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With Android you can install any software you want. With Apple, all apps have to be approved an bought from an Apple App Store.

With Android you can choose from multiple Markets (Android app stores) or install applications directly yourself. That is the big difference.

Ok, so with 250,000 (and growing by the second!) apps in the Apple App Store, and an estimated 50,000+ Android Apps (plus an insignificant additional number NOT in the Marketplace), I'd say, FOR THE AVERAGE USER, that the "Walled Garden" of the App Store is pretty fucking HUGE compared to the "Fully Open World" of Android Appdom.

In fact, over FIVE TIMES BIGGER (and the difference is getting LARGER with each passing SECOND, not smaller).

And, oh, BTW, HERE's what your precious "Freedom ton install any software you want" vs. "all apps have to be approved and bought from an Apple App Store" REALLY buys you. That is not a theory, it is fact.

"Liberty" on smartphones is NOT the same as "Liberty" in government. And, just so I don't get some sort of snippy retort, TRUE "Liberty" would mean that I could hunt you down and kill you for not agreeing with me. Do you really think THAT's "1337"?

HD2 has none of these problems. dont lie to yourself. i have hd2 and i look and search for hd2 news and tweaks and i've never seen anything like that reported.

Liar, Liar, Pants on FIRE!.

Smartphones are not low margin, and Symbian outsells iOS and Android combined:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone

Last year Apple still outsold Nokia in touchscreen smartphones. I wouldn't be surprised if Nokia overtakook Apple this year as their lineup is shifting more to touchscreen phones.

http://www.gsmarena.com/touchscreen_smartphones_sales_rose_twice_apple_still_in_the_lead-news-1437.php

Regarding company size, market valuation is not necessarily the best gauge. For example, Nokia's revenue in 2009 was larger than Apple's. Also take into account that Nokia is almost exclusively in the phone business whereas it's only a part of Apple's.

UMA, definitely. Then you're not stuck with a Wi-Fi only device if you ever move location, or god forbid, take the phone off campus.

Not an exhaustive list, but here's some phones with UMA in the description

Or is it the lg prada?

...think back to what cell phones were like before the iPhone came out...

Hm, yeah; I can think of Ericsson R380, from 2000 (not a "true" touchscreen smartphone since one can't install apps; but by that measure iPhone wasn't one either, in 2007). Or similar one from...1993. But if necessarily "true" touchscreen smartphone - SE P800 does fine. Did in 2002, actually. Five years of difference (sort of six, if looking at apps)

Oh, I get it, you're talking about waiting until absolutelly every piece of "tech surroundings" is firmly in place for some time? Plus nice marketing in a visible, to you, market?

...think back to what cell phones were like before the iPhone came out...

Hm, yeah; I can think of Ericsson R380, from 2000 (not a "true" touchscreen smartphone since one can't install apps; but by that measure iPhone wasn't one either, in 2007). Or similar one from...1993. But if necessarily "true" touchscreen smartphone - SE P800 does fine. Did in 2002, actually. Five years of difference (sort of six, if looking at apps)

Oh, I get it, you're talking about waiting until absolutelly every piece of "tech surroundings" is firmly in place for some time? Plus nice marketing in a visible, to you, market?

Again, 320x240, but thanks for trying. http://www.gsmarena.com/o2_xda_ii-697.php

http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_x820-1556.php

what you need is a bidirectional, multi band cell phone booster with an external antenna you mount high to 'see' the local cell tower. Make sure you look up your cell model to be sure the unit works with your phone.
This place has a lookup list of what your phone is. http://www.gsmarena.com/

This is a high on an outside wall antenna hooked to a multi band amplifier with an antenna inside the house where you want coverage. There are a few of them on ebay, the cheap ones are the old single band ones that are probably useless to you. You can even buy extra yagi antennas to hook up and point towards a cell tower that can be a few miles away. Then you can walk around in the house and when you talk the unit picks it up and amplifies it to the outside antenna and gets the signal back to you. It will also work for other people close to it.
See if you can find one on Craigslist or Kijiji. There are lots on ebay, read specs with care. Those little flat foil plates are no good for your use.

Why on earth won't it support multitasking when the previous versions have done so quite well? That's like asking whether Windows 7 will support these newfangled things called mice. Multitasking is not even a feature to ask about unless you're coming from the Apple camp. I don't even have to think about the call blocker,chat program, background email checker and GSM cell detector/reminder that I usually run. I can switch between them, run a game that gets paused when I get a call/SMS and resumes afterwards. And I've been able to do this since my first Symbian phone in 2005. Every mobile OS other than Apple's has supported multitasking right from the start. Just as how reviewers actually used copy/paste as a parameter to compare the iPhone with other handsets when Apple finally added it as an update! This is anyway just a preview- we don't yet have fullblown handsets on the market to test scrolling and other features. And for heaven's sake get over the 'iPhone domination'. Everything doesn't have to be positioned against the bloody iPhone, it is unfortunate that all the major tech news sites are American, and have never seen a smartphone OS before 2007.

