E-Ink charges a fortune per display, the single most expensive part (about 100$ for a 7 inch reader) is the display, and since they have a monopoly or still have one, that is not bound to change, they probably are withholding the color one for exactly that reason.
Why can't Google offer a cell phone that provides browsing, etc via WiFi, WITHOUT REQUIRING ME TO HAVE A CARRIER DATA PLAN?
Urgs not sure which phone you mean, but I have an HTC Hero here, which does exactly that fine, I can switch on Wifi and can do browsing etc... whatever I like without any data plan;-) UTMS needs a data plan, Wifi definitely not. I dont think the Nexus One is different in this regard, it even has the switch widget now integrated which lets you switch the various connectivity features on and off from the homescreen.
Actually the biggest boost Google probably got this year was due to the rejection of Google voice by Apple. In the end this was a lucky coincidence for Google because they suddenly could say hey there are alternatives outside of the iPhone which have it (Android mostly) and a lot of people learned about Googles additional products.
Speaking of shooting itself in the foot, this was Apples biggest mistake this year and probably cost them in the long run a few millions. The second biggest mistake of Apple this year is that they suddenly have become very stingy once it comes to repairs under Apple care. A few scratches on your notebook and Apple might refuse an Apple care repair due to assumed dropping damage!
Not sure which google you know, but outside of search, gmail and gtalk is excellent, I have heard the same about google voice. Analytics is used widely, and besides the beginning problems of the Nexus one (which are fixable) most people are pretty happy with Android (which is mostly run by the open handsets alliance but google does most of the dirty work).
If you check the CES reports than Android was a big issue there, almost all vendors had something android related in the pipeline either phones or multimedia tablets. I have not heard too much about WinCE this year though.
Not sure which google you see, but the google I see is pretty strong with its lineup.
I have a HTC Hero and it is relatively bugfree (Ok I am on a hacked rom here which gets monthly updates), I assume the problem with the Nexus one is mostly Qualcom firmware related or they did an overaggressive power management shutting off 3g whenever the signal becomes weak enough that the phone has to raise the power itself over a certain threshold. None of this sounds unfixable to me, I assume we will se a fix soon.
I would not really call the Nexus One a 1.0 version it sounds more like a HTC Hero 2.0, better processor and screen and more 3d effects to the original offering.
The main issue from what I can gather people have, is that the 3g reception especially in signal weak areas is fluctuating between 3g and Egde, this seems like a firmware/driver issue to me (have in mind modern phones do all the GSM, UTMS, CDMA stuff in dsps) which can be fixed and probably will within the upcoming weeks. Nevertheless I would like to have such a beast, and would like to see how it compares to my HTC Hero but you cannot yet get it in my country.
Not fast enough, I dumped my perfectly fine Radeo 4850 in favor of a somewhat slower NVidia, the reason was that X support was hit and miss, half the 3d functions crashed X others worked. I then dropped in my NVidia card and everything worked out of the box. I do not care for how many years we got promises, the linux drivers suck donkey balls, and probably will be forever. Wake me up when the stability is up to NVidias offerings, or shock the Intel opensource drivers.
Well the trick for those games simply is to offload the data to the SD card, the biggest application, ok not a game, but still an app is the offline navigation software I have and that one has 2 gig of data (maps for all of europe) and it works well, it just offloads the map data and textures to the sd card and the app itself is about 5 MB... So the RAM itself is not that much of an issue, but you have to live with a separate download for the map data.
whether consciously or not, google is potentially breaking this scheme by offering a desirable higher-end smartphone, unlocked. personally, after being bound to AT&T's crappy service for almost 2 years now i will never buy a subsidized phone again.
This scheme is only broken in the US, unsubsidized phones are pretty much available for every brand over here in europe (you have both options on most phones), the iPhone here is more the exception than the rule. And even in some countries the iPhone can be bought unsubsidized because it is against the law in several countries to offer just the subsidized version.
