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My S7 does not have a removable back, and I can't get at the battery.

And yet functionality is still there if you want it. https://www.gottabemobile.com/... You're just being pedantic about the specifics of exactly how you want to achieve it.

However, the new phones from Google and Apple do not. Again, this is a significant change in strategy.

Actually there's more than 2 phones on the market too. Having to quote a Google pixel doesn't help your case. No one gives a crap about a phone with almost no market share. Apple can wallow in their filth. Wake me when I am unable to buy a flagship phone with that feature. Otherwise it's just complaining that not every single manufacturer supports every single feature.

I assume you were at least trying to make a point, but I'm not seeing it.

That much is obvious. You're spending so much time wanking over phone feature lists on GSM arena that you're ignoring the underlying point: Battery technology and battery life has improved incredibly over many years. Phones and all sorts of portable devices have been enabled and improved by these, and we have more functional variation on the market than we ever have had before allowing everyone to buy that phone that they want.

The fact that you compare modern better technology to the thought that you're being screwed points more to your entitled little snowflake status than technology itself.

lol. :)

I'll say, you just got insulted over the internet. Welcome to the "better" world.

Rarely do people stop when I tell them it is really disruptive. This is a technology that when used for good is superb, but is more often used for annoyance.

You do realize that you can use OS X/macOS' "Do Not Disturb" setting for exactly that purpose, right?

I played Mortal kombat X on my iPhone.

According to this page, it uses taps and swipes for attacks. But what does it use for moving your kombatant around? I don't own a phone made by Apple, nor am I in the market to buy one any time soon, so I can't try it for myself.

Actually, yes it is hard. 8.4 has never been jail broken. How would you do your detective stuff on my phone?

You forgot the sarcasm tag.

Not everyone knows that most of iOS users won't get iOS 8.4 until two or three days from now (June 29th or 30th).

Android users are having similar problems with the Android M Preview. You can install the Android M Preview on a rooted device, some manufacturers will even officially give you access to their official custom Android M ROM, but you can't unroot and then reroot an existing device with Android M Preview on it. If you try to do so, SuperSU will go into an infinite loop.

Really, the only advantage to a dumphone is the inexpensive cost to replace it, should it become lost or broken. Most non-contract wireless providers with a "bring your own phone" option are perfectly happy letting you use a cheap plan on a modern flagship smartphone, so being a Luddite won't save you much on your monthly wireless bill.

Regarding battery life, the main reason smartphones don't have the endurance of dumbphones comes down to how people use them. If you turn off mobile data, WiFi, Bluetooth and background app refresh, even an iPhone 5 can go a week on standby. You could also just buy an extended battery, portable USB pack, car charger, solar charger, etc.

I suspect this is more about longing for the "good old days" when people didn't expect you to be reachable through e-mail and at least 3 different social networks. Sorry, but using a dumbphone won't bring those days back.

[Lack of a walled garden is] a curious part of your definition. It's almost as if it's done specifically to allow yourself to avoid acknowledging that iOS holds a large share in smartphones and tablets.

No, it's because I use a laptop for things that an iPad can't do without remote desktop and the cellular data plan it implies. I write and test code for hobby projects while riding the bus to and from work. Doing this on an iPad would cost another $500 per year payable to Verizon Wireless or AT&T so I can VNC to a VPS. Besides, Apple doesn't even have part 1 according to this article. Split-screen multitasking was rumored to be in iOS 8, but it did not appear in the released version.

Oh, the ISPs interlaced part of the video stream, did they? They made it loop? They added minutes of this image into the stream? They added chinese audio on top of the english one?

Like it or not, this was a total clusterfuck. Whoever modded my first comment above as flamebait is a blind Apple follower. And I say that as an Apple user. When shit happens, don't cover your ears and pretend nothing bad is happening.

Android development is accessible to anyone with a computer

Is an Android device "a computer" in this sense? Either way, it still doesn't matter because AIDE allows for programming directly on an Android tablet, provided that the Android 4.3 update didn't disable your keyboard. (The workaround works only on rooted devices.) On the other hand, each student would have to carry both an iPad and an Android tablet: an iPad to read the iPad-exclusive textbooks on which the district has standardized and an Android device for programming.