Nokia 5530 is GSM/EDGE only. No UMTS or HSDPA, so it is 2.75G. http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_5530_xpressmusic-2832.php

Nokia N900 is looking better by the minute. Maemo (Linux), and theres Python port for that, so it wont be hard to code for. A Firefox browser with Flash support and generally nice specs on the hardware front. € 540 or so isnt too bad for a smartphone in that class.

They also have cheaper smartphones like 5530 XpressMusic. You can buy like 2-3 of those for the price of an iPhone 3G/3GS.

They also have cheaper smartphones like 5530 XpressMusic. You can buy like 2-3 of those for the price of an iPhone 3G/3GS.

Yes. The Satio (specs: http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_satio_(idou)-2683.php).

Hell, every SE phone I've ever owned has had a front-facing camera in addition to the standard one.

While there are wrist watch format cell phones such as the Samsung S9110 and the LG GD910 they usually have battery life issues. Even if they didn't, people who use smart phones require more than just a phone. So while wrist watch format devices may exist, many people need something akin to an organizer, web browser and map. This means you need a larger display screen and a writing/drawing surface similar in form factor to a moleskine notebook. Something that fits into a pocket. This is what a smartphone such as the iPhone, or even a device such as the iPod Touch does.

While there are wrist watch format cell phones such as the Samsung S9110 and the LG GD910 they usually have battery life issues. Even if they didn't, people who use smart phones require more than just a phone. So while wrist watch format devices may exist, many people need something akin to an organizer, web browser and map. This means you need a larger display screen and a writing/drawing surface similar in form factor to a moleskine notebook. Something that fits into a pocket. This is what a smartphone such as the iPhone, or even a device such as the iPod Touch does.

HTC makes a couple of Android phones which look interesting. They are about to start selling the HTC Hero too.

no phone in the history of the universe has had a front facing video camera, and Apple itself of course doesn't have the software to utilize it.

As it was pointed out, pretty much every 3G phone does have a front facing video camera. Primarily, since initially that was the main reason for the phones to be 3G in the first place. Videotelephony, anyone?

But if we take things a bit more to the extreme, there have been a few phones, that actually had cameras that could twist around, so you could take a picture of something in front of you or of yourself.
http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_n90-pictures-1155.php

The Nokia N79 would like to have a word with you.

Most carriers don't want front facing cameras because then people will start asking for video conferencing and that goes against the philosophy of "If the customer buys a data plan, it must be as hard to use and crappy as possible to drive them back to the insanely profitable SMS and MMS instead". Video Conferencing doesn't qualify, it uses way too many bits unless you really work hard to make it near unusable.

You'd like to believe it was your Jesusphone being that intelligent, but in reality, the SMS standard has supported message concatenation for at least the last ten years, if not since its inception. My Nokia 2110e could turn it on and off, and you'd see the little counter for "remaining characters" go from 160 to 470 or so.

These ones, mostly they've only been released in the Asian markets. It's rare that we see them in the west.

Sorry, not that one, I thought those were real keys. But others have well defined keys, like this one, nice big keys and screen that doesn't need much power:

http://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_motofone_f3-1794.php

I'm not sure what network AT&T is, CDMA or GSM, but if I were to select something for a blind person, I would get a simple cellphone with very few keys, for example something like this one:

http://www.gsmarena.com/lg_ku990_viewty-2070.php

By the way, the site above has pictures for quite a lot of phones so you should be able to find several easy to use ones.

I use the Nokia E90 for similar purposes. It features a 800x352 pixel display and you can run a version of PuTTY on it. Depending on the font size you're willing to use, it gives you a terminal size from 88x23 characters up to 160x50 with the smallest font. Combine that with the vertical split patch for GNU screen and you have a mighty useful terminal for system administration. It works quite well for me.

I would like to see more convergence between small form factor PCs and cell phones.

Last week I played around with a Nokia E90. I found it to be a nice system, if pricey for a cell phone. It does everything, though. I would have actually preferred a larger format for the device, especially to make touch typing possible, and the 9" screen would be sweet. The form factor of the ASUS eee 9" appears to be perfect; that is, if only it were a cell phone, too. The problem I discovered is that the software necessary software may not be available. For example, I was able to choose the Nokia only because there was a version of the "Blackberry Connect" software available for Series 60 phones; the user spec's absolutely mandated blackberry capability for their new phone. It would be nice to see one of these new small form factor UMPCs have built in cell phone capabilty.