Let me see how many brands we really have HTC Nokia Samsung Sony/Ericsson LG Motorola Apple
The rest is mostly small manufacturers or OEMs which buy from HTC or Samsung (like Dell for instance)
I would not call that that many, sorry. It is also very hard to join that club on a worldwide scale because there is a load of patents involved as Apple now has to feel.
Soft of price fixing of course the phones are not even worth 200 dollars maybe not even the price the carriers charge, but since we only have a handful of phone producers, almost a cartel no one will change that
Yes and it is very easy, you just have to add an ext2 or ext3 partition on your SD card and then you are free to offload the applications.. Not that I really use or need it, but it is nice to have the option (I rooted my phone to get WIFI tethering)
You also could buy the phone unsubsidized get a cheaper data plan, and you could switch networks more easily. My days of subsidized phones are over since this year, and I am happy, no more simlocks, cheaper data plans etc... In the end you pay less.
I have voice enabled on my hacked hero, dont expect too much, it is a hit or miss thing, 60% it works perfectly 40% it does not. I use it rather seldom because I personally think, typing most searches is faster. (You have to speak, then the data is transferred to google which also takes time)
Actually on hacked android phones you have the possibility already by using apps2sd, I assume Google shuns away for copy protection reasons for now. From what I have read they are working on a solution to push the apps encrypted to the SD.
But seriously 190MB for apps is not too shabby, the reason simply is, that the apps can store there data on the sd and almost all do it that way, so you end up with an average app size of 3-4 MB if at all. 190 MB is a lot in such an environment! I only ran against my limit once in my HTC hero which has less free apps space and only because a stupid comic reader did not conform to the standards and did not buffer its data on the SD but used the apps ram instead. After deleting it, I have not run against the limit again.
Actually regarding the functionality Android is ahead of apples approach, I personally love the multiple homescreens and widgets very much, I would not want to live without it, also the multitasking is quite nice especially if you can push a loading web page into the background do something else and then recheck it again. It is also quite nice to run a PNA and online radio parallely while driving. (One area however which Android needs more competition is offline PNA, there is Copilot and when it hits the correct roads it is very precise but I have had too many problems with it in the recent past)
Pretty much everything you mentioned is available on Android;-)
Skype not directly in the same inkarnation (the android version of skype is a joke) but there are other apps which allow you to use skype via data connections:-)
I know quite a handful of dissatisified iPhone users, in fact almost every one of them except one person has a serious look regarding alternatives because Apples lockin basically slowly drives them away, almost everyone of them needs some functionality Apple has locked out and they had to revert to jailbreaking to achieve it. And that in a country where Google voice is not available (yet) I assume Apple will get a hard time in the upcoming years if they do not change their attitude all it needs is the competition to catch up and some already have like Android, others like Nokia are not too far behind.
Btw. their attitude regarding their computers is getting worse as well especially when it comes to repairs under Applecare.
Yes Indeed, Intel has licensed the PowerVR design again... but they did a lousy job, the chipset they integrated has been way more capable than the drivers Intel has delivered are capable. I have to revert my statement somewhat because I forgot PowerVR again is present somewhat.
Jepp they now apply the same tactics they did on the notebook market in an even worse way for the desktop market, simply by providing a SOC solution with a good enough video processor integrated is enough that 80% of all sold desktop systems simply wont get dedicated graphic adapters anymore.
NVidia should get into the x86 business asap by buying via or developing their own solution or they will have to get out of the PC business entirely, and after that it will be AMD.
ARM is not yet on the list of companies openly being targetted, but ARM will get a hard time in 3-4 years.
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E-Ink charges a fortune per display, the single most expensive part (about 100$ for a 7 inch reader) is the display, and since they have a monopoly or still have one, that is not bound to change, they probably are withholding the color one for exactly that reason.
The screensavers are pointless, my Sony 505 does not have one. And yes they drain the battery.
