Microsoft Reportedly Seeks To Put Windows Phone On Android Devices 182
quantr draws your attention to a Bloomberg report that Microsoft has reached out to HTC to see if the company would be interested in adding Windows as a second OS to its Android handsets. From the Bloomberg story: "Its willingness to add Windows as a second operating system underscores the lengths to which Microsoft will go to get manufacturers to carry its software. HTC, the first company to make both Windows and Android phones, hasn’t unveiled a new Windows-based handset since June and has no current plans to release any more, said one person. Microsoft, with 3.7 percent of the market, is finding it necessary to make concessions after agreeing to acquire Nokia Oyj’s handset unit, which competes with other smartphone makers.
[Microsoft operating systems head Terry] Myerson was planning to visit Asia this month and meet with senior executives at Taoyuan, Taiwan-based HTC to discuss his proposal, one of the people said."
Wrong way round. (Score:5, Insightful)
Android on Lumia, that'd be an offering.
Re:Wrong way round. (Score:5, Interesting)
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According to a few inside accounts, Elop originally wanted to have Android on Nokia phones. When Elop visited Google's HQ, he was rather surprised how hostile Google was to him. Google was willing to give a decent licensing fee if Nokia used the stock Android firmware but were charging hand and leg if Nokia were to add their own features to the device. According to rumors, Google was being complete jerks about it too.
When we heard about that account, we all assumed that Elop's "burning platform" was Symbian
Re:Wrong way round. (Score:5, Informative)
You are incredibly misinformed. It costs nothing to put android on a phone (even for a phone manufacturer). The manufacturer has to get a license to put the play store on the device, but that is about compliance. If nokia wanted to do their own thing then they wouldn't have had to spend a penny or ask anyone's permission. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)#Licensing [wikipedia.org]
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Except for this part:
Even though the software is open-source, device manufacturers cannot use Google's Android trademark unless Google certifies that the device complies with their Compatibility Definition Document (CDD). Devices must also meet this definition to be eligible to license Google's closed-source applications, including Google Play.
Google doesn't certify your phone if you put in new features it doesn't like. You can make a phone that can run Android apps (like BB10) without paying a dime, but you can't call it an Android Phone unless Google approves of it.
Re:Wrong way round. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Nokia used to be such a big player in the mobile market that they did not need to become "yet another Android vendor". They had the know-how, capital, fame, and few billions of loyal customers to either come up with a competing OS (MeeGo) or just fork Android and not give a flying fuck about Google trademark. They even had Nokia-built map and navigation good enough to rival Google's.
By resting on its laurels and past fame (like Motorola did), Nokia ended up the way it did (like Motorola did.) It should have given a fuck about Android (or even gone Windows Phone). But it didn't, so, all that remains for it now is to indulge in past glories while circling down the drain.
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Carrier approval is utterly irrelevant except in North America where you have corporations making the laws. Anywhere else people can just buy a phone and use it.
Now obviously the North American market is a good place because it's full of suckers who will cheerfully pay you $50 per month for two years to buy a $500 phone, but it's not necessary. If you can't recoup the cost of deliberately arcane "Carrier approval" processes from the money those suckers will pay you then you simply don't sell into America.
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Huh? Carrier approval is about getting a new device certified on the networks. It has to be done in Europe too. It has nothing to do about buying a phone and carrier subsidies.
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Nope. That's FCC approval.
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I'll only post a tl;dr version of a response here: All of them. North America is the follower in the mobile space, not the leader.
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Europe and Asia. Now what?
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Europe and Asia. Now what?
This. As a US citizen, it embarrasses me how uninformed US citizens are about wtf is happening in the rest of the world. Outside the realms of operating systems, the US is a follower in the mobile workd (hardware, ecosystems, marketing, logistics), not a leader.
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The whole world is using the same hardware. The software ecosystem in the USA is a leader. Marketing we are behind, what do you even mean? As for logistics. Cell phones don't have their own logistics except in manufacturing.
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Some of this was definitely because of the carriers. The Galaxy S was rebranded for each major carrier (the Captivate on AT&T, the Fascinate Verizon, the Vibrant on T-Mobile), each one of them having a unique outer shell design rather than just shipping the same damn phone that was in Europe for a year. I think they all *lost* features (FM radio, LED flash, etc) c
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They were using smartphones long before the US caught on outside of the blackberry business users.
