opinion? (Score:2, Interesting)
This is basically a blow-by-blow refutation of Pogue's article. Enjoy.
HTC Juno (Score:2)
In any case, the problem with those phones is the Windows Mobile software; since HTC is part of the Open Handset Alliance, hopefully, all that great hardware will be liberated soon and run with easy-to-use Google services.
Buh? (Score:2, Insightful)
I, for one, don't want hyphens or parentheses in my phone numbers, and my zip code starts with a G, so I wouldn't want my keyboard to type numbers in my zip code field.
"A locking feature, which prevents the buttons from being p
Seems picky (Score:2)
I, too, would like someone to give this a better review.
WM6 is at fault (Score:2)
Ever phone from now on is going to call itself the i
Now that's an ugly phone! (Score:2, Informative)
When I read this in the article:
It made me seriously question whether the photo shown along side was actually the phone they were talking about. That thing is seriously the ugliest phone I've seen in a long time and reminds me of something from
Apple Copied LG, Which Copied Samsung (Score:3, Interesting)
Agreed, Nokia's phones are usually based on the Nokia "look" more than anything else. But there is a whole new wave of big-screen phones emerging based on trends coming out of Korea. The first one of these was a few mutant Samsungs, which begat the LG Prada, which Apple then lifted for its own phone design. Compare and contrast [reghardware.co.uk].
Nokia (Score:2)
WM6 (Score:2)
It crashes every now and then, and sometimes the GPS locks up, but a simple reboot has always fixed it. I suspect part of the problem is some of the crap AT&T loaded on top of the OS after Microsoft and HTC was don
It's a Pogue Review of Non-Apple Kit (Score:2)
My Comments to his Suggestions (Score:5, Informative)
I think this person needs to understand what the difference is between WM6 and a company that has jacked it up. WM6 is not perfect, but the issues he's blasted here are either because of TMobile's implementation, or his lack of knowledge of the features of the OS.
Re:My Comments to his Suggestions (Score:5, Insightful)
AHHHH!!!!!!!! (Score:5, Informative)
And it needs to be, most importantly, a GOOD PHONE. With GOOD RECEPTION, SOUND QUALITY, AND DIALING SHOULD BE SUPER-SIMPLE!!
Photo and video opportunities so that you could upload to Youtube/Flickr/Facebook would be cool too, but I'm OK without having that.
How fucking hard is it to roll that out???? Seriously, how fucking hard?
One size fits all (Score:5, Insightful)
The F111 was designed to be both a fighter and a bomber. It was too heavy to land on carriers and could not carry the required equipment and payloads required by the Navy... did not even have gatlin guns on it for a while, and it was too small to carry a large payload and the range was too short to be an effective bomber.
So is the T-mobile a F111 or can these problems be worked out?
This is a time for the designer to eat his/her pride and make it work... if that is possible. It wasn't possible with the F111 and the T-mobile remains to be seen.
Re:No Design Experience (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't need mobile OS design experience to figure out that a phone has a terrible user interface. While I agree that his comment on a two-button unlock sequence is uncalled for (why have a lock function that unlocks with a single, accidental keypress?), but other than that I think all his gripes are perfectly justified because they deal with the end-user experience.
Re:No Design Experience (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't dismiss a single-key lock process because you can't think of a way to make it work.
Re:No Design Experience (Score:4, Insightful)
I had a Siemens candy-bar style phone about 5 years ago that only required one button press to unlock. I mention that it was a candy bar because that means its buttons were unprotected, and I walked around with it in my pocket. Never once did I unlock it by mistake. All it takes is a combination of the right resistance on the buttons and requiring a certain length of a button press (1-2 seconds) in order to successfully unlock it.
People have a tendency to get tunnel vision, and to get locked in to a certain way of thinking (no pun intended) just because "that's the way it's done". This is probably why, after 5 earlier iterations, Windows Mobile still requires going into a menu to hit "delete" on a text message. The one thing I will give Steve Jobs credit for is looking at things like this and saying "why does it have to be done this way?" If there's no good answer, he throws everything out and starts over.
That kind of questioning needs to be done at every level of every single product design. You can't just continuously carry things over from iteration to iteration without any justification as to why.
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Steve Jobs didn't do diddly here. The basic design principle is: If you have a mechanical sliding lock, cool. Otherwise, you have to use buttons, and if you use buttons, use more than one. Because a "phone lock" that regularly unlocks i
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Personally, I find the two button press option to be a pretty good solution in the case where your only controls are buttons. The op mentions
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Yeah, Steve's solution was to not allow the deleting of text messages at all.
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I was actually taking this article to heart until I read this paragraph, then I realised the author has probably never had any real mobile OS design experience. There are a lot of things wrong with WM6, but I'd like to see an article written by someone with a little more consideration for mobile design necessities.
Your post says everything that is wrong with modern interface design. Designers should design things to be used by people without design experience. If you need design experience to evaluate a product, you haven't designed the interface right. The ultimate (and only) judge of a good interface is whether the target audience finds it a successful interface. The target audience is rarely people with mobile interface design.
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The meta-news is that Apple's competitors still do not understand this. Which is good for my stock investment.
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And yes, it was incredibly dumb. And more than once I nearly dialled random 4-5 digit numbers because it had activated in my pocket. It wasn't the only model to suffer from it, though. And I shouldn't think many modern phones emulat
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This isn't a goddamned comedy club. We don't reward people for being funny. We reward people for being Insightful and Informative. So don't be shy about posting a methodological review of Pogue's reviews. Don't skimp on the details. And, please, if you have a conflict of interest, please inform us in the body of your reply.
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I've generally found mobile-review.com's reviews to be very poor. Apart from anything else they're often written in very strange English, like they've been auto-translated or something.