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Agora Android Phone Delayed By Glitches
An anonymous reader points out this report at News.com.au which says that "THE first Australian 'Google phone' set to go on sale within weeks has been delayed indefinitely, with the manufacturer Kogan forced to refund early buyers. In a statement released this afternoon, the company said the delay was 'due to future interoperability issues.'The Agora reached a very late stage of development, manufacturing had commenced and we were within days of shipping the product to customers,' company founder Ruslan Kogan said in a statement."
I noticed the low screen resolution, but didn't think it would really be a problem... In fact, I thought it led to the phone being so cheap.
My current phone is dying, too... I was really looking forward to getting my Agora Pro at the end of the month.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
From the annuncement:
Mr Kogan said one of the potential problems was applications with a higher resolution and screen size than what the Agora could handle.
"I now believe that in order to access all the Android platform has to offer, the Agora must be redesigned."
What?? I don't belive that someone a few days before release, find out that they need a higher resolution screen. I only thought the software business were that fucked.
... nice to see somebody who don't just ship the product and then hope to fix issues with later software updates. I was going to mention the IPhone here, but I actually couldn't think of a phone that didn't have issues on initial release. So I won't.... Oh, I guess I already did...
TC - My Photos..
What's the real story? Nobody goes into production without atleast you know having 1 prototype... They could have tried it first... It like a pretty serious obvious issue if it causes indefinite delays...
giigle? he he he
An anonymous reader points out this report at News.com.au which says that
Why don't you believe it? I see 2 different ways this could happen:
1) Someone finds a few apps that don't work at low res at all... Good apps like Google Earth or something.
2) The programmers assure him that it can be handled right up until the end, when they are forced to admit they can't do it after all because they finally found the fatal flaw in the plan.
As a programmer, I've had both things happen to me during a project. The first is just oversight and the second is usually due to some asinine quirk in the API that can't be worked around.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
I have to say January 29th has had quite the jaded history including the death of Robert Frost and GWB's declaring the "axis of evil". At least we can celebrate the inception of the first baseball hall of famers. Now add to the list, "this is the day the agora android was suppose to release, but failed citing future interoperability."
A couple of guys came from Google. Our CEO had been waiting for them by the door. someone says they went straight to a meeting room and were there for less than 20 minutes. no one saw them leave, but as soon as they were gone our CEO called a meeting. He looked very pale. he said: "I've halted the production on the Android phones." he said we were not to ship any of the products that have already rolled off. he told us to cancel all orders and refund all pre-orders. then he left the building with the marketing director.
Our CEO has not been back since then. This must be big.
"I emailed the company about this charge and received confirmation that it was indeed not a scam and the device was going to be shipped in January. It looks like they did try hard to get a device out, but they werenâ(TM)t very experienced with the requirements and were designing a device that did not fit the minimum specs for an Android phone."
Considering that apple sold ibooks with 1024x768 resolution in the early OS X days, when that was about enough real estate to get a console window and a few icons on, I can believe it easily. The question for me is, which of these happened:
a) Google told them that they needed higher res, and they ignored it. Then they finally realised Google were right.
b) Google didn't specify android's resolution requirements highly enough, and devs went ahead and created an ad-hoc standard with the res they needed to make decent apps.
The first would be a bad sign for the phone maker. The second would be a bad sign for the whole platform.
Yeah, I could look up the android specs and see which it is, but frankly I don't care that much about android. Not yet, anyway.
I think you just said, "Of course this can happen -- because even though its a device manufacturer, they still have to deal with the fucked up world of software." Nice rejoinder.
Release it and then just patch it repeatedly for months on end, fixing some things and breaking others in the process. Eventually, say the phone is past the end-of-life and instead of fixing anything, suggest that your customers buy your newest phone.
This seems to work for most other businesses.
I didn't want one anyways, with the iPhone available and all.
The programmers assure him that it can be handled right up until the end, when they are forced to admit they can't do it after all because they finally found the fatal flaw in the plan.
Or, alternatively, 3 days before shipping, the Pointy Haired Boss is finally forced to accept that the "political and economic realities" he's been trying to explain to the programmers for the last 3 months really are less important than those silly, geeky "laws of physics" which the programmers keep babbling about, and that all the unpaid overtime in the world won't produce a software patch that puts more pixels on the LCD.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Considering that apple sold ibooks with 1024x768 resolution in the early OS X days, when that was about enough real estate to get a console window and a few icons on, I can believe it easily.
You do realize that *everything* that the first few iterations of OS X did fit perfectly fine into that 1024x768 resolution (not sure about the last few versions). That's why it was an officially supported resolution. It's similar to how XP and Vista have minimum requirements of 800x600. This sounds like Google has set minimum application resolution requirements as well as minimum device resolution requirements. It sounds like Agora built their phone to the min app resolution spec.
Considering that apple sold ibooks with 1024x768 resolution in the early OS X days, when that was about enough real estate to get a console window and a few icons on, I can believe it easily.
I've just tried and you can fit 4 OSX terminals on a 1024x768 display. If a slashdotter can't do it with 4 parallel bash sessions it isn't worth doing.
When I were a lad, we ran GUIs on 640x256 in 256 colours and we was grateful for it. Heck, people run Linux/Gnome on EEEPC 700s!