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I totally agree with development costs. If HTC wanted to make an android phone, they'd likely have to use parts that already have linux drivers or they'd have to pay a team to write them. But i feel like i should also point out that this benefits everyone. Open source drivers are a big thing. I don't think you can use this as a point against android though. No matter what the OS was, they'd have to get drivers to interface with the phone hardware. But i completely agree that there are costs involved w
Re: Wrong way round. (Score:3)
Actually you'd be surprised how easy it can be especially in this day and age where most of the IP blocks are largely the same and most are supported. I used to do 50-50 embedded linux and embedded windows work and back when I did a lot of windows I could do a bring up from bare hardware and a linux port to booting into a windows GUI (windows mobile if required) in a day or maybe two if lucky. I'm not even a slight ms fanboy but the embedded windows architecture is quite clever in the way that the HAL abst
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Good luck running popular apps without the Play Store services running on the phone. To get the full android experience you have to pay the license and have Play on it. You'd be surprised how much functionality is in the play store service and not the OS.
Re:Wrong way round. (Score:4, Interesting)
huh who the f modded this up?
funny insiders you have.
now what elop did was say that nokia had looked into android and COULD NOT CUSTOMIZE IT ENOUGH for their needs so they had to partner with MS. seriously. that's what he claimed as one reason. that with android they couldn't differentiate enough so they went with an os that in all practicality can't get any customizations and a phone platform where they could not even choose which soc providers to use!
now if you don't see the bullshit in that then you're kind of hopeless and I have a bridge to sell for you and an investment opportunity in a potentially multinational ladder business.
(that is to say that nokia had insiders working for them who on purpose were to find reasons not to use android, including elop. nokia was so dysfunctional at that point though that they would have on purpose looked for reasons not to use android even without elop. but this was back when elop bothered to even keep up a charade about what's going on)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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I don't care personally what OS the computer (which some people call phone for no good reason) originally came with. I want to be able to swap it at will. But this is not the case for some reason. Hardware should not be locked down just because the computer is called a phone. It's a computer and you as the user should be able to do what you want with it. This doesn't of course mean that a company like Apple has to support this, but they should at least not actively prevent it like they do now by locking dow
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I don't care personally what OS the computer (which some people call phone for no good reason)
Because it makes phone calls and that's what 90% of users use it for at least in part?
It's a computer and you as the user should be able to do what you want with it.
Agreed, absolutely! You did buy it for full price like you buy a computer, right? If you did, then you are 100% correct. Did you buy it for several hundred dollars less than the true cost because you agreed to use it under a carrier's terms and conditions for a fixed period of time? Then you are getting what you paid for.
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Because it makes phone calls and that's what 90% of users use it for at least in part?
It's certainly one of the features, but I think it's clear that won't be the case as more and more general computing moves to mobile.
Agreed, absolutely! You did buy it for full price like you buy a computer, right? If you did, then you are 100% correct. Did you buy it for several hundred dollars less than the true cost because you agreed to use it under a carrier's terms and conditions for a fixed period of time? Then you are getting what you paid for.
That's exactly what I did. Carriers don't have that type of control where I live and hardware is therefore usually available at full retail price. The last phone I bought cost me roughly $1100 with current exchange rates.
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My android phone freezes like Win95. It's like they never wrote an OS before...
Hardware / firmware issue. Common newbie mistake.
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Microsoft loved that excuse back in the day! There are no third party drivers on android noob. Their programmers just suck.
So the drivers for each SoCs is written by google android developers? Or are you saying S3 did not write the driver for my S3 Trio64 back in the day? Back in the day? My obsolete ATI card uses 3rd party (OSS) driver today on top of Ubuntu, and it runs fine most of the time
Will they allow the reverse? (Score:5, Insightful)
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
IBM has contacted Apple to see if they want to put MVS on the iPhone, complete with a punched card interface.
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Without a paper-tape reader, the idea is a non-starter.
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It'll be the most high-tech method to get your own code running on an iPhone.
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Haha. However, it's interesting to note that an iPhone is much faster with tons more memory than the original IBM mainframes that ran MVS. Actually, I'm surprised someone hasn't written an OS/360 emulator for the iPhone. Actually someone probably has...