Yet Doom as Well as Duke 3d were supbar technologically to Ultima Underworld which came out a few weeks before Castle Wolfenstein 3d.
Why can't Google offer a cell phone that provides browsing, etc via WiFi, WITHOUT REQUIRING ME TO HAVE A CARRIER DATA PLAN?
Urgs not sure which phone you mean, but I have an HTC Hero here, which does exactly that fine, I can switch on Wifi and can do browsing etc... whatever I like without any data plan ;-)
UTMS needs a data plan, Wifi definitely not. I dont think the Nexus One is different in this regard, it even has the switch widget now integrated which lets you switch the various connectivity features on and off from the homescreen.
Actually the biggest boost Google probably got this year was due to the rejection of Google voice by Apple. In the end this was a lucky coincidence for Google because they suddenly could say hey there are alternatives outside of the iPhone which have it (Android mostly) and a lot of people learned about Googles additional products.
Speaking of shooting itself in the foot, this was Apples biggest mistake this year and probably cost them in the long run a few millions.
The second biggest mistake of Apple this year is that they suddenly have become very stingy once it comes to repairs under Apple care. A few scratches on your notebook and Apple might refuse an Apple care repair due to assumed dropping damage!
Not sure which google you know, but outside of search, gmail and gtalk is excellent, I have heard the same about google voice.
Analytics is used widely, and besides the beginning problems of the Nexus one (which are fixable) most people are pretty happy with Android (which is mostly run by the open handsets alliance but google does most of the dirty work).
If you check the CES reports than Android was a big issue there, almost all vendors had something android related in the pipeline either phones or multimedia tablets.
I have not heard too much about WinCE this year though.
Not sure which google you see, but the google I see is pretty strong with its lineup.
I have a HTC Hero and it is relatively bugfree (Ok I am on a hacked rom here which gets monthly updates), I assume the problem with the Nexus one is mostly Qualcom firmware related or they did an overaggressive power management shutting off 3g whenever the signal becomes weak enough that the phone has to raise the power itself over a certain threshold.
None of this sounds unfixable to me, I assume we will se a fix soon.
I would not really call the Nexus One a 1.0 version it sounds more like a HTC Hero 2.0, better processor and screen and more 3d effects to the original offering.
The main issue from what I can gather people have, is that the 3g reception especially in signal weak areas is fluctuating between 3g and Egde, this seems like a firmware/driver issue to me (have in mind modern phones do all the GSM, UTMS, CDMA stuff in dsps) which can be fixed and probably will within the upcoming weeks.
Nevertheless I would like to have such a beast, and would like to see how it compares to my HTC Hero but you cannot yet get it in my country.
Not fast enough, I dumped my perfectly fine Radeo 4850 in favor of a somewhat slower NVidia, the reason was that X support was hit and miss, half the 3d functions crashed X others worked. I then dropped in my NVidia card and everything worked out of the box.
I do not care for how many years we got promises, the linux drivers suck donkey balls, and probably will be forever.
Wake me up when the stability is up to NVidias offerings, or shock the Intel opensource drivers.
Well the trick for those games simply is to offload the data to the SD card, the biggest application, ok not a game, but still an app is the offline navigation software I have and that one has 2 gig of data (maps for all of europe) and it works well, it just offloads the map data and textures to the sd card and the app itself is about 5 MB...
So the RAM itself is not that much of an issue, but you have to live with a separate download for the map data.
The internet is a minority thing MSDN is where things will be heading to.
Bill Gates 1994...
whether consciously or not, google is potentially breaking this scheme by offering a desirable higher-end smartphone, unlocked. personally, after being bound to AT&T's crappy service for almost 2 years now i will never buy a subsidized phone again.
This scheme is only broken in the US, unsubsidized phones are pretty much available for every brand over here in europe (you have both options on most phones), the iPhone here is more the exception than the rule. And even in some countries the iPhone can be bought unsubsidized because it is against the law in several countries to offer just the subsidized version.