Nokia may be shy to release anything in a larger form factor than E90. It is noticably smaller than earlier generations, and with added features. But even with a somewhat smaller form factor, some users have returned/resold the E90 because they find it is still too big. It looks like an impasse, which can only be cured by a change in mindset. It may happen because big is the new small. You should see Cammy Diaz' phone. It's huge.

i had one of these http://www.gsmarena.com/ericsson_r310s-200.php a good few years ago. Never submerged it, but i did drop it 12 foot onto concrete with no harm done (by contrast, the nokias i had previously broke the display if dropped 3 feet) . If its water resistance is as good as its shock resistance it should be pretty good.

It has happened many times with wireless modem cards (3G/GPRS) - not

£7000 Charge For Useage When Sim NOT In Use

case #1.

case #2

other cases
(Has anyone ever seen a $48,797.09 phone bill from ATT ????)

I don't even bother to read Pogue's reviews since the hard drive recovery service review he did and was discovered it was paid for.

Pogue's review is wrong on so many counts it isn't even funny. From methodology, description and so on. People interested in communication technology should read websites that specialize in this kind of things like gsmarena.com, mobile-review.com and see how a review should be done. For example he compares it with the Iphone on a regular basis, though they are not in the same category, or still not because Apple won't release a SDK untill february.

A real review of a phone should be made like this (for you iphone lovers), or a Nokia N81 review, and i will shut up now and not comment on Pogue again in my life. :)

I don't even bother to read Pogue's reviews since the hard drive recovery service review he did and was discovered it was paid for.

Pogue's review is wrong on so many counts it isn't even funny. From methodology, description and so on. People interested in communication technology should read websites that specialize in this kind of things like gsmarena.com, mobile-review.com and see how a review should be done. For example he compares it with the Iphone on a regular basis, though they are not in the same category, or still not because Apple won't release a SDK untill february.

A real review of a phone should be made like this (for you iphone lovers), or a Nokia N81 review, and i will shut up now and not comment on Pogue again in my life. :)

If I am on the phone and want something, I will seek out the best of what there is through research - I will pay NO attention to advertising that TELLS me what I should or should not want. There is a difference between non-intrusive (sometimes entertaining) advertising in (say) print magazines where one gets to learn about something new - perhaps in a field one would not have discovered without the ad - and the opposite of having unwanted information shoved in ones face in a manner that makes assumptions about me. Amazing with all the technology and (supposed) brilliance available in the tech sector that this sort of crap and those annoying small pop up 'ads' that appear over hyperlinked words on websites like GSM Arena that this is all 'we' can come up with. What a waste of mankind! No wonder we're failing to solve the world's problems, our intellectual capital is tied up thinking of pathetic ways to squeeze a tiny more money out of each individuals persona. If you develop a service (such as VoIP) that does its job, then people will pay for it - and you are then answerable to any failings of said service. Pay peanuts, get monkeys. Pay money, get warranty.

...phone to have a non user replaceable battery. My Ericsson T65 circa 2001 had a couple of lovely hex screws where the battery cover opening should have been.

Seriously. 640x480 screen, 2MP+, broadband internet. FM radio? Hah, stream MP3s from your home PC!

Yah they cost starting at $300+ w/o a contract. The problem is that the only way to get the really sexy Windows Mobile phones is without a contract, because so few carriers offer them!

Heck, we have had sexy phones available here for years now!

Link time:

o2 XDA

I-Mate JasJar

The I-Mate ultimates are also coming out soon, and they are some awesome phones. With 128MB of RAM and a 520MHZ CPU, they also will be screaming along in terms of speed for general processing tasks.

Ultimate 7150

Ultimate 7150

Anybody want an 8GB HD with their phone? Try the HTC Advantage X7500

The issue is, finding any of these phones from a carrier. Once in a while a few of them end up on the big companies offerings, but far too often, they have to be purchased separately.

Seriously. 640x480 screen, 2MP+, broadband internet. FM radio? Hah, stream MP3s from your home PC!

Yah they cost starting at $300+ w/o a contract. The problem is that the only way to get the really sexy Windows Mobile phones is without a contract, because so few carriers offer them!

Heck, we have had sexy phones available here for years now!

Link time:

o2 XDA

I-Mate JasJar

The I-Mate ultimates are also coming out soon, and they are some awesome phones. With 128MB of RAM and a 520MHZ CPU, they also will be screaming along in terms of speed for general processing tasks.