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Apple doesn't allow emulators. They'd allow you to run code they didn't get a cut of.
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They seem to allow them under certain circumstances:
Spectrum ZX emulator [apple.com].
TurboGrafx-16 emulator [apple.com].
HP48GX emulator [apple.com].
Re:Will they allow the reverse? (Score:5, Funny)
choice of OS on other devices can only be a good thing
BAD OR MISSING NTLDR. CANNOT CALL 911.
Abort/retry/ignore? _
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You can already get what is basically the Galaxy S3 with Windows Phone, its called the Samsung Ativ S. I think Samsung makes it as a concession to Microsoft, as they seem to sell very few of them. I would love to see smartphones become more PC-like, with multiple OSs available on each model and more hardware standardization, so custom ROMs become simpler.
I'm pretty sure Microsoft means this as a one-way-street, though, don't expect to see a Lumia running Android any time soon. Too bad, the Lumia product
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Amusingly enough, the ATIV S was also the first WP8 device to have its security cracked open; an "interop-unlock" hack (not quite root, but much closer than before) is available for it, but not for any other non-Samsung WP8 handset at this time.
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Actually, they should outright reject it as it is Microsoft's policy to not permit dual boot PC's to be sold. Until I can go into Best Buy and pick up a Windows7/Linux Mint machine, the phone industry should adopt Microsoft's own policy of Single OS only. They should understand this policy well. They created it and enforced it heavily with legal action. Remember the DOS alternatives and attempts at giving the customer a choice? Windows as a second OS? are you crazy for even suggesting it?
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This includes Apple as well.
how about them... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm trying here...so I'll give you partial credit. You're definitely begging the question, but it is important to acknowledge that other companies make similar mistakes as M$ (though they are not as bad).
Apple's design flaws are just as annoying as any other design flaw.
The question is, what about Apple's process allowed them to do right what M$ did wrong?
As others have pointed out, Apple is the exact opposite of M$: a successful and popular company. There is no debate on that point worth having.
So what about Apple kept them from screwing up as bad as M$?
> Was it Steve Job's megolomania combined with good design choices and lucky market conditions? Any CEO can pound their fist and force their way, but just by law of averages, when JOb's did it, it had marginally better results in the end product, perhaps?
> Is the answer in the engineering department? like where they actually write the software...,did they quietly refuse to do things like Internet Explorer tried to do in the 90s?
> Lack of the government contracts forcing them to innovate at Apple? See, M$ only exists b/c IBM needed a lackey to put stripped down PC boxes on every government office desk...M$ was the operating system....credit Gates for profiting by leveraging his govt contracts into forcing users to use his product...but...that didnt' really encourage R&D. Apple had to fight to survive
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kill interoperability to **force** users to use their software.
I was referring to this. Look at all the Apple specific protocols ... iMessage, FaceTime, iBooks.
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> So what about Apple kept them from screwing up as bad as M$?
Two things:
"Shiny" and "Marketing"
This is simple numbers pumping (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is simple numbers pumping (Score:5, Funny)
I would be interested. I get real Onenote support and better integration for exchange at work. On the weekends its android time. Metro may suck on a big computer screen but is fine for cell phones.
The Windows kernel is lighter than linux and snappy too.
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The Windows kernel is lighter than linux and snappy too.
Linky?
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> The Windows kernel is lighter than linux and snappy too.
Smaller? Faster? Giggles... Uh.. I mean "citation needed".
Actually, smaller's not that important as clearly Linux has a rather successful footprint. Is "snappy" a way of saying "fast, but not faster than linux"? Being smaller but unsuccessful isn't really anything to shout about.
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Sadly, it wouldn't be all that hard for Microsoft to make the UI on Windows Phone 'snappier' than the UI on Android, due to some incredibly shortsighted design decisions that were made early in Android's design. They bent over backwards to make sure Android apps written for 320x480 could limp along on a 160x240 display, while completely IGNORING the use case that everybody ended up caring about (the rapid leap to 1280x720/800, and 1920x1080/1200 displays).Simply put, Android's rendering system doesn't scale
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If we're just comparing the NT kernel to the Linux kernel, then yes, I can make it boot with that constraint. Even give you a shell or a basic X session (in 20MB). But for Android? Don't know, I moved to an iPhone when the 5 came out - I like my phone to actually work, and my experience with Android made me not want a to buy another.
