Posts by Niels 2 8 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Sep 2010
I keep having trouble with my iPhone's wifi working, yet not working, so I went to several stores to check out some HTC Android phones.
in every single store, the Store Clerks were quick to point out how Windows Phone 7 is so much easier and better, and how "facebook" is fully integrated..
Even when I told them how I don't use Facebook, and if I did, I wouldn't like how Windows Phone 7 mixes all your random online contacts from Facebook with your normal address book, they wouldn't relent.
Even straightforward remarks that the phone had to have Android or I wouldn't be interested, didn't cause abatement of the Windows Phone revelry
I can come to only one conclusion: either a lot of money is being passed through the channel to push this phone OS, or Carriers would just be much happier with another walled garden approach from Microsoft, than the unbounded, pretty much borderless system from Google.
Sure, if you get a google phone, you'll probably end up with a gmail account, google maps and a few other free google goodies... But they sure aren't taking any steps to stop you from going somewhere else and doing whatever you want with it.
Since I just lost interest in my iPhone, because it wastes too much of my time, forcing me to fight Steve Jobs' annoying restrictions every step of the way, I'm sure not gonna buy into Steve Ballmer's walled ghetto now...
I don't know if Microsoft is going to leave some open doors in their great wall unlike Apple, in order to take the middle ground between iOS and Android.
But I sure don't feel like spending my money first and later finding out Microsoft's phone is just as locked down as Apple's system.
This lack of support is on purpose, because Microsoft sees HTML 5 as a natural enemy to Silverlight and a threat to Windows in general.
Microsoft just continues to refuse to support open standards.
So, everybody is supposed to have to keep downloading large proprietary plugins, that require constant patching for security holes and arbitrary changes M$ makes whenever they feel like it. And Society at large is supposed to spend millions of frustrating hours and billions of dollars making different versions of their websites, because of Microsoft's conniving little tricks.
Further, they have announced a new DRM for Silverlight. They must think we've already forgotten about all the customers who bought DRM'ed music from Microsoft. And a few years later, Microsoft turned off their DRM servers, and customers lost the ability to play back the music they had paid for. This will make for still more incompatibility and be pure annoyance to customers.
On the Developer side, sure, MS' development tools are all very well done... but they always force you to doing things that work nowhere else.
And if someone makes .Net work elsewhere, like the mono project, soon enough, you got another lame patent fight, making it rather uncertain if you can rely on any promise of being able to ever re-use anything you've done in C# outside the Microsoft garden.
I'm no fan of Java, but at least its really portable, not fake portable.
So, I will neither buy a WP7 phone, nor will I write anything for it anytime soon.
Why would I bother... WP7 is almost as restrictive as iOS.
Google doesn't tell me what to do with Android, they don't need to bother, the stack is well enough designed. They say: here, take this thing we made, have at it in any way you like...
I can run a Python interpreter/compiler on android and code away wherever I find myself with idle time on my hands...
Only with Android does the phone really belong to the customer who bought it and paid for it...
With WP7, the phone really belongs to Microsoft.
With Symbian, the phone really belongs to Nokia and their cronies, the Telcos
With iOS, the phone belongs to Steve, he even tells you when you have replace it - after a year, when the capacity of the soldered in battery drops off.
Finally, I couldn't imagine anything worse than my phone being totally integrated with Facebook...
@ Bloatware: There are ways to get unlocked, unbloatware'd phones with the same plans from O2 or whatever telco of your choice. You just have to be smarter than to go into a store. There's various independent Phone plan sellers, that will provide an unlocked phone with the same telco plan you would be able to pick in a store, and usually for less, even.
I got my i8910 that way last year. Its neither locked nor branded by any telco, But I got a major telco's 20 euro a month flat rate plan. Crappy Symbian 5th edition is still making me wish that there had been an Android phone with a 720P video cam in 2009. i8910 users on the forums are clamoring for an Android port...
You can find independent phone plan sellers on the internet or on ebay.. ebay is easiest... Just check their ebay reputation and any fine print. (which people tend to not do in the local phone store - idk why) Most important feature for me: I can plug in a different SIM when I travel.
@ Nokia Hardware lovers:
Yeah, Nokia is (somewhat) consistent about making good quality hardware. At least they don't dare solder in the batteries...
But that's not enough because Symbian S60 5th makes me regret my purchase every day. Why? I'm not even missing access to some esoteric tricorder software, or the uber social networking integration. Its about the simplest functions possible that absolutely stink!
1) I would simply like the crummy built in PDF reader to have a full screen mode, because using up 30% of the screen for UI buttons makes it unusable for any serious reading.
2) The audio player plays back audio well enough, but try to make a playlist... ouch
3) play back video? scale/crop features are less than half baked.
4) Codec support is poor. Half my h264 video plays back, the other half doesn't. And the player is buggy as hell... I downloaded all symbian 5th video players I could find with searches, and none of them solved the problems. No wonder Samsung and Sony both announced to stop making any phones with Symbian. Makes perfect sense to me...
the list goes on... aggravating enough to pass 11 month left on my plan to a household member, just to get a phone with a different OS...
I just posted a response at the bottom, saying how the results didn't wash with people's smartphone purchasing patterns.
But I hadn't gone to check the survey itself...
If it was about phones in general, certainly the results make perfect sense, and this article is an embarrasment for The Reg...
Factual correction incoming asap?
Lets see, Nokia's phones are known for great hardware, but there isn't that much software you can install on them. Sure, they can give you some impressive sounding number like hey, we got 10.000 apps for Symbian, but that number includes 10 year old crap without touch screen support, and Its tough to name more than 3 ebook readers to run on an N97. Out of those 3, ZX Reader's certificate is expired, so you can't install it without a hack. The built in pdf reader uses up 30% of the screen for the UI with no available full screen mode... I think anybody who tries to read a pdf that way will find it too annoying to bother a second time, without needing to be any kind of a smartphone software specialist.
So, users don't care about apps, but they leave for the new smart phone brands that boast loads of apps... Its great when someone completes a study where the results completely go against whats actually happening, and they don't see the slightest hint to double check their methods?
...Oh wait, I know how that must have happened: some Telco or other invested party was paying for the study!
I'll admit there maybe many people who bought a smartphone cause their nephew told them THAT ONE was the one to get... and the good family member wouldn't know crapware from hardware. They just remember that their nephew told them you can listen to music on it, and read books while riding the subway. Last not least, they could talk for free to family members over something he'll install for them.
I guess its Steve Jobs' presentations and the 5% of tech savvy folks who talked the other 95% out of just buying one of those high resolution LG camera phones, completely free of apps..
So, Motorola, Sony, HTC, Samsung and LG must all be missing the true market with their Android phones, and that's the fault of those pesky tech savvy people, who are hyping everybody into buying something that means nothing to them.
I'm not sure I buy that... even cows on a meadow are picky with grass and pick the stuff that tastes best to them.
"Java Verified is an independent org with reps from AT&T, LG, Motorola, Nokia, Oracle, Orange, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Vodafone"
Muahaha disqualified!
You're presiding over testing for an unacceptable mess created by telco's self serving BS.
And I think they like the fragmentation that's driving developers insane just fine. God forbid the possibility of an open market place of java apps on dumb phones, they don't want a lot of apps competing with their crapware, or using their network for activities they don't have another toll booth for.
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