Not true. See links below: http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/att-clocks-average-real-world-lte-speeds-13-mbps-opensignal-survey-finds/2013-02-14 http://www.gottabemobile.com/2012/09/21/iphone-5-speed-test-verizon-4g-lte/

You might want to waterproof your phone with 'Hz0', shown off at the CES. I saw a demo, it's a coating any device, inside and out, supposedly warranteed for 2 years. http://www.gottabemobile.com/2012/01/12/ces-2012-hzo-waterblock-can-waterproof-your-phone-or-tablet/

10 Mbps is doable today.

http://www.gottabemobile.com/2012/09/22/att-vs-verizon-iphone-5-4g-lte-speed-test/

What's really funny about this is that it's a transparent publicity stunt -- but almost no one in the mainstream press even noticed.

Even if you're Google, you can't create much buzz about the release of yet another Android phone into an already overcrowded marketplace. It's about as exciting as a new inkjet printer.

Outside of the nerdosphere, there really isn't a lot of call for a phone that is almost the size of a small tablet . It dwarfs the iPhone 5 shown next to it, and bigger isn't always better in something that is supposed to be portable. Well-heeled consumers can afford both a smartphone and a tablet. They don't need a phone so large that it requires its owner to only buy clothes with massive pockets.

Everyone else must be as frustrated as I am with HTC devices not being able to be upgraded to ICS.

AT&T is going to gouge the consumer for every cent they can. The irony, or course, is that Apple trumpets the fact that you can now make Facetime calls over a 3G/4G connection instead of WiFi. But the owner of the pipes (AT&T) is going to restrict how much of it you can use.

Um, I know you don't keep up on such things; but Apple has been on carriers other than AT&T for some time now, and they don't all pose restrictions on FaceTime. So it is not in the least disingenuous for Apple to tout that new feature in iOS 6.

Having said that, and as an AT&T customer myself, I think that what they are doing with both FaceTime AND Tethering should be frickin' illegal, even if it isn't. It's my data I'm paying for. AT&T SHOULD be a dumb pipe, nothing more, nothing less...

"Honestly, if you're going to go for an Android-based phone I'd go with one of the Nexus devices. They're a lot easier to modify and get software updates before any other phone."

Unless you get a Nexus that works on the largest carrier in the US....

http://www.gottabemobile.com/2012/09/11/verizon-galaxy-nexus-jelly-bean-update-excuses-roll-out/

"f you're an Android power user, and you want to see reasonable OS updates, then you know to buy a Nexus device, that's the point of them."

Unless you have a Nexus phone on the largest carrier in the U.S.

http://www.gottabemobile.com/2012/07/27/lack-of-nexus-s-4g-android-4-1-jelly-bean-update-bad-sign-for-verizon-galaxy-nexus/

"Google can't force the various carriers and handset makers push out updates,"

Apple doesn't seem to have a problem updating all of their devices across carriers worldwide without waiting on the carriers. Surprisingly enough, even Microsoft takes responsibility for Windows Phones updates without waiting on the carrier or OEM.

Do you mean "unlocked" as in "Able to switch carrier" or "Able to change software"?

If you mean the former, that's probably true but I'm not sure it pertains to the issue at hand. If you mean the latter, well, the Galaxy Nexus is available for Sprint and Verizon, and does still include an unlockable* bootloader, from everything I've read.

Not that the Galaxy Nexus is a typical Android phone, but there are options, anyway.

* (that is, officially unlockable, I don't mean "We can exploit this buffer overflow bug during a race condition to temporarily unlock..." type stuff, you can just use the standard Android adb command)

Raspberry Pi presold sight unseen over 350,000 units while restricted to one-per-customer. They ramped up the factory to 4,000 units a day - a run rate of 1.5 million units a year. They're little bare project boards. We're not even sure what we can do with them yet. Now that the schools they were intended for can order them in the bulk appropriate to the use of entire school districts full of students they may ramp quite a bit. School districts order in the dozens of units for test/dev and for deployment up to tens or hundreds of thousands so in the launch enthusiasm for RPi they were pretty much shut out so far. It doesn't hurt at all that their HDMI video output is standard input for flat panel monitors and TV's these past few years, so displays for them are everywhere and likely to last far longer than the PCs they came with.

If a bunch of hardware OEMs aren't snapping to attention over this they should be. The march of tiny low power ARM platforms seems to not want to stop. Now we have the Android TV dongle, five of these SBCs including the one in the fine article, a Kickstarter for OUYA that raised $5.3 million so far in 11 days from 41,000 backers who have no guarantee the product will ever even be made, on the strength of the reputation of the participants and the description of a product that isn't anticipated even being made until 9 months out - if they succeed in making it at all. That so many would put so much of their own personal money on only the promise of a thing is evidence of immense underlying demand for something.

Of course over in China and India they're making about a thousand different kinds of low-cost Android devices including a 7" tablet that costs $40 and runs Android ICS. Then there's the Nexus 7 tablet which sold out in retail stores around the planet on launch day and the 16GB version is even sold out on the Google Play store until further notice and the 8GB version probably soon will be - most of them were presold before they even hit the shelves. This one alone may move 10 million units the first year or more. Maybe much more. It's a product that may have buyers camped out at retailers awaiting fresh shipments like they were iThings.

The iThings are going great by the way, moving about a 500,000 units a day between iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch - every one a neat little ARM PC. And they just opened up the China market, which is like a whole third of everybody.

At last report little Android ARM PCs that also happen to have cellular phone capability are also doing well, activating 1,000,000 units a day - a run rate of 365,000,000 per year and still growing at a 2.5x pace year over year. And early next year come little ARM SOCs with 75% more processing power and 2x the graphics power for about the same price - and the SBCs that are made from them. Wow, the pace of progress here is stunning. It's like the early '90s again in PC land.

The traditional PC is stagnant. If you have one that's not too old you probably can suffer through another couple years with it, or until it fails completely, and save the money you would have put to a new one on one of these amazing new things. It's not like your laptop isn't already overpowered for what you're using it for. People have a certain budget for neat new gear anyway, and with adequate laptops costing $300 it's not like there's not money left over in the US market even if it is time to update your PC. The traditional PC market isn't going to collapse right away but I think it has peaked, plateaued, and begun its long gradual decline. In time, all things end.

All of these new things work wonderfully together, a

I remember that slanderous campaign, showed how sad and desperate apple had become. Make up a bunch of BS lies and then hide them under the generic "PC" name so that it wasn't considered the fraud it was. PC became the new brand X, and as long as they didn't say either Windows or that they don't have those problems then it was technically legal. The first step towards the patheticness that is apple, now they patent troll instead using patents of ideas they stole from others (like patenting Neonode's slide to unlock patent, patenting the Sony Vaio, the Android Vega tablet from 2009...)

And I'll bet you think they are all running OSX too.... sorry to burst your bubble, but they aren't. They are using Linux

Funny. You're the first person I have EVER heard that called the ad campaign "slanderous" or "lying".

WTF are you talking about with you babbling about "stolen patents" and "Android Vega tablets" and "Sony Vaio"???

But since you are, we'll discuss these one at a time:

1. Patenting Neonode's "slide to unlock": Well, the patent case in question was against HTC, but it wasn't HTC that was considered by the UK Court to be "Prior Art"; it was ANOTHER phone (the Neonode) that had an "unlock gesture". Although on a touch-screen device, it's kind of hard to avoid SOME kind of unlock GESTURE... So I guess both Apple AND HTC might have infringed... But isn't is curious that NeoNode didn't see it as "infringement", or wouldn't THEY have sued APPLE???

2. Patenting Sony's Vaio: This is just asinine. Are you saying that because the Vaio is thin, and the MacBook Air (and now MBPwRD) are thin, that SOMEhow "Apple Patented the Sony Vaio"??? Yeahrightsure. The Vaio is a milled aluminum "Unibody" construction. Yeahrightsure. The Vaio has a glass, multitouch trackpad with the left-button built-in. Yeahrightsure. The Vaio has MagSafe. Yeahrightsure. The Vaio has Thunderbolt. Shall I go on?