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If it's NT kernel vs Linux kernel, I can boot Linux in 4 MB--with 3 login shells. /, set the login shell to ash, and booted with mem=4096. About 2 MB free once boot was over, IIRC. No swap.)
(I'm serious: I linked busybox statically against musl, configured a pure busybox
Android, on the other hand, has a display manager and a VM to fit in there. "free" on a Gingerbread phone just after boot claims ~ 200M used. That probably includes a bit of bloat, but I don't imagine it booting in much under 128 MB.
Re: This is simple numbers pumping (Score:2)
There's something odd about comparing the Android footprint to a 'Linux' footprint given that Android is just Linux + middleware at the end of the day... You could still load the linux portion of android in a similar small footprint even if you can't the rest!
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My point in that comparison was "just linux" vs. "full android stack".
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Android is rather resource hungry, but the Linux kernel is not the cause of that. I've run Linux on a handheld game console with 32MB RAM [wikipedia.org] and it has enough memory left to run most applications we've thrown at it.
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(*) Actually, the MSM7227 has four cores, but only one is available for applications. The other cores work as DSP for applications, run the GSM/UTMS stack or work as DSP for the telephony subsystem.
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The fact that it runs on low end luminas with 512 megs of ram and single core cpus and runs decently where gingerbread wont even boot is why I wrote that. I have a galaxy s1 with similiar hardware with the exception of a dual core arm and its barely functional with Android 2.3 which is obsolete.
Windows 8 kernel uses less than 20 megs of ram. Try having linux run with that
Windows is not vista or xp anymore. They have gotten their act together with the exception of Metro. 8.1 runs on 10 year old systems fine with the exception of a real video driver.
My problem is, it doesn't really matter to me, the end user, that a certain OS runs on less resource than other OS if both handsets is priced the same. If both handset performs similarly on benches or general use cases, but one is much, much cheaper than the other since it uses last year SoC and less RAM than the other, I might be swayed to buy the cheaper one. As of now, My S4 is a power sucking, plasticky toy, but it will do (almost) everything a Lumia 920/1020 or the 5s can, and perhaps a little bit more
Re: This is simple numbers pumping (Score:2)
Don't blame the OS for snappiness! That's purely done to how the developers have implemented their touch interface and graphics drivers and the GUI (although the GUI is typically fine as it's got long history) it's actually quite tricky to optimise touch drivers for minimum latency especially given that most interface controllers rely on driver side averaging to give accurate results and that inherently is a delay.
In principle any embedded OS can give you a lightning fast user interface if done right - we'r
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The problem that needs to be solved is closed products like Exchange. Sorry, but trying to get better integration with products like that at the cost of the ability to use other operating systems is a very bad idea.
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I would be interested. I get real Onenote support and better integration for exchange at work. On the weekends its android time. Metro may suck on a big computer screen but is fine for cell phones.
The Windows kernel is lighter than linux and snappy too.
Odd ... but at least one cloud provider has a minimum Windows image of 2G memory, as compared to Linux mininum .5G. Not sure what is meant by "lighter", but I don't see it from a resource utilization standpoint.
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The sad thing is that VMware Dual Persona mostly does this... but they sold out to Verizon and gave them exclusivity, so Verizon is going to ruin it the same way they squandered and wasted the Galaxy Nexus. VMware DP gives us the ability to have Cyanogen and Corporatemode on one phone, but with our luck, the only phones you'll be able to GET it on will be locked-down Motorola phones on Verizon.
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No thanks.
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Re:This is simple numbers pumping (Score:4)
How about these days where installing Windows will still kill your Linux boot. You'll either need to repair your boot configuration or install Linux after Windows instead of before. Microsoft does not play well with others, and in general is not to be trusted.
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Well, they could pump the numbers by including a Windows Phone software license with every Windows 8 license sold for PCs. So if you buy a new laptop with Windows 8 pre-installed, and later decide to buy a Windows Phone device, you don't have to buy the Windows Phone software license . . .
. . . or they could couple the Windows 8 PC license with a Windows Phone device, so if you want to use Windows 8 on your PC, then you have to buy a Windows Phone device . . . but wait, there's still more . . .