Let me see how many brands we really have
HTC
Nokia
Samsung
Sony/Ericsson
LG
Motorola
Apple
The rest is mostly small manufacturers or OEMs which buy from HTC or Samsung (like Dell for instance)
I would not call that that many, sorry. It is also very hard to join that club on a worldwide scale because there is a load of patents involved as Apple now has to feel.
Soft of price fixing of course the phones are not even worth 200 dollars maybe not even the price the carriers charge, but since we only have a handful of phone producers, almost a cartel no one will change that
Yes and it is very easy, you just have to add an ext2 or ext3 partition on your SD card and then you are free to offload the applications.. Not that I really use or need it, but it is nice to have the option (I rooted my phone to get WIFI tethering)
You also could buy the phone unsubsidized get a cheaper data plan, and you could switch networks more easily.
My days of subsidized phones are over since this year, and I am happy, no more simlocks, cheaper data plans etc...
In the end you pay less.
I have voice enabled on my hacked hero, dont expect too much, it is a hit or miss thing, 60% it works perfectly 40% it does not. I use it rather seldom because I personally think, typing most searches is faster.
(You have to speak, then the data is transferred to google which also takes time)
Actually most Android telephones have multitouch, but it is mostly locked away on the US market, even the Motorola droid does, but not in the US ;-)
Actually on hacked android phones you have the possibility already by using apps2sd, I assume Google shuns away for copy protection reasons for now. From what I have read they are working on a solution to push the apps encrypted to the SD.
But seriously 190MB for apps is not too shabby, the reason simply is, that the apps can store there data on the sd and almost all do it that way, so you end up with an average app size of 3-4 MB if at all. 190 MB is a lot in such an environment!
I only ran against my limit once in my HTC hero which has less free apps space and only because a stupid comic reader did not conform to the standards and did not buffer its data on the SD but used the apps ram instead. After deleting it, I have not run against the limit again.
I would not say it will skyrocket, there is quite a number of users who will move away as soon as alternatives are good enough.
Actually regarding the functionality Android is ahead of apples approach, I personally love the multiple homescreens and widgets very much, I would not want to live without it, also the multitasking is quite nice especially if you can push a loading web page into the background do something else and then recheck it again. It is also quite nice to run a PNA and online radio parallely
while driving. (One area however which Android needs more competition is offline PNA, there is Copilot and when it hits the correct roads it is very precise but I have had too many problems with it in the recent past)
Pretty much everything you mentioned is available on Android ;-)
Skype not directly in the same inkarnation (the android version of skype is a joke) but there are other apps which allow you to use skype via data connections :-)
I know quite a handful of dissatisified iPhone users, in fact almost every one of them except one person has a serious look regarding alternatives because Apples lockin basically slowly drives them away, almost everyone of them needs some functionality Apple has locked out and they had to revert to jailbreaking to achieve it.
And that in a country where Google voice is not available (yet)
I assume Apple will get a hard time in the upcoming years if they do not change their attitude all it needs
is the competition to catch up and some already have like Android, others like Nokia are not too far behind.
Btw. their attitude regarding their computers is getting worse as well especially when it comes to repairs under Applecare.
Yes Indeed, Intel has licensed the PowerVR design again... but they did a lousy job, the chipset they integrated has been way more capable than the drivers Intel has delivered are capable. I have to revert my statement somewhat because I forgot PowerVR again is present somewhat.
Jepp they now apply the same tactics they did on the notebook market in an even worse way for the desktop market, simply by providing a SOC solution with a good enough video processor integrated is enough that 80% of all sold desktop systems simply wont get dedicated graphic adapters anymore.
NVidia should get into the x86 business asap by buying via or developing their own solution or they will have to get out of the PC business entirely, and after that it will be AMD.
ARM is not yet on the list of companies openly being targetted, but ARM will get a hard time in 3-4 years.