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I LOVED my HTC Universal , I actually had two in a row. Great keyboard and a rotatey screen so you could use it like a phablet. If someone made a multigigahertz model I'd snap that right up : https://www.mobilegazette.com/...

Asset stripped and dumped. Thanks, Google.

Classic case of whole being less than the sum of the parts.

Motorola Mobility consisted of:
1. a handset business
2. a set top box business
3. a patent portfolio
4. a bunch of cash
5. a bunch of tax assets, which the company couldn't use because it wasn't making enough money

Google wanted the patent portfolio, so it bought the company (the price of which incorporated the cash), utilized the tax assets (which had been worthless until MM was purchased), sold the set top box business to a set top box maker (Arris), and is now selling the handset business to a company in the handset business.

This isn't "asset stripping," since the pieces are worth more, and can be more successful, as separate pieces. It's breaking up a conglomerate that didn't make sense.

Asset stripped and dumped. Thanks, Google.

Allowing a web page to have complete access to the device.. what could possibly do wrong? Oh that's right.. pretty much everything. Firefox OS is likely to follow in the miserable footsteps of Java, ActiveX and .NET when it comes to security nightmares.. assuming it every becomes popular. When everybody else is trying to sandbox the browser from the OS, Mozilla go and do the opposite. Bad move.

Haven't they learned anything? You shouldn't be able to control device fundamentals from the browser, it's a complete security nightmare. Modern OS and browser designs try to sandbox the browser from the underlying architecture with good reason. Remember ActiveX? That was a security disaster. Java is the modern equivalent, I probably patch it more often that I use it. If the Firefox OS ever takes off then the weak security model will probably ensure that it crashes down to earth.

If it was obvious then early 1990s tablet PCs would have soon had the same design.

No it's because the technology clearly wasn't there yet since there were many tablet designs that the ipad appears to have been copied from in scifi movies well before it came along, but you'll ignore that because you want to believe the design was invented by Apple and no-one had ever thought of such a thing before.

If it wasn't for Apple's iPad and iPhone, Samsung's tablets and phones would look like this and this.

You mean just like how if Stanley Kubrick hadn't come along Apple's iPad and iPhone would look like the Newton, but of course it's ok for Apple to copy others, but not ok for others to copy Apple.

> "unlike the patent-a-rectangle nature of the opposition"

This is Apple's cross to bear, designing and then popularising products of such elegance and simplicity that after they're released, the design appears bleeding obvious. An ex post facto judgment that this is what tablets always were, always should have been, and everybody knows that duh.

Except nobody bar a few design students with incredible vision (but without the support of large companies) knew it at all. If it was obvious then early 1990s tablet PCs would have soon had the same design.

If it wasn't for Apple's iPad and iPhone, Samsung's tablets and phones would look like this and this.

QNX offered them a way out of the dead end they found themselves in.. but the Playbook isn't really finished (like the original BlackBerry Storm) and it needs more work.

On a personal note, I have a BlackBerry Pearl 3G for corporate use. It's a bag of crap. My Android phone is much more usable and flexible.. the ONLY advantage that BlackBerry still have is for corporate users who install BES servers to support the things. For SoHo users, BlackBerries are completely pointless.

I'm not convinced at all that Nokia have worked out how to deal with the midrange. Yeah, we all know that WP7 is going to be the OS for high-end smartphones, and Nokia are "looking to the next billion sales" for cheaper stuff. However, the message for everything else has been confusing and inconsistent.

Here's one way of looking at it - Nokia: Mind the Gap.

Same with some links and a few extra comments (in []):

Panasonic Viera P905i ([A phone with 854 x 480 display] Think of it as the world's smallest "big-screen" TV)
Raon Everun UMPC (Ultra-mobile PC - a micro laptop)
Samsung 'Soul' SGH U900 [another phone]
NEC ValueStar W (Vista Media Centre that's extra quiet)
Toshiba ApriPoko Robot ([only a prototype?] This 11-inch-tall robot--which looks like the love child of a bird Pokemon and the Pillsbury Doughboy--is actually a voice-activated remote control)
Sony VAIO G2 [Google translation (super-light laptop with all the normal features)
Fujitsu F705i [thin waterproof cell phone]
Aigo USB Dongle (HD receiver [very small -- e.g., for laptops])
NEC LUI (LUI stands for "Life with Ubiquitous Integrated Solutions - basically a combination of media server and PDA or laptop)
Face Bank (Wave a coin in front of the bank's eyes (actually light sensors), and it opens wide to swallow your loose change. Afterward, it looks so pleased that you half expect it to emit a contented belch [okay -- this thing is REALLY weird])

Right now, most of the 3G chipsets are still relatively bulky and draw fairly high-power

Sorry, but that's uninformed drivel.

