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Testing an Orange SPV 'Smartphone'
theolein writes "The register has an article discussing the first major phone company's implementation -Orange SPV- of MS Smartphone as well as a common user's experiences with it. More or less confirms what quite a few expected."
Has anyone realized that if you allow the device to run unsigned code, you can effectively steal their access, cause them large phone bills, etc. It's VERY dangerous, much more than your typical virus.
FWIW, I would never trust any 1st generation/iteration of Microsoft software. Remember Windows 95? NT 3? Ugg. I have a sinking feeling that this MS Smartphone has the same destiny...
;-)
Besides... who wants some script kiddie hacking into their phone and delivering an Outlook virus?
I can see it now...
"If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try agai... Fatal Exception 0F in module mscphone.dll"
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Next time you upgrade with orange, ask the assistant to quote 'return / failure rates' on all the handsets available....
I was thinking of upgrading - It would be cool to have a camera or the ability to run my own applications on my phone. Despite the cool new products available, I have decided not to buy for at least 6 more months because all of the phones currently available are even less reliable than my t68 (which is only just tolerable).
According to Orange, there are problems with all the new generation of Camera / Organiser phones. Aparantly, the worst offender is the new Nokia camera phone - that had a more than 90% return rate due to hardware faults. I am sure this MS phone could be worse! My Ericsson T68 had to be swaped 4 times this year - I'm astonished that anything could be worse!
As all the mobile phone companies seem to be rushing out new models in time for xmas - it seems the idea of waiting untill the product is right has been completely forgotten.
By the way, if you ARE thinking of upgrading - a heavy user on Orange can usually blag a free handset. Rather than go through the upgrades line, go to the disconnection line and tell them you want to end your contract with orange because O2 or Vodaphone has offered your chouice of handset as a joining incentive.
Orange will usually offer you a decent handset for free as an incentive to keep you to another year's contract. A heavy user should never have to pay for upgrades!
The smartest phone would be one that allows people to actually know how to drive while talking
I think the reviewer says it all:
This is a phone that has shipped before it's finished. Microsoft see their Smartphone OS as a way of stopping Symbian getting a hold of a platform that they don't yet control and for this reason they've rushed it out.
Everything he says and I've heard from other points to this. It's actually nice to see M$ so scared that they're using their clout to scare companies into making bad moves like an early release of something so flawed. If they keep that up it will be all the more easy to watch the monopoly meltdown. not that I want to see them fail completely, but some real competition (read: some real reasons for quality user focused software) would be nice.
we speak the way we breathe --Fugazi
I never really believed sendo dropped their phone when it was ready for launch. May be it's a combination of crappy speed, horrible UI that really ticked off the company. It also explains why not that many phone makers are signing up to MS's smartphone platform either.
Also, have you noticed that most of the problems that the guy found in the MS smartphone DID NOT occur in symbian based phones (the SE T800, Nokia 7xxx (don't remember the model name))
At the beginning, I thought MS's smartphone is an excellent idea, but then again, heavy, buggy, slow, horrible UI cannot be possibilly good for something that they have been designing for so damn long.
kawai
One word - treo. I have had one since they were introduced. Everyting works as advertised including GPRS. They got it right.
Sporange almost rhymes.
Silver, purple, and month remain intractable problems for poets.
But if you're rapping about cellphones, you have far more serious problems. Like an income.
What I was wondering, though, is whether there are any phone form-factor Java-based phones that allow end-user programming.
... so bad in fact I started writing exactly what that dude wrote about his SPV. Unfortunately, I wanted to write too much and never finished the damn thing. There's two great features of the Philips I love - the "egg timer of death" (every now and then an egg timer just appears - the only way you get rid of it is to pull the battery) and the complete inability to remember the time and date if it crashes (see previous) and you have to pull the battery. Oh, and the THIRD thing I hate about it is that although it has xxx kb for storing background images, it can only store around 10 SMSs. Go figure that, eh ? Oh AND you just can't redial easily. AND it's got a really unfriendly keyboard lock / unlock feature. It's time for bed. I can't start this whinge now.
Two wrongs may not make a right, but three
Sound, Picture, Video sounds nice on paper but I can't imagine it would be too useful in practice.
/.'er generally have a terminal case of gadgetitis, the PDA will need to do
having grainy little pictures on 2 inch screens is just unbearable for any kind of useful application.