Ultimate 7150

Ultimate 7150

Anybody want an 8GB HD with their phone? Try the HTC Advantage X7500

The issue is, finding any of these phones from a carrier. Once in a while a few of them end up on the big companies offerings, but far too often, they have to be purchased separately.

Seriously. 640x480 screen, 2MP+, broadband internet. FM radio? Hah, stream MP3s from your home PC!

Yah they cost starting at $300+ w/o a contract. The problem is that the only way to get the really sexy Windows Mobile phones is without a contract, because so few carriers offer them!

Heck, we have had sexy phones available here for years now!

Link time:

o2 XDA

I-Mate JasJar

The I-Mate ultimates are also coming out soon, and they are some awesome phones. With 128MB of RAM and a 520MHZ CPU, they also will be screaming along in terms of speed for general processing tasks.

Ultimate 7150

Ultimate 7150

Anybody want an 8GB HD with their phone? Try the HTC Advantage X7500

The issue is, finding any of these phones from a carrier. Once in a while a few of them end up on the big companies offerings, but far too often, they have to be purchased separately.

Seriously. 640x480 screen, 2MP+, broadband internet. FM radio? Hah, stream MP3s from your home PC!

Yah they cost starting at $300+ w/o a contract. The problem is that the only way to get the really sexy Windows Mobile phones is without a contract, because so few carriers offer them!

Heck, we have had sexy phones available here for years now!

Link time:

o2 XDA

I-Mate JasJar

The I-Mate ultimates are also coming out soon, and they are some awesome phones. With 128MB of RAM and a 520MHZ CPU, they also will be screaming along in terms of speed for general processing tasks.

Ultimate 7150

Ultimate 7150

Anybody want an 8GB HD with their phone? Try the HTC Advantage X7500

The issue is, finding any of these phones from a carrier. Once in a while a few of them end up on the big companies offerings, but far too often, they have to be purchased separately.

Seriously. 640x480 screen, 2MP+, broadband internet. FM radio? Hah, stream MP3s from your home PC!

Yah they cost starting at $300+ w/o a contract. The problem is that the only way to get the really sexy Windows Mobile phones is without a contract, because so few carriers offer them!

Heck, we have had sexy phones available here for years now!

Link time:

o2 XDA

I-Mate JasJar

The I-Mate ultimates are also coming out soon, and they are some awesome phones. With 128MB of RAM and a 520MHZ CPU, they also will be screaming along in terms of speed for general processing tasks.

Ultimate 7150

Ultimate 7150

Anybody want an 8GB HD with their phone? Try the HTC Advantage X7500

The issue is, finding any of these phones from a carrier. Once in a while a few of them end up on the big companies offerings, but far too often, they have to be purchased separately.

It can't be simpler than this And battery life is great.

Anyone who's owned a phone for more than a year knows you will eventually have to replace the battery

Ironically, the only part of my Ericsson phone that broke down is the battery lock. I'm now using tape to keep the battery inside the phone. This couldn't have happened with an Apple iPhone.

Since there was a slideshow of pictures taken with the iPhone camera in the parent post, to compare here's a GSMArena review with some pictures taken with the Nokia N95's camera.

yes, we would

Bunch of crap. I don't see anybody talking about PRADA LG, though it was announced a year ago. Bunch of hypocrites. This talk about a PHONE on /. is because Apple made it, not because it is some uber-phone.

GPS is not the N95's killer app. GPS is just the next essential phone feature. Nokia got it first cuz Nokia is better than everyone else, including Apple. No news here.

N95s are cool cuz they do everything better than every other current phone, including the iPhone, period. N95s also have video output which seems potentially quite important.

But N95s are kinda clunky and short on battery life. Otoh Apple's iPhone is actually physically larger in your pocket. Apple's chart is obviously biased to avoid admitting that their phone is larger in other dimensions.

http://www.gsmarena.com/

$600 iPhone + cingular rip off >> $800 N95 + your choice

Noikia always has and always will be king, everyone knows this. The N95 has **vastly** more features:
http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_n95-1716.php

The iPhone won't even have 3rd party software to make up for it's poor feature set.

My new next phone is Motorola F3. As far away from a PC as possible.

My dream phone:

makes calls
6 hours of active battery life

Thats it.

You want the O2 Jet then. It has 540 hours standby and 9 hours 50 minutes talk time (so almost 4 hours more than your request).

I wish phone companies would work on making it a better phone rather than adding useless extras.

