Posts by c 1 31 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Jun 2009
"Being able to pin various parts of an App to the home screen is very handy."
As BobV alluded to (but not quite 2007) you do realise Android has had this capability since Cupcake (7 versions ago) was released in early 2009. How MS are marketing "Live Tiles" as a unique is beyond me - they are just rectangular widgets.
@ AC:
"But it really is a great mobile OS."
No - it is not. It is terrible to use (and I have used a heap of different WP devices across all versions). The UI is ugly as sin. Every time I have to use a WP device I dislike it more. And this seems to tally with most customer experiences given the sales to date.
"In the US, for example, the whole 108 MHz of spectrum from 698 MHz to 806 MHz has been designated for public safety applications."
Ummm - not it hasn't. >60Mhz of this digital dividend spectrum was divided up into 5 blocks (A/B/C/D/E) and auctioned off in 2008 in one one of the most hotly debated and public spectrum auctions of all time. Yes there are some deisgnated public safety chunks but nowhere near the whole 700Mhz chunk.
I expect better from El Reg - this new fad of sourcing local Australian content is adismal failure when it comes to quality and accuracy.
@Michael Hoffmann
You cant get 3G because you are not on Telstra NextG. There are countless testimonials as to the quality, performance and coverage of NextG - a simple google will find them. The LTE rollout will provide for even better speeds. It is not a replacement for a fixed fibre solution but will meet the needs of many customers for now and well into the future (me included).
Right now the NextG network supports up to 42Mbps theroretical max in capital CBDs/some major metros. Real world speeds are in the 10-20Mbps with latencies around 30ms (from my personal experience).
As for the original article - Telstra already has fibre conenctions to pretty much every base station and has had for some time.
@ nathan B,
Your kidding right? J2ME is a dogs breakfast of partially implemented, dodgy designed garbage that has stymied the progression of mobile computing by a decade or more. Anyone, and I mean anyone, that suggests that J2ME has any place other than the rubbish bin has exactly no credence whatsoever in any discussion around OS choices for future devices. Period.
@StrongType - you do know that file access is provided by the optional (but widely implemented) JSR75 File IO API?
In any case J2ME MIDP is dead as a doornail. No device manufacturers are doing anything with it anymore and any sane developer is targetting iPhone and Android for new intiiatives.
@AC,
J2ME is still as broken as it ever was. As a standard it is dead as a doornal, MIDP3.0 is sstillborn and not one single device vendor is doing anything signficant with it. All of them are abondoning in favour of Android or other open OS.
As for TCKs - theya re joke. Most OEMs dont even pay lip service to the TCKs.
Andorid howver - yet to have a serious compatibuility problem. Things just "work" across multiple vendors. That is unheard of with J2ME. I completely reject the notion that somehow Android is "fragmented". yes there is potentila for this to happen but is most defeintely has not yet.
""They had very weak notions of interoperability, which, given our history, we strongly objected to. Android has pretty much played out the way that we feared: there is enough fragmentation among Android handsets to significantly restrict the freedom of software developers.""
JG must be kidding or he is living in cloud cuckoo land. Java/J2ME is so ridiculously fragmented that it defies belied. There 100 or more JSRs that comprise it, the vast majority of which are optional. Even the ones that are mandatory have large chunks where things are either not defined or optional as well. FFS even address book access is defined in an an optional JSR! As is access to any of the messaging functions. Want a listening socket - well that is optionally supported as well. That is before you even encounter a device - which most likely wont work as expected or at all with the feature that you want. J2ME needs to be killed and killed now. Luckily that is happening at a very fast rate.
Android is beacon of consistency and stability in comparison.
@Nathan 6
That would have been the most brain dead thing that google could ever have done - base Android on J2ME. J2ME is a god awful mess of half baked and over-engineered "standards" (yes - quite a feat to be both at one time I know), infighting, pathetically unstable implementations and generally the reason why the mobile industry has been stuck in the dark ages until iPhone/Android showed the way.
And the reason why J2ME is so bad is directly attributable to Sun. Their screwed up licensing scheme and total lack of leadership lead to the mess that is there now and to all and sundry running away from J2ME as fast as possible.
@David Given - what are you smoking?
"This is, basically, Android for Windows. It's using .NET instead of Java, and the WinCE kernel instead of Linux, but it's very much the same thing."
Except for multitasking,
and ability to install any app you feel like without using a "marketplace",
and ability for OEM custom UIs,
and native code support,
and dozens of other things.
But your right : WM7 does not sound all that appetising now.
@Cameron Colley
you are mistaken. No need for a google ID to use android. Android has native pop/imap/smtp support - always has.
The only thing you need a google id for is to access the marketplace (i.e. app store).
And in reference to the article authors statement on the google app store - what drugs is he taking? The google marketplace for android has 30000+ apps and growing. Having used this and the Iphone app store in my opinion the Android offering is light years ahead of the Iphone app store.
@doc spock,
Telecomms is in no way a utility. It is one of the most innovation-intensive/competitive industries on the planet.
The fundamentals of moving a litre of gas/ a kw/Hour of electricity etc. have not changed in 100+ years. Now compare that to the telecomms industry. This alone renders the rest of you argument invalid.
diito to anonymous coward...
It is not the modulation technique (HSDPA) that affects in-building coverage but rather the frequency used. In AT&T's case they run a UMTS 850/1900 network so in theory if they deploy the upgrade on UMTS850 then in building should be quite good. I can vouch for that as down here in Oz we have a national UMTS 850 network and coverage in building is fantastic.
there are a number of commercial UMTS 850 networks that are providing great coverage and performance. UMTS 900 deployments should be almost identical. Down here in Oz we have a national UMTS 850 network (99.9% population coverage) that gives consistent real world data speeds (with the right device) of 6-10Mbps or even higher. Indoor coverage is fantastic. Voice calls are never a problem.
With decent cell planning the simplistic potential problems you describe don't manifest to the end user. That is a fact.
what a load of bollocks. The ability to "legally intercept" traffic on mobile networks has been part of the standards for a long time. From personal experience every carrier that I know keeps detailed logs of everything their customers do for a considerable time. One particular carrier has these logs available for support purposes in real time - the last 30 days activity of every customer is stored and available at the click of a button (URLs visted, IP layer information etc.). This is allmlinked back to phone number associated with the service.
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