You get a
Oh, "BeOS" has come back to haunt Microsoft (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh, if only the license terms for Android FORBID dual booting, and allowing the user to make such a choice.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/02/20/be_inc_sues_microsoft/
Trust Microsoft??? (Score:5, Insightful)
My memory is fuzzy on this, but I believe Microsoft took Toshiba to court and made them stop dual booting Linux on their laptops about 20 years ago. At the time Toshiba owned a Linux distribution so they prevented Toshiba from shipping their own code.
This is the same Microsoft that is extorting everyone over unnamed Android patent infringements.
Why would you want to work with them? Every company that works with them ends up dead or wounded.
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Just for fun Google should put those exact licensing terms Microsoft used against Toshiba into their Android license.
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"Hi mom. Oh, your Android phone is screwing up? Yeah, Google messed this one up. Hey, the best thing to do is to boot into Windows until they get their act together. Just hold down the bottom left key with the two squiggles on it at the same time you're pressing the home button and the power key."
"Mom? Are you there? Mom?
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They need the subsidize the extra 32GB of flash needed to hold Windows Phone too.
Then we can delete WIndows Phone and use the 32GB flash.
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From HTC's perspective (Score:3)
HTC has had trouble getting traction against Samsung despite offering compelling hardware. Offering a dual-boot phone might give them a competitive advantage with some subset of buyers... although I'm guessing it'd be a fairly small number.
Re:From HTC's perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:From HTC's perspective (Score:4, Interesting)
I just don't see anything helpful coming out of that-
For a site dedicated to nerds, there's an utter dearth of imagination...and memory.
See kids, back in the day, HTC made this little phone called the HD2. It shipped with Windows Mobile 6.5 and was intended to ship with Windows 7, but Microsoft told them "no can do" for the sole reason that it has an inconsistent hardware button configuration with the rest of the Windows Phone 7 handsets. However, because of the intended dual-OS compatibility, HTC released a phone that was impressively consistent and relatively easy to flash. This lead to the development of MAGLDR and CLK, which were alternative bootloaders that enabled users to flash Windows Phone 7 (unofficially, though completely functionally if you can get MS to give you a product key), Android (more versions of Android than any other handset; everything from Froyo to Jellybean and I think some of the earlier versions were available, too), Meego, Ubuntu, FirefoxOS, and proof-of-concept compatibility with WP8 and WinRT. To this day, it has one of the most active communities on XDA, certainly moreso than any other phone that was sold during the same time period.
When HTC builds a phone to boot a pair of OSes, especially ones as different as Windows Phone and Android, odds are better than ever that HTC will end up shipping a phone that's more mod-friendly than most of the phones that ship with just one OS, even a Nexus. Don't you think that there's something "helpful" about a phone that is sufficiently hackable that it can have its software kept current long past its EOL date according to the carrier? I do.
While we're at it, I know that hating Microsoft is cool around here and all, and yes, I do walk around with an Android phone because a phone without a user-exposed file system is a dealbreaker for me, but are we seriously going to sit here and say that it's better for Google/Samsung and Apple to each have ~50% of the market rather than having Google/Samsung/HTC, Microsoft/Nokia/HTC, and Apple all having ~33% of the market a piece? I always thought competition was a positive situation, and even if HTC gets screwed over by Microsoft somehow (like they did by not being able to officially software upgrade the HD2), it still means more mod-friendly phones for everyone - something I thought that a group of people who like installing Linux on everything with a processor would appreciate.
Re:From HTC's perspective (Score:4, Insightful)
> HTC has had trouble getting traction against Samsung despite offering compelling hardware.
Interestingly, HTC's plummeting market share coincided almost EXACTLY with their elimination of removable batteries and microSD cards. It's not rocket science. Two years ago, HTC was neck in neck with Samsung. Then, they eliminated microSD and removable batteries, everybody who viewed that as intolerable & used to have a HTC phone bought Samsung phones when it was time for their next upgrade, and HTC went from being "a little behind Samsung" to "WAY behind Samsung".
Suggestion to HTC: give us a new phone like the Evo3D (but with GSM+LTE capabilities compatible with AT&T and T-Mobile as well) that has microSD and a removable battery (or at least a 6,000mAH battery if it MUST be non-removable) and an unlocked (or trivially-unlockable) bootloader, and watch your market share climb again. I know people (like my brother) who literally paid a small fortune to buy a USED Evo 3D long after it was officially EOL'ed because their original one got destroyed and they liked the 3D features so much. My brother STILL resists buying a new phone, because he doesn't want to give up the 3D camera and display.
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I have owned a T-Mobile G2 (HTC Desire Z) for the last 3 years, and I would love for HTC to come out with a similar phone with more modern hardware (I have mine rooted, running android 4.2, and its starting to show it's age)
I don't understand why nobody makes android phones with physical keyboards anymore. I'm ready for a new phone, but I don't want to give up my keyboard
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Let me get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
So instead of OEMS only caring about Windows, designing hardware only tested for Windows, only supporting Windows, signing Windows in the hardware boot device,and even including Windows where someone has to manually go into the bios and install a second bootloader to run Linux has now changed to carriers only caring about linux, designing phones just for linux/Android, only supporting Linux, and even signing linux to run Android on top, now has to listen to an angry MS who feels its soo unfair that no one will even stock their products on the shelf nor care and are begging just for the opportunity to dual boot! ... No cost too as well according to NEOwin!
Wow. Couldnt happen to a nicer company. It is amazing how fast this happened. Windows CE was gearing up for a monopoly and beating blackberry just a few years ago to. ... well this?
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Apart from in one of Ballmer's wet dreams, when on earth was WinCE (or its descendants) ever en route towards monopoly status?
In 2004, Windows Mobile (CE) had 11% market share in "smartphones". In 2005, this increased to 17%. In 2006, it moved up to 37% (tied with Blackberry, well ahead of Palm's 17% and Symbian's 9%), and in 2007, it hit 42% (while Blackberry lost share).
That flattening of the growth of Windows Mobile marketshare in 2007 may have been inevitable . . . but it may have been the iPhone. No
Underscoring the lengths, for the win! (Score:2)
"Its willingness to add Windows as a second operating system underscores the lengths to which Microsoft will go to get manufacturers to carry its software.
Now that they have underscored lengths, will that... er... um... what?
willingness to add... underscores... to which ... will go... to get ... to carry
For the advanced student: Parse this into the canonical <subj><verb><predicate> form. 10 points.
HTC, the first company to make both Windows and Android phones, hasn’t unveiled a new Windows-based handset since June and has no current plans to release any more, said one person.
Which person is that?
Microsoft, with 3.7 percent of the market, is finding it necessary to make concessions after agreeing to acquire Nokia Oyj’s handset unit, which competes with other smartphone makers.
Apropos of nothing, which of these is the main verb?
Myerson was planning to visit Asia this month and meet with senior executives at Taoyuan, Taiwan-based HTC to discuss his proposal, one of the people said."
This is Bloomberg, right? Are they supposed to be good at writing?
Wave of the future (Score:2)
This is the why it is supposed to be. People should be free to install whatever operating system they want on their phones like they do their PCs.
Sooner all this proprietary / OS imaging for specific devices garbage ends the better for everyone.
trust microsoft == trust the NSA (Score:5, Insightful)
if you are going to run Windows Phone, you damn well better accept that MS and the NSA will have full access to everything on your phone and will set it to record all your conversations.
this used to be tinfoil hat area but now it's a probability.
Trust communications == trust the NSA (Score:2)
Fixed that for you. My tin foil hat is a steel Spartan helmet, lined with aluminum of course...
battery life (Score:2)
Will I get a longer battery life from using Android or using Windows Phone?
seems like something worth knowing.
Windows Mobile (Score:2)
Windows Mobile is the Zune of wireless technology. Who would want to junk up perfectly good storage space on a mobile device with windows?
Quit trying to make Windows Mobile happen, it's not happening.
Might be interesting if... (Score:2)
It might be interesting, but not for me. A friend of mine works for a carrier so I get to demo and thoroughly play with all the phones and I can co
For free and in a VM inside Android with Office? (Score:2)
A free "Windows Phone App"
I would like that.
Any other thing (Dual-Boot, Choice at start-up, something else messe up, additional cost): Dont like that
Whats that I smell? (Score:5, Insightful)
Desperation, I think.
The king of "You must sell windows with every device, you may not offer other options" is now begging, with its tail between its legs, to an "other option" on a device.
"No thanks".
Storage Space (Score:3)
The problem with having a dual boot phone is that phones typically have limited storage space. If you want to dual boot a PC with Linux and Windows, you can stick in another hard drive to add a terabyte or two more storage. Phones, on the other hand, only have a small amount of space. My phone (a Droid Bionic) has 16GB of storage. It's a bit old, though. Newer phones come with at least 32GB of storage. Of this, some is allocated for the OS.
If you want to have two operating systems on the same phone you have two options:
1) Have the user storage area (for apps, photos, videos, etc) be smaller. Some people will buy your phone because "it runs Windows AND Android" but word will quickly spread about the fact that this means you can't install as many apps or take as many photos as a normal Android only phone (or Windows only phone for that matter).
2) Add more memory to the phone. This will allow you to compensate for the second operating system, but it will also raise the price of the phone. Users will need to decide whether the increased cost is really worth it.
Yes, you can use MicroSD cards to increase the space, but that's an added cost to the user. Telling the user that they just bought this more expensive dual-boot phone and now they need to buy another card to get the same user-storage space as that person who bought the cheaper single-OS phone is a losing proposition.
Re: (Score:2)
You forgot option (3) -- as soon as the user chooses an OS to boot into, that OS auto-deletes the other OS to free up more user-space. I think this might be what Microsoft is going for ;^)
Don't think this is about dual boot (Score:4, Interesting)
Why would MS have any interest in a dual booting phone? I find it more likely that MS is begging HTC to still make Windows phones and are trying to make this more attractive by suspending demand for the mandatory 17 Windows buttons or whatever they usually demand to certify the hardware.
That way HTC can use exactly the same hardware for both their Android and Windows version, thereby reducing their development costs.
MS probably have to sweetening the deal by making their OS free for HTC to use too.
It is difficult to understand why any phone company would still want to make windows phones now that MS now are competing directly against them with their own large ex-Nokia production line. Yes, for sure, MS is no longer a software only company.
Nokia already sold their Windows phones with a hefty loss, so now MS either have to raise prices as to not out-compete other Windows phone makers (not going to happen), or compete for market share by dumping prices, thereby out-competing other Windows phone makers like HTC, or dump prices and compensate anyone desperate enough to still make Windows phones.
There's already a better solution: YouWin (Score:2)
You can read about it here:
www.sprysoftware.com
It's a better solution because
- You DON'T need a Windows license
- It's smaller: You can run more apps with less memory
No way (Score:2)
Re:licencing "cost"? (Score:4, Informative)
Smooth upgrade. Finally!
The Neo900 project aims to provide a Fremantle (Maemo 5) compatible successor of N900, with faster CPU, more RAM and LTE modem, basing efforts on an already existing, mature and stable free platform - the OpenPhoenux GTA04.
We'll provide both complete, ready to use devices in N900 case, and motherboard replacements for your current device. Neo900 will also support all operating systems available for GTA04 (QtMoko, SHR, Debian, Replicant,
Re: (Score:2)
While I really applaud your project (N900 is still the best phone), Neo900 is so miniscule an upgrade it's not worth the price. You're replacing 2009 specs with not so good 2010: 256->512MB ram, slightly faster CPU, and basically that's it. The worst thing, you seem to stick with exact versions of Nokia's software, which is what drags you down. Doing something hybrid would allow using modern hardware.
Get me something with a hardware keyboard, a sane GNU-based userland and decent specs and I'd be reall
Re: (Score:2)
Troll rating: 2/10.
But kind of funny.
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Complaining about lack of updates for android? think of all the poor suckers who had windows phone 7, or windows mobile, both of which got dropped leaving users with existing handsets high and dry...
And MS have always been worse than apple when it comes to lock-in.
Re: (Score:2)
I like the MycleanPC scam posts better.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly. Somebody with a US Galaxy S3 should be able to go to qualcomm.com, navigate to Support -> Downloads -> Firmware -> MSM8960. Then, navigate to Radio Modems -> [AT&T | T-Mobile | Sprint | Verizon | US Cellular | Rogers | Telus | Fido | Whomever], download the latest radio modem for our carrier, back up, then navigate to SoC Support -> Android -> {kernel-version}. From there, we'd be able to download individual kernel modules (some with buildable source) as we saw fit. Or, for th