They do. The problem is that the majority of people on Slashdot who say "I wish I could get a phone that only does X and Y" haven't bothered to do five minutes of research.

You've got to be kidding about the iPhone! You'd seriously go with the least supported & most closed mobile OS on the planet?

Simbian phones are amazing, period. But I'll accept that you might find Nokia's lack of style annoying. Motorola OTOH has amazingly sexy Linux phones. Windows mobile is not ideal, but it's got plenty of software & look options. Just check out gsmarena.com. And don't even consider the iPhone.

Still happy with my 5 year old Ericsson R310s.

Party trick - set it to "vibrate" mode, drop it in a pint of beer, and phone it - instant cocktail shaker! :-)

Completely gortex'd up phone. You can find them on ebay here in the UK for about 50 pounds now and again, old stock people are dumping...

Of course iPhone (especially when judged from a distance) is not going to be a perfect phone. There are many people around who would say that something this was and still is a perfect mobile phone (and to a great degree I can't blame them -- this phone does what a phone should do: makes calls). We can go back to 2001 and check the "predictive powers" of CmdrTaco wrt iPod -- has it panned out?

But is the market really *that* uncertain? Or maybe the analysts are looking at it from a way too US-centric view (and maybe Steve is making a very similar mistake not releasing this phone in US and Europe at the same time)?

Look at it this way, check out current Cingular offering. The cheapest smart phones start at $99 with a 2-year contrct, but these are older BBs 7290s and Treos. WinCE smart phones are between $299 and $399 with a contract (and at a special price). None of them carries nearly as much RAM as iPhone (and I read it that 4G or 8G will be the user available space), packs nearly the same set of features. I don't have a first-hand experience with WinCE phones, but I keep on hearing about dropped calls, reboots, etc. -- not good, and that;s already 2nd or 3rd generation, is it not?

Six months ago I picked up Nokia N80 for nearly $800. When I am looking at it now and comparing it to the iPhone -- I'll pay just about as much for iPhone now (and I bet it will cost just about as much in Europe): it has a much larger display, looks like it is so much faster, would seamlessly sync with my Mac.

But even if we set a nerd like me aside and just look in a different part of the globe, I know of a lot of people that here in Europe (and even more so, here in Russia) will shell out twice that for the iPhone had it been available here sooner. Look at the prices for the stylish high-end from Nokia (8800 and the likes) -- they are priced out side of any sensible ranges, considering what they can do (and don't even start me on Vertu -- a 3320 wrapped in jewels).

So, I think that while Steve may not end up meeting the 1% share target, he may still well make the required breakthrough, and by the 2nd generation of the iPhone it would make the same to smart phones market as 2nd gen iPod to the MP3 player one (or so I want to believe).

Disclaimer: I used to work for Nokia, and I own a N73 and it is a great phone IMO.

The article is pretty short, and it's main criticism is the fact that Nokia's flagship smart-phones (or as they say "multimedia computers") have too many features and aren't good at "one" thing. First, let's look at the market.

Phones are marketed to all different types of demographics, age groups, technological needs, price points, etc. Nokia, being one of the (if not _the_) biggest phone manufacturers on the planet, has a huge selection of phones that appeal to all kinds of different needs. There are the cheapo phones that make calls, send text and that's it. There's the mid-range that have some memory, include an MP3 player, and maybe have a decent camera too. Then there's the high-end ("N series") which are generally meant for high-end business users and tech-heads like your's truly. To claim that Nokia, as a company, is slipping into Gizmondo territory is either ignorant or wishful thinking.

TFA also makes claims about making calls and sending text messages with the new S60v3 being too difficult, yet provides no argument for "how?" or "why?". Using the N73 let me show you how "unintuitive" it is to make a phone call:

1) Type in the number
2) Press the green button on the left

As you can see, this is real rocket science not intended for every day cell phone users =). Ok, now let's take a look at writing a text message:

1) On S60v3 devices there is a small row of quick buttons on the Standby; one looks like an envelope with the caption "New text msg". Click that button.
2) In the To field you can type a number manually or just hop over to your contacts by Options >Add Recipient
3) type your message
4) Options>Send

Admittedly, writing a text message is a slightly more lengthy process than making a phone call, but you're typing on a numpad, so that is to be expected IMO. I think at the end of the day, it all boils down to what your needs are. If you want a simple user interface without feature bloat, don't buy a cell phone with a full blown operating system! There are plenty of *great* phones from Nokia that have simplistic user interfaces and do certain things very well. See the Nokia 6233 or Nokia 6131 for great examples of Nokia midrange phones that are highly functional (without feature bloat) and also extremely easy to use.