3G and 3.5G handsets come in slivers that are a few millimeters thick and have excellent battery life:

http://www.mobilegazette.com/nokia-6500-classic-07x05x31.htm

http://ezinearticles.com/?Sony-Ericsson-W-880i-Black---Experience-the-Walkman-Phone&id=534534

Some of them even throw in WiFi. Those phones aren't even particularly expensive (about $15 for the Nokia with activation).

The US phone market is several years behind Europe technologically. In part, that's because it's so fragmented and because the US chose frequencies different from the standard ones used mostly everywhere else.

Oh, and you can get a 3.5G iPhone-like phone: the Samsung F700; it looks superb, and squeezes a full keyboard into something with roughly the same form factor and look as the iPhone:

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/cellphones/apple-iphone-vs-samsung-f700-which-is-touchscreenier-235112.php

What gets me is that people think it's an iPhone competitor. They do a fair job with the design, but it's the same basic setup of the old WinCE devices (ex: http://www.mobilegazette.com/images/vodafone-perso nal-assistant.jpg, which is actually a Windows phone from 3 years ago) - mediocre screen (look at the actual size... they did a good job framing it, but it looks like the same size as my example). It has the buttons on the bottom. Not just YES/NO, or A/B, but the 4-way. All it's missing are the application buttons. Whoop-de-do.

I 'need' a UMPC due to a large amount of time spent travelling via train to and from work, that I could be spending productively. I've currently got a HTC Universal PDA mobile phone - allowing me to edit Word docs, Excel, surf the net etc while on the go. However, my phone contract's up in August, and I'm looking for the next ideal purchase - and I think I've found it!

The HTC Shift will provide a mobile phone in a Vista UMPC form-factor. apparently "it is about the same size as two DVD cases", yet features include "full QWERTY keyboard, 7" touchscreen, 1Gb of RAM and a 30Gb hard drive" (Source

I can't wait to have a look at it.

prior art 'nuff said

So it's a bit like the Bang & Olufsen "Serene" mobile, then?

Icky flash-driven official site or a review.

it would be a little hard on them to expect them to provide both a CDMA (Verizon,Sprint) and a GSM (Cingular,T-Mobile (other freq. of GSM being the rest of the WORLD)).

They missed the European Union's EUROPHON-1 Standard (pronounced "euro phoney") out. This is clearly a case of the European Union gone mad. ;)

What, the link to http://www.mobilegazette.com/april-fool-0604x01.ht m didn't give it away?

You almost got it, but what *really* takes to kill the ipod is quite simple:

Hype

Plain and simple, what the iPod has is a lot of marketing and hype. As you stated there already are portable digital players with hell more features than the iPod (personally I preffer the iRiver series since I got my frist cd-mp3 player imp-300 a long time ago).

I can think of at least one reason why Microsoft is not the /adequate/ company to come up with the killer. I believe it is more likely to come from a telephone company like Motorola that have more idea on how to make cool design products.

Also reviewed here but the review unit didn't want to talk WiFi. Looks like Nokia's customer service is dreadful and probably best avoided.

Also reviewed here but the review unit didn't want to talk WiFi. Looks like Nokia's customer service is dreadful and probably best avoided.

The problem? Well, currently nobody really has a DVB-H network apart from a few trial areas in a handful a major cities. I understand that it's not too expensive to piggy-back DVB-H onto a DVB-T infrastructure, but it's still an expense.

Nokia are certainly taking a risk, but you know that's what business is about. Most consumers these days are demanding camera phones, for example, but a couple of years ago that wasn't even something that most handset manufacturers would have thought of. A lot of technlogies are like that - nobody really knows if the market wants them because they represent something new and untested.

Personally.. well, I'm the kind of geek who would sooner be surfing the web than watching TV, but I understand that watching TV is quite popular. Only the market can really decide if the concept is going to be a success.

My quite old Nokia 8310 is smaller, and the Nokia 8210 I had five years ago is lighter - and you can get smaller yet these days, such as this little 44g thing.

By the way, this site has a pretty nifty 'compare size' function (on top of the images:) http://www.esato.com/phones/index.php/phone=23,cp= 141

So, I think the lack of a Video iPod is no great loss. What Apple are missing out on is a decent iPod-style phone. According to The Register, the Motorola ROKR iTunes phone isn't shifting in any significant quantity. Perhaps if Apple and Motorola had come up with something more like the (admittedly flawed) Bang & Olufsen Serene then it would be a real seller. That's the kind of unified gadget there's a market for.. a good mobile/music player hybrid. B&O showed that it's possible. But Apple have either missed the boat on this one, or perhaps they do have something in development in-house.