3. Andoid Vega Tablet from 2009. The WHAT? You mean that big IPHONE clone??? Riiiiight. Let's just take a look at the TIMING of who had what first: You're saying that Apple, who already HAD an iOS (f/k/a iPhone OS)-based, ARM-based, capacitive multitouch device ON THE MARKET for TWO YEARS prior to the Vega tablet, SOMEHOW tooled-up the iPad in the TWO MONTHS between the Vega's ANNOUNCEMENT on November 13, 2009, and the iPad's ANNOUNCEMENT on January, 27 2010. If you believe that is even remotely possible for ANY company, even one the size of Apple, you are SADLY mistaken, and of course know NOTHING about R&D and manufacturing processes. Keep in mind that Apple had HUNDREDS of WORKING iPads to show around and even GIVE AWAY at that January, 2010 announcement. In fact, the Vega wasn't even supposed to be on the market until WELL after the April, 2010 "on-shelf-date" of the iPad. So who is copying who here? It's not that the iPad looks like the Vega, it's that the Vega looks like.... AN IPHONE. And, as we all know, by 2009 there were already MILLIONS of iPhones in people's (and apparently Innovative (ha!) Converged Devices' Seattle (Hmm. Redmond?) labs, too, eh?)

And what's all this "bet you think they are all running OS X too. [...] They are using Linux."

What's the antecedent of the word "They" in your blathering? Are you talking about the NeoNode N1, the Vaio, and the Vega? Or are you talking about the iPhone, the MacBook Air and the iPad? Because in EITHER case, you are incorrect. The NeoNode N1 and the Vega Tablet run ANDROID, which is NOT Linux, any more than iOS is OS X. Yes, they are derivatives; but with enough differences to make them classified as their own OSes. And as far as the Vaio goes, I'm pretty sure that MOST (if not all) of them went out of the factory with WINDOWS installed, NOT Linux.

And I really shouldn't have to explain to ANYONE on Slashdot that OS X (nor iOS) ISN'T LINUX. So, you

" I was referring to the level of loyalty of their fan-base, and the rapidness of their hardcore to upgrade."

They have fans because they make great products and they support those products. A iPhone that runs next year's iOS 6 is only 99 cents.

Cheap and runs next year's OS? Yes please. Oh wait, no 4.8" OMGLOL screen. Nevermind, because, you know, I buy phones for the hardware, not because it runs the all the apps I want now and next year.

Why YES I believe they are.

http://www.gottabemobile.com/2012/03/27/android-or-condom-can-you-tell-which-is-a-phone/

Need I say more?

Adobe will keep supporting Flash on Android, for example.

You didn't get the memo?

http://www.gottabemobile.com/2011/11/08/adobe-abandoning-flash-for-android-mobile-platforms/

One thing that really interests me for potential tightness of integration is the idea of the phone as a portable desktop - I think that for many people, a phone that you slap on a docking station on your desk to use like a desktop or even a tablet could well be all the computer they need.

Inevitably, some people will complain about the desktop experience there, but for browsing and email it should be just fine. Microsoft have made their fortune on "good enough" - well, this is easily good enough to serve the needs of the majority of people.

Did apple patent gestures? Because i'm giving apple one right now.

Check it against Apple's 2011 collection of gestures.

You're thinking of Hulu: http://www.gottabemobile.com/2011/08/24/hulu-starts-blocking-the-hp-touchpad/

But that isn't the only reason that iPads are popular. They are popular primarily because THEY ARE NOT LIKE THE COMPUTER YOU FIRST PROGRAMMED IN 6TH GRADE BY CANDLELIGHT WHILE HIKING BAREFOOT UPHILL IN THE DARK.

I don't on an iPad, though I'm considering purchasing one. I'm just having a hard time convincing myself to shell out a couple hundred bucks for what amounts to a toy. It's certainly nothing like the computer I had in 6th grade. It's many many orders of magnitude more powerful that that. Hell, it's high resolution and not monochrome either.

I'm constantly amazed at the angst this device has created amongst the Slashdoterati. You all sound very threatened about a 1 pound device that, according to the hive mind here, can't process it's way out of a recycled paper bag.

Calm down, switch to decaf or something. Take a walk. It's something different, an 'uncomputer', an appliance. It doesn't fortell the end of the universe, it isn't George Orwell's worst nightmare.

It's an "Uncomputer"!?! You sound like a fucking marketer for Apple. And that's my primary problem with Apple. I think they make excellent hardware/software/interfaces. But the rabid way many of their customers act is frankly a turn off for me. Very much like you hive mind statement.

  Macs have their strengths and weaknesses. As do Linux and Windows based systems. My company has virtually no non-Mac users, save me. I chose to go with a Windows system. But not because I really care one way or another, mostly to be contrary. My previous company was primary Windows users, so I went with a Linux system for the same reason. The funny thing is, is that many of them sound like an advertisement, similar to your "uncomputer" statement. But they probably have close to 20 times the issues that I do with Win7. I've thought tablets were a pretty good idea for over a decade now.What I find sad is how many people ignored them until the iPad came out. Then I saw people talk about how much they wanted one. But virtually everyone that I spoke to that "had to have one" had absolutely no clue what it even was when I asked them. They just knew they wanted one. This has left me in complete awe of the marketing prowess/reality distortion field of Apple and Steve Jobs. But truly saddened by the complete gullibility of my fellow (wo)man.

Jesus, you'd think there was an earthquake or something recently.

What? You don't have the app for that?

According to this article, the iTunes match copies are iTunes Plus tracks, which are DRM free. I have no idea about the metadata, though I'm sure it wouldn't be extremely difficult for someone to write a script to merge two sets of ID3 tags.

Wow, that is unprecedented, unless you count the Kno:

http://www.slashgear.com/kno-dual-screen-tablet-hands-on-07124780/

Or the Acer Iconia 6120:
http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/03/29/6367167-acers-dual-screen-tablet-behaves-like-a-laptop

Or the Toshiba tablet concept:
http://techtickerblog.com/2006/03/17/dual-screen-tablet-from-toshiba/

Or the MSI dual screen tablet:
http://blog.laptopmag.com/msis-dual-screen-tablet-video-hands-on-much-more-than-an-ereader

Or the Toshiba Libretto
http://www.gottabemobile.com/2010/08/16/toshiba-libretto-dual-screen-tablet-hitting-the-u-s/

Or the Asus Dual Screen concept:
http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/asus-dual-screen-laptop-features-a-touchscreen-keyboard/

ah, yes, Samsung, the company that charges for updates.

That was a rumor, which is apparently not true.

I don't know that Acer rules any roost, so I think the point of this story is that tablets are getting bigger, more powerful and hopefully, as implied by the Acer name - cheaper.

So far as I can tell, the big winner here is the 10" screen - using tired old LCD tech.

Personally, I think where tablets lose is the display (not e-ink) and for those that may be interested, there's an Android tablet on the horizon with Pixel Qi tech and Qualcomm's Mirasol is also something to know about:

http://www.gottabemobile.com/2010/11/05/pixel-qi-powered-notion-ink-adam-android-tablet-in-time-for-the-holidays/

For some other tablet alternatives - http://www.anythingbutipad.com/

(I got nothing against the iPad, that's just a halfway decent site for a tablet alternative.)

My 2 cents on tablet ownership would be - match your OS to your cell phone if you can because it makes your transition from one device to another smoother and tablets should be all about ease of use. In that sense, Acer's move to offer these things in Androids and Windows shows real insight on their part (and no sad surprise - no Linux out of the box, again).

I'm OS agnostic and believe in the right OS for the job, fwiw.

How quickly we forget. John Sculley was showing demoware of the Knowledge Navigator all over the place in the late 1980s.

Here's a picture of it, bowtie and all.

It has gone to whatever Valhalla OpenDoc, Cyberdog, and QuickDraw GX dwell in.

Windows 7 now features a math input panel, which converts handwritten mathematics to MathML. You can see screenshots at this link: http://www.gottabemobile.com/2008/10/29/windows-7-math-input-panel-screenshots

What if MS decides you can only install Windows on a list of approved brands?

Well, ... During the recent financial analyst day Steve Ballmer had this to say:

Our license tells you what a netbook is. Our license says it’s got to have a super-small screen, which means it probably has a super-small keyboard, and it has to have a certain processor and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

If they disappear the snapdragon, there'll be hell to pay. Both of them had best be checking the logs to see who had contact during CeBit.

