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Samsung Unveils Galaxy Tab 10.1, Galaxy S II
An anonymous reader writes "At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Samsung unveiled two new Android devices: the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, running Android 3.0 (codenamed Honeycomb), and the Samsung Galaxy S II, running Android 2.3 (codenamed Gingerbread). The two have been leaked over and over for days, but now we finally have the official details."
It has a PDMI connector.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDMI
This is a docking, charing, and connection port which includes support for USB3 and DisplayPort (which is easily converted to HDMI). It is like the non-proprietary equivalent of Apple's dock connnector.
Like you I am sad that this thing doesn't just give us a USB port, but a PDMI port will be a very good thing once they catch on and become widely supported, and if a lot of these Android tablets have PDMI ports then they will catch on soon.
The worst thing that could happen would be for each Android manufacturer to create their own proprietary and incompatible docking port. And it must have been tempting because then they get to make extra money charging crazy amounts for accessories.
Based on my experience with my Galaxy S - I'm not going to be buying a Samsung phone again real soon.
I just got 2.2 and the manner to upgrade was pretty lame. (Requires a PC and software that only runs on 32 bit windows) I don't expect to ever get 2.3 on it. When I bought it 2.2 was "just around the corner", which turned out to be around a year.
The GPS is busted, Samsung has never, to my knowledge, addressed the issue and I've just come to accept that my phone doesn't have GPS. I've seen some fixes that involve opening up the phone and messing with some parts, but I'm not interested.
The screen is gorgeous, a lot of things work well, but for what I payed ($500) I expect all of it to work well and for decent support.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Seriously, why would I want a PDMI or whatever other type of port? I'm seriously getting sick of having to buy adapters for every device just for the sake of simple communication.
Mainly most of us don't want to be limited to 'basic' charging and data only.
Todays phones not only need to charge and have data connectivity, but can pump sound and video out, as well as remote control connections for media players as well as have higher capacity batteries.
What you are seemingly asking for is a phone with a bunch of huge jacks all around it.
Most of us don't want a USB jack for power/data, a 1/8" headphone jack for audio, a standard video connector which is limited to either composite (RCA) for the low end, or VGA (db15h) for higher end.
The next smallest you will find for video is HDMI, which then raises the temptation for the manufacturer to add in DRM since it's supported out-of-the-protocol-box with that one.
Not to mention high amperage charging with the current line of power hungry devices and their matching batteries.
The genius of Apple's connector is that all of that and more is provided in one tiny *standard* connector. It's only downside is being proprietary and thus needs licensing to make/do anything with.
(Note that it only seems non-standard because Apple was the first to have to mass produce such a thing. That in and of itself is not bad. If they would have not required any licensing and allowed anyone to duplicate it's design, things would be about as perfect as they can get. Only their choice in not opening the connector design up is why there is any problem at all.)
The clear answer to that problem is another type of jack, equally small and genius as Apple's, but an open standard free for all to use.
That answer is PDMI.