The only reason I can think of to put a camera on a phone and email, is to get evidence when you get
in a car crash. It's useless to view on PDA and horrible to be subjected to on a decent computer
screen. Video is just a lame gimmick. Now, sound would seem to be promising.. but given I'm fairly
used to decent quality of sound from cheapo discmans and ok quality from the current
generation of mp3 players, listening to AM/FM quality mp3 on my phone gets less and less
appealing. The only real use I've got out of wireless web at this point is checking short email
messages, and checking movie times for a particular theatre if I overran on time and need
to catch the next showing. It's simply too unpleasant to do too much websurfing on a phone
simply because of the dimensions of the screen.
Don't even get me started on web surfing on your phone savages the battery life.. And if you really
feel the need to drool over porn on the 2" screen, I'd recommend putting yourself out of your misery.
so my new list is down to:
1. smaller dimension (anything bigger than my 270 will be junked, in fact, I wish it was 30% smaller)
2. better sound quality for the phone
3. longer battery life
everything else would be treated like the damn hairclip help in office.. I'll ignore it until
it gets in my way. once it does, it's gone.
Given the average
everything including cleaning the kitchen sink and run a solar power fusion generator. But I'm
starting to wonder now that if we actually did get everything we wished for in a PDA, would we end up
regretting it.. it's time to realize why the early Palm succeeded and the old Newton failed.
simplicity, usability at a price we're willing to pay..
-- I have enough stupid gadgets to know that I can do without -- http://www.modestneeds.org
it looks like MS FUD has evolved...past empty announcements to empty releases.
Note: I just set up a doctor on a Treo phone and everything works great. Even syncing to a Mac.
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
The Nokia 7650, the Nokia 7210, the Nokia 6310 and just about every other Java based mobile phone that I've used are all end-user programmable and not only that provide application suites to download the applications without doing OTA.
You are confusing the phone capabilities with network capabilites.
Yell at your moronic telco, not at the phone companies.
I've used a Motorola i85s here in Australia as a Java "JVM" despite it not being able to be connected to the mobile network due to incompatibilities and lack of a SIM card. I've used a Siemens, an N7650, 6310 and 7210 all downloading applications via OTA and Infrared.
Clearly you need to do some research before your particular rant, as you are quite wrong.
This is very typical of Microsoft-based products--particularly when they see threatening competition on the horizon or must play catch-up(which is almost always). What is important for the Palm/Symbian camps is that they MUST NOT write off Microsoft because their offering is a big steaming pile of crap, or lose focus on their own products by fighting Microsoft's tactics.
History has shown that as long as MS can limp along until the third major release of any given product, it has a much better than even chance of squishing the competition. Where are Go Computing and Netscape today? They were leaders/innovators and now they essentially don't exist--killed off because MS stepped up the FUD machine (like with the Win3.1 based PenWindows 10 years ago) and/or taking a loss financially (taking IE off the extra-cost "plus pack" and giving it away in the Win95 install CDs, selling XBboxes for less than they cost to make, etc).
MS will be at the height of desperation if they start giving away the Smartphone OS to the phone makers (if they can get away with it--I think they'd acually pay phone makers to use Smartphone if the US DOJ lets them). There is little MS won't stoop to do if they really want a piece of the action in a given market--especially considering the scads of cash they are sitting on right now. If Smartphone isn't killed off quickly, look for MS to do something that drastic.
It'll happen in other markets that MS plays in too. Remember MS only makes money off its OS and Office licenses--it uses that money and influence to leverage other products. Watch for it--MS might find Linux becoming more of a threat than it is comfortable with in the corporate server and workstation space. Biggest reason? Huge up-front costs in purchasing licenses (look at Content Management Server - US$43,000 per processor!? OS NOT included? Holy Crap! Think I'll just use Slashcode, Scoop, OpenACS etc to manage my site). Solution? MS can use bags of cash to set up their own leasing program a la GE capital to spread out the big $ hurt, or otherwise accelerate their move towards selling their "software as a service". It'll be ammunition against the argument that Linux has a lower implementation costs. Anything to make it easier to "invest" in Microsoft rather than any competition.
If it all goes "right", MS will have it made--from the cellphone up to the big racks of servers, consumers and businesses will just get a monthly bill from Bill for anywhere from $100 or so up to thousands for corporations--just like the electric bill. Then Bill takes care (and control) of your gagets and computers to make sure all the ugrades and bugfixes are done, and that you aren't using any pesky little "non-authorised" apps and files. And the rest of us will have the honor and privlege to turn said devices on and "use as directed".