Really though.. if I want to watch a film while I'm away.. I stick a DVD in my laptop. That has a nice big screen and I've never run into DRM issues with that. Yet.

Prefer Linux? Well, maybe check out the Nokia 770 internet tablet. Despite the "Nokia" label, it's not a phone, but a compact internet tablet that you can use with a compatible Bluetooth phone or a WiFi connection. The screen is 800 pixels wide, which is pretty good for web browsing. I'm pretty sure that they'll be a keyboard available for it in 2006 when it gets its first software update. The Nokia 770 should be hitting the streets very soon for a rumoured $300 or so.

Of these two competing products, the Nokia is perhaps the more interesting as it has a modular approach and it means that you don't have to lug a half-pound handset around just to make calls. Just how much access to get to the Linux innards is unknown, but really it's just an appliance rather than a full blown computer. You can betcha that I'm going to get one though!

Look closely though at the two handsets and they are both a very similar layout, apart from the "rotator blob" on the new picture which seems to clash with the keypad.

The "E790" pictured is basically the E390/E398 platform that has been remixed onto several different handsets already.

Quite apart from the Motorola V560 which is beginning to look like a bit of a relic, the system itself has lots of rough edges, is extremely restrictive and looks like a product in search of a market, not the other way around.

Here's a different take on the BT Fusion / Motorola V560 / Bluephone thing. Not pretty.

Closer to $350 but handles your problem nicely. WiFi for portability, Linux for any editor you want + grep. Extendable. Faster than 8bitter, Damn, dealbreaker.

Ok here ya go.
http://search.ebay.com/brother_Consumer-Electronic s_W0QQsofocusZbsQQsbrftogZ1QQmaxrecordsreturnedZ30 0QQfrppZ50QQfromZR10QQsacatZ293QQcatrefZC6QQsargnZ -1QQsaslcZ2QQftrtZ1QQftrvZ1QQsadisZ200QQfposZQ5AIP Q2FPostalQQfsopZ1QQfsooZ1QQcoactionZcompareQQcopag enumZ1QQcoentrypageZsearch

--=
God, If only there was a script to do this. /oblig CAPTCHA joke.

-a good strong signal that won't drop calls

That's broadly dictated by your provider; granted, a phone can emitt more power to improve the phone to tower SNR, but you can't do much about the tower-to-phone SNR, except putting up more towers.

-a long battery life

Mostly constrained by battery technology, but you can by larger 'long life' battery packs for some phones.

When someone invents better batteries, you can bet the cell phone, camera, laptop, MP3 player, electric car, etc companies will jump on it.

-the ability to survive repeatedly being dropped onto a hard surface from a height of about 5 feet
-waterproofing might be nice

Google and ye shall find.

Michael

It's the Motorola E790.

Maybe Gates is talking about this: http://www.mobilegazette.com/motorola-e790-rumours .htm

So who *is* actually building Windows phones in quantity? Well HP is.. a little tiny bit, but most of the world's Windows phones are manufacturerd by HTC of Taiwan and then just rebadged. Sure.. HTC is doing well, and the HTC Universal certainly rocks.. when it eventually comes out. But for all the squillions that Microsoft has put into this project, they haven't seen an awful lot come out.

Oh yes.. the iPod. Well, on one part we have these "jack of all trades" devices that have a so-so camera, music player, phone and PDA built into one. There's a market for "unified devices". There's also a market for focussed devices that are of a better quality. There's a market for both. Don't forget that Microsoft has been failing to kill off Apple for over twenty years too..

Enough already! Can't we ditch these heavy news items in favor of something a little more lighthearted, like some April Fool's Stuff?

I still have one of those Casio handheld TVs :-)

Anyway, there are phones with TV (and maybe FM) reception ... in Japan!

Seriously, I've read a while ago about a Japanese phone which could do half of what you want. A quick search revealed that it really was a Sharp, as I suspected: Sharp V402SH, the pink one. It's only a matter of time before a cross between that phone and this Samsung appears, then you'd be able to do anything, although I don't think that the battery would last more than a few hours in recording mode.

The Nokia 6820 has only been out for [b]six months[/b]. I've seen the 6820 and although the keyboard is clever, the screen is terrible. Check out the Siemens SK65 though - it's a much smarter, more business-orientated phone with a better screen and proper Blackberry support.

But.. they've taken out MP3 support, the radio and still haven't added a digital camera. The display is a little small by current standards too.

My guess is that the "N-Gage 2" will be announced in a few months time with another model name (what the heck does QD stand for anyway) and will have more features, and maybe a better screen.

Doing it this way means that they should still be able to shift the original N-Gages still in the supply chain, then they can announce the "N-Gage 2" later.

There's a useful independent writeup of the N-Gage 2 here.