Posts by robin thakur

Zune phone specs spied

Development Platform

To clarify: for desktop, I am a dot net developer for SharePoint, but for mobile the best development platform is the one where what you develop might actually be paid for by someone. The App store on iPhone/Touch is how it should be done, easy to browse and purchase from the device in seconds in a vetted environment with QA (though sometimes draconian) with a huge user population who are very used to such micro-transactions and a well documented and updated API, seems like a good option. More than anything, Apple's approach is joined up especially the universality of the App store being able to be used on touch/iPhone and the maturity of it which gives users confidence.

Its the complete opposite of the almost schizophrenic offerings from competing parties especially regarding the DRM switching. Who is going to invest heavily in music if they fully expect the music/apps provider to go bust and pull the plug on all its servers and then switch to a different model?

I'm not knocking the Zune on its software which I know was very good and a bit different, but seemed like a wasted effort when Microsoft hardly tried very hard to get it to be mass-adopted overall. No world-wide launch, patchy support for it within MS itself and a 'follower' mentality meant that generally people wouldn't have one as a gift. The name is PR whacky and some decisions like the brown model have become its lasting legacy. Why they are maintaining the brand for the future is nuts as its a toxic asset outside of the MS faithful as far as I can see.

Its very difficult to dethrone Apple because their users and branding are entrenched and so many iPods get sold on the back of recommendation and 'cool' factor. To compete with this you have to get everything right, and MS didn't do that. they are however in good company as Sony have spectacularly failed in this regard also. Whilst the pedantic IT profs and linux users might find fault with iTunes, very few users do outside of IT, simply because the DRM is unintrusive for the most part and *overall* its significant component of the iPod offering which is unmatched and frequently overlooked.

I think this clinches it for Apple in this regard.

Give up on the Zune already

Microsoft need to learn when to stay down...seriously! The Zune was comprehensively ignored by mostly everybody and Microsoft are still using the branding hoping to resurrect it? Give me a break. I'm hoping they learnt their lesson from the brown debacle and choose to release it in colours people want.

They need to listen to their target market. Even if this phone were to be technically perfect, there is far too much negativity associated with the Zune to make it viable. They're trying to use the Zune monicker much as Sony do with the Walkman, and look how successful their phones/mp3 players are these days. Nobody wants or buys them. They do however buy iTouch's and iPhones. Both are easy to use, not so fiddly one need a degree and a little stick to prod the screen with to use them. Compared to these two devices, all others seem positively stone age to the buying public most of which are technically bereft.

I'm a developer, and I only would buy and use an iPhone. I had more than enough of the "superior hardware" of HTC years ago, trading up to first a BB 8800 and then some iphones then a 3G. FYI, the build quality of HTC is anything but superior and so is their utterly appaling usability. This is also a factor putting me off a Google phone as well as the OS lacking polish. The App-Store whether you like it or not, is a game changer, with over 1 billion downloads and counting. Nokia, BB and the rest are racing to try and catch up in this respect and on many other fronts and have yet to offer any convincing reason why i should upgrade from my 3G.

Apple prepping 32GB iPhone 3.0?

Apple catch up with...who?

Apple isn't trying to play catchup you simpleton, its quite the other way around. Who would buy another kind of smartphone at this point, right now? Judging by the sales, Blackberry excluded, hardly anybody. Samsung can spend what they want on marketing the 'Omnia', but all it is at the end of the day is a poor-man's iPhone without a robust OS and without on of the main selling points, the App-store. There's a reason why the iPhone has reigned supreme and had a collosal effect on the mobile industry and its not the speed of its CPU or RAM availability or even the camera. Nor, might I add is it the storage available. Only those that haven't used one would say that. For other phones I owned before the iPhones came out, this was the case and specs would be the main decider, but the iPhone OS and general usefulness trumps all others and cannot be realistically compared to other supposedly 'top-tier phones' and their 'amateurish touch OS-over-creaky-Windows with a stylus' or Nokia's weird Symbian touch system which looks about 10 years out of date. The reality is that prior to the iPhone, the mobile OS really didn't need to evolve at all and was still fairly static and creaky with the most advanced option being Windows Mobile. This was completely changed for the better by the iPhone's arrival and now Nokia et al are struggling to catch up and win back their influence. Apple's entrance into the mobile arena reminds me somewhat of Sony going into consoles. Let's hope they don't become (even more) cocky and arrogant like Sony.

The shear audacity of LG's latest ad campaign for its latest iPhone botherer is breathtaking, you would have to do a double take to realise that its not actually an iPhone. especially as the user swipes the answer call button instead of umm...just pressing it! Shameless, but it might con a few people into buying one, thinking its an iPhone until that is, they realise how much its lacking compared to Apple's baby.

LG Arena touchphone

Another poor man's iPhone

Whilst I understand that LG, HTC et al can't simply admit defeat of a sort, this is just pathetic. The advert for this particular phone goes all out to convince people that the guy is walking around using an iPhone even swiping the answer call button when he actually should just press it. Truly a poor man's iPhone with a dramatically short shelf life before LG forget it in the race for the next glossy advert. Buying an iPhone 3G would have actually saved you money as LG Samsung, Nokia etc. have released about 5-6 "competing" models during its release. What a joke.

