Slashdot Mirror
Former Apple CEO Creates an iPhone Competitor
An anonymous reader links to Fast Company's profile of Obi Worldphone, one-time Apple CEO John Sculley's venture into smartphones. The company's first two products (both reasonably spec'd, moderately priced Android phones) are expected to launch in October. And though the phones are obviously running a different operating system than Apple's, Sculley says that Obi is a similarly design-obsessed company:
"The hardest part of the design was not coming up with cool-looking designs," Sculley says. "It was sweating the details over in the Chinese factories, who just were not accustomed to having this quality of finish, all of these little details that make a beautiful design. We had teams over in China, working for months on the floor every day. We intend to continue that process and have budgeted accordingly."
Obi is also trying to set itself apart from the low-price pack by cutting deals for premium parts. "Instead of going directly to the Chinese factories, we went to the key component vendors, because we know that ecosystem and have the relationships," Sculley says. "We went to Sony. It’s struggling and losing money on its smartphone business, but they make the best camera modules in the world."
I wonder if that's a result of Sony buying Konica-Minolta's camera operations.
Not just many DSLRs, but some of the best performing DSLRs with some of the best specs in the market. Canon used to give Nikon a lot of flack for using 3rd party sensors in their cameras when they design their own. Yet here we are and they have yet to release a product capable of matching the dynamic range and SNR of the D800 4 years after its release. The sensor in the D800, It's a Sony IMX094AQP
CMOS and CCD sensors are now the only time I will use the words "It's a Sony" out of praise rather than disgust.