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
It's similar to how XP and Vista have minimum requirements of 800x600.
Truly, spoken like a man who has never tried to run a recent Microsoft OS at the minimum resolution.
When I first saw the announcements about this phone... from a manufacturer nobody heard of, with a very rapid release schedule, and a set pricing scheme, but only a 3D rendering of the product, to me it screamed "scam". Now, I couldn't say whether it was a scam that was aimed at customer money, or investor money, but the outcome does not surprise me at all. After all, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
My guess is that they feel their product wouldn't be competitive with the soon to be released in Australia G1, and they don't want to support just a handful of customers- that doesn't give them economies of scale.
I've made an Android app, and I was dreading trying to make it usable for the smaller screen (although I have found the Android layout model very flexible).
oh.
Agora. Never mind.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
Haven't you heard? They're not evil, they're morally ambiguous. Remember, when picking your corporate overlord, pick the low-evil choice, because if you don't they'll know about it (and where you live... and oh, I see you're doing a search for... my, you really should have that looked at by a professional).
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
Oh, no doubt it sucks. But at least all the system dialogs and buttons fit on the screen.
Google Earth? You're thinking of the iPhone, that isn't out for Android.
Reviews with a twist! http://www.sardonicbastard.com
Well Australia was a prison colony...maybe they were just sticking to their roots and trying to rip off Europeans and nerdy American types using T-Mobile or AT&T? Either way I blame Hugh Jackman for this. WOLVERINE!!!!
And doesn't want to go outside where it can meet up with nice hot little software numbers. Just maybe.
today is spelling optional day.
Heck, people run Linux/Gnome on EEEPC 700s!
Yeah but not everything works. Thunderbird & Lightning is unusable.
Pete Boyd
But Android is open, and you can change the API and contribute the code back, so it must be the former option, oversight.
You're ignoring the fact that everyone is going to want Random App X to work on the phone out of the box. If they have to modify each app to work on their special copy of Android, that would be unacceptable to most of their customers.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
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He brings back the old x86 days when off-brand companies like his tout 'cold fusion' and deliver vaporware.
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Really a total disservice to the F/OSS community. I was worried about Koolu, but because they published their modifed stack and distro it showed commitment and was acceptable for them to be late to delivery (and they still are late though after promising a Dec release date). Kogan has done no such thing, just demo-ing a phone mockup at trade shows...
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Kogan, having a closed demo strategy (no beta testers?), holding to all the press releases, tech details and tooling around with a single phone that for all I know was showing a flash app is asking for some major b*tchslapping from the community. And now abrupt about the details of shutting down production & refunds, providing zero details is an insult to the Android community. If Google was involved and led to a legal issue, okay, mentioned it at least, but if it was technical, the community deserves to know the details.
This is not good for the Android community and [we] sure better find out why production was stopped. Was this:
The page with details about the phone is still in Google's cache.
The Agora display specs: "2.5-inch TFT-LCD flat touch-sensitive screen with 262K QVGA (320 X 240 pixel) resolution."
This is a significant drop from the G1: "3.2 in (81 mm) HVGA (480×320) (180 ppi) 65K color capacitive touchscreen."
Still, if there is a minimum resolution for Android, you'd think that would have been discovered as an issue long before the manufacturing stage. Perhaps the problem is that app developers have assumed that any phone released after the G1 would have matching or better specs.
Windows. ;-) Didn't I read that this telecom was already in bed with Microsoft and even had the CEO or some other big-wig dissing on Google and Android?
Money talks so don't put it out of your head that there wasn't some kickbacks from Microsoft to keep them tied to Microsoft. We know Microsoft has bank accounts and/or budgets setup just for funding these kinds of things.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
>> the Agora must be redesigned
And possibly renamed to "Depois". :-)
Wonder how many of these have already been made, would be awesome for woot offs.
Try Thunderbolt & Lightning... supposed to work better! :-p
Yeah but not everything works. Thunderbird & Lightning is unusable.
I've used Thunderbird on an EEE 701 and I think "unusable" is going a bit too far. Main problem ISTR is that, for the account setup dialogues, you need to know the alt-drag trick to pan the window around the screen - but once it was set up it was OK. Evolution on EasyPeasy <SideshowBob>(shudder)</SideshowBob> is the same.
Of course, if Asus hadn't drunk the Kool Aid and lost interest in Linux on the EEE, tightening up the dialogue boxes on the key apps would hardly take a Manhattan Project.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Regardless of whose fault it is, they did one thing right that no American company or Sony would ever do. That is, after they realized their product wasn't ready, they actually went back to the drawing board instead of shipping the thing anyway.
"THE first Australian 'Google phone' set to go on sale within weeks has been delayed indefinitely, with the manufacturer Kogan forced to refund early buyers. In a statement released this afternoon, the company said the delay was 'due to future interoperability issues.'The Agora reached a very late stage of development, manufacturing had commenced and we were within days of shipping the product to customers,' company founder Ruslan Kogan said in a statement."
Future interoperability issues? What the fuck does that mean? That it won't run Duke Nukem Forever?
Let me translate: We advertised a vaporware product and then took money from a lot of people to build a it. Then we designed the phone. Then we tried to build it and realized we didn't have a clue.
Fail.
I meant that Lightning was unusable, Lightning in Thunderbird.