This only comes off as desperate as most potential purchasers must have used an iPhone by now and will just be really disappointed once they realise that they've been duped into buying something which isn't an iPhone and can't even touch it. No apps store, ugly poorly photoshopped icons and interface. Looks like it was designed by students on a gap year.

Please nobody buy this effort or the HTC diamond touch etc. you're just encouraging more mediocre rip-off touch screen mobiles. Which is really odd as I'm often told that HTC were working on the original touch model "years before the iPhone came to market." It looked more like it should have *come out* several years before the iPhone came to market along with the rest. Several years since the first iPhone and still the rest of the industry is still flapping about. Get it together you lot!

Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 Windows Mobile smartphone

re:-Cheese sandwich or Roast Beef dinner ?

The 'fruitee phone' kicks Wimo's ass on nearly everything worth mentioning and funnily enough the manager from MS I was speaking to to last week admitted the same. I generally don't like closed systems, but my experience with other phones before iPhones were invented and trying to buy and install apps left me in no doubt that a non technical person wouldn't have a hope in hell, and would bother in the first place. The iPhone is closed but is extensible enough through the amazing appstore that nobody really cares. All apps are guaranteed to work and not screw your phone up either thanks to Apple's absolutely 'terrible' QA and vetting procedures. If you don't like that, jailbreak it and the sky's the limit. Try using a iPhone for a month or two, then go back to WiMo, you will be shocked (as I was) that you ever spent the extra time to use it.

WiMo folks are going to have to realize that this market is definitely shrinking because its being attacked on all sides, not just by Apple, but by Blackberry and Android too. You can't say that MS didn't have a large enough window of opportunity to fix it to be something decent instead of wasted potential, they have had years and yet its still pretty much pointless for and invisible in the market for most people outside of the IT crowd who seem to assume that since MS have a dominant desktop and server share that naturally their handset OS is the best as well. There's nothing to say that just because something is complicated to use it is better. Apple's brief spike of innovation has shown the mobile industry as a whole to be too preoccupied with the exterior design of phones and not enough on the OS's. This is evidenced at how they have been falling all over each other to try and release an 'iPhone-beater' but all singularly failed. Wimo is detined to disappear quite soon, and rubbish sales of the Xperia will only hasten this. Having said that, the P990 was the worst phoe I ever owned and made my next Wimo phone looks quite good by comparison for a while. But everything's relative.

This is an overpriced joke

This phone was hotly anticipated by me ages ago when it was announced. I'm not a fan of the prism styling but this is an disappointment due solely to the OS. SE if you want to beat the iPhone, look at what people like about it, and what they don't/won't like about yours. Nobody outside of the IT community likes using WiMo phones, and the sooner you wake up to that fact and move on, the better. Who the hell wants to have to navigate the Windows OS on a tiny screen with a stylus? Its like punishment of some kind. £500 for the pleasure? You must be joking.

Anyone thinking that the media capabilities of this phone are better than an iPhone/Touch/iTunes are living in fairy land also, have you used one ever? The camera is better on this and the keyboard is better, but in context with the crap OS, and the archaic brick design, who exactly do SE imagine buying one? Brick phones really muck up my suit lines, you know. SE are trying to repeat the success of the p900, p910 etc but this is not the way to do it, and the post-iPhone market is changing quicker than they can keep up, it seems. They need to not waste valuable R&D and marketing spend on dead ends like this. A lot of developers have jumped ship to the Apple Appstore too thanks to its smooth method of delivery, and micro-payment system, so expect the 3rd party software on this to be the best of homebrew and a version of Frogger if you're lucky. Or you could always code your own... Anyone? No? People compare every smartphone to the iPhone because it is leading the pack at the moment, whether you want to admit it or not.

Great battery life on this btw, 1 day really puts the 'defective' iPhone 3G with similar or better battery life in the shade...ahhemm, or isn't anyone going to mention that? How long did this phone take to develop after the iPhone came out and how much did it cost to bring to market SE? You know that you won't be seeing that money again.

Nokia unveils N79 and N85 smartphones

No thanks

Having used many nokia phones upto the N95 8GB, I have to say that honestly I'll never buy another Nokia. I'm not sure where they lost their way, the OS is bulky and so slow, the phone designs are pretty ugly and none of the features are particularly accessible/snappy to launch regardless of operator customisations. A pity as they used to be top notch when there wasn't any competition around. The iPhone currently does have the industry by the balls as they've all been shown to be lacking by this first stab from Apple which makes everyone else's OS look like it was designed in the 70's. This is why they are all falling over themselves to incorrectly declare their phones as 'iPhone killers'. Even the N85 looks very iPhone esque until I imagine, you start to actually use it. Obviously thats just an amazing coincidence then? They do say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery...