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."
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?
Re:Suck on that neckbeards! (Score:3, Insightful)
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".
Re:Does it run Linux? (Score:2, Insightful)
Maemo seems more 'open' and customisable at this point. Would love to see maemo run on non-touchscreen devices and without any animated effects
Re:Motorola's great return? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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.
Re:Does it run Linux? (Score:1, Insightful)
Runs the Linux Kernel but really not much else.
Let's see what's included in the core distro [android.com]...
aes, apache-http, bison, bluez, bsdiff, bzip2, clearsilver, dbus, dhcpcd, dosfstools, dropbear, e2fsprogs, elfcopy, elfutils, embunit, emma, esd, expat, fdlibm, freetype, gdata, genext2fs, giflib, grub, icu4c, iptables, jdiff, jhead, jpeg, libffi, libpcap, libpng, libxml2, netcat, netperf, neven, opencore, openssl, oprofile, ping, ppp, protobuf, qemu, safe-iop, skia, sonivox, sqlite, srec, strace, tagsoup, tcpdump, tinyxml, tremor, webkit, wpa_supplicant, xdelta3, yaffs2, zlib
Hmm, that's "not much" else?
The rest is a branded browser-based pushing platform for Google Web Services and a mostly proprietary touch-screen UI.
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.
Re:If this was available nine months ago... (Score:1, Insightful)
Well, if the MotoBlur app(s) are really just custom-made interfaces to the various social network sites using the publicly-available APIs, then you're really not relying on Moto for anything apart from app updates (as needed).
Re:Get these on Verizon!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
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'
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%.
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.