The form factor is that of a dual-screened eBook, but they have a popup touch-screen keyboard as an application. It's a computer, kinda like a super-sized Nintendo DS. There are pictures of if accepting typed input, of it being held like a book, and of it laying flat like a board game between two kids.

I know the site listed in the summary is almost gone under the load, but there are lots of sites with news and pictures if you Google for "2nd generation OLPC". Two of them (spread the load!) are Laptop Magazine and GotteBeMobile, both of which are responding well as of right now.

MOST IMPORTANT THING

Really, so coming to market is the most important thing? Then Apple loses in every context then...

First, you need to thank and give kudos to Creative and iRiver as they had MP3 products on the market 5 or 6 years before the iPod.

You also don't get that there are tons of multi-touch devices out there, even trackpads on existing Windows Laptops.

This is where this article is WRONG, as it may support multi-touch, but it is NOT THE FIRST ONE, in fact multi-touch drivers with the CURRENT gesturing concepts go back to freaking Windows XP and TabletPC designs from 2005/2006. Here: http://www.gottabemobile.com/LenovoThinkPadX60TabletPCMultiTouchAndUltrabase.aspx

Still think Apple brought it to market first?

Do a Google "Windows Multi-touch". There are tons of companies out there, is looking up information this hard for Mac users?

The other 'sick' part of the Apple multi-touch, is they applied for patents on almost everything that was presented at TED. So not only did they race home to put the technology in their devices, they filed for patents on technology that was demonstrated to them at a conference...

http://www.multitouchtechnology.com/mac/apple-patents-for-multi-touch-gestures-in-mac-os-x/

Nice uh?

Apple even touts the 300 patents on the iPhone as a feature or example that it is more advanced. So they tout how they cripple the technology world by shoving patents in a product they didn't even invent and this makes people happy? Nice again...

And don't even go there with the freaking visual voicemail... A cool name, so it MUST BE NEW! People are retarded when it comes to crap like this.

There have been voicemail systems around for over 10 years that offer the exact same features as Visual Voicemail. In fact, many of these phone system even use voice recognition on the call to put the first line of text on the screen, so it looks like an Visual Inbox with the actual message in text. And this really is 'Visual Voicemail', not just a CallerID name on a list on the freaking screen.

There were plugins for the Inbox in Windows95/NT 4.0 MAPI mailbox that had these features back in 1995/1996, and now Apple somehow 'obviously' invented it? Are you high?

Go look at a service like UReach even, it is one I have partnered with since it was opened back in the 1990s. It has a visual voicemail system, that is accessible from your PHONE, Web Page, or Computer even. And this is OLD TECHNOLOGY...

And the best implementations are the ones that literally show the message in text (being voice recognition processed), and you can even access the whole message wihtout listening to anything, but read it 'Visually'... Hell go look up MS Phone Speech services, they have been providing features like this to phone software providers for almost 7 years themselves. So Microsoft was doing this for years and years, but they didn't freaking invent it either... These are OLD concepts.

So how in the f**k does Apple get people to believe they created this stuff, cause they haven't. And not only that, then idiots like you give them 'credit' for at least doing it first. WTF?

GEEEEESSSSSHHHHH...............

The M1400 is great if you can get over the fact that it doesn't have a keyboard, and the bundled keyboard that is integrated into the screen protector is pretty lousy. But I had mine running XP tablet edition and it did everything I needed it to do (with one-note of course) and I have just recently switched it over to Vista. I know, I know, Vista is the anti-christ and all that, but the tablet features in it are far superior to XP. As a note-taking platform, the M1400 is light and fast enough for all intents and purposes. As a report writing platform it falls flat (I have a desktop so it doesn't matter to me).

Tablet PCs don't really have a learning curve, but they do take a special kind of mind-set to get used to and aren't really for everyone. My suggestion is try to find a cheap one like I did (toshiba makes some good cheap ones too, convertible style (fold down screen) which might be better if you need a keyboard to do reports and the like on it) or rent/borrow one for a couple days. Also check out the forums at http://www.gottabemobile.com/forum/, they will help you find something if your are not sure what to get.