While the locations of cell towers are usually of public record (at least in the U.S. - there's a searchable FCC database somewhere), it probably is missing critical information needed for geolocation, such as (for GSM systems) the GSM CellID, and also a detailed coverage map of that tower (signal strength may not be easily predictable as a function of location due to obstructions and such.)
Getting this information would require some data collection, and the easiest way (since most carriers want to force users to use some sort of for-pay service such as TeleNav and hence wouldn't give it to Google) is to collect it from users who have real GPS units in their phones.
Except that most CDMA phones had the ability to use 2G circuit switched data, in which case you used the phone as a modem (with standard AT commands) and it was all-digital up to the analog modem at the other end. There was a 14.4k speed limit on this.
This would allow people to dial up a modem or ISP and get slow circuit-switched data only using their airtime minutes (instead of the per-kilobyte charges for packet switched data). It was slow but it was cheap, and is how I used data occasionally on my Treo 600 and 650.
At some point (around 2005), VZW closed this loophole, forcing people to pay per kilobyte or get an unlimited packet switched data plan. CSD could not be used, whether to Verizon or to another ISP.
It may have changed in the past two years (and in fact I've heard indications that it has changed and VZW started ESN whitelisting just like Sprint), but at least back in 2005 (the era when the Sprint Treo 650 was released 6-9 months before Verizon's) all barriers to activating a Sprint phone on VZW were on Sprint's side (random MSL codes for Sprint phones, instead of Verizon's universal 0000 MSL code.)
If you could manage to MSL-unlock a Sprint phone (required some heavy duty hacking), people were able to activate them on VZW without problems.
Yeah, to Verizon's credit, the guy at the store didn't try at all to convince me not to cancel when I went in to stop. VZW management might not be happy with the guy for this, but it gained VZW a few lost brownie points with me, and raised their infinitesimal chances of me returning a little bit.
Admittedly, the AT&T Tilt I was surfing the web on while I was in line might have been a sign to the guy that convincing me to stay was futile...
In my opinion, they've been doing just the opposite. Two years ago, I was an incredibly happy Verizon customer, and evangelized them frequently.
In the past two and a half years, my opinion of them went downhill fast. A laundry list of problems (including but not limited to phone release delays for crippling, phone crippling, and them adding unlimited data to my plan when I explicitly refused it three times in a row) led to me hating them and switching to AT&T three months ago.
I've been much happier with AT&T than I was with VZW for the past two years.
From the announcements, "Devices will be tested and approved in a $20 million state-of-the-art testing lab"
If your phone isn't crippled up to Verizon standards, NO APPROVAL FOR YOU!
This announcement is a bunch of PR that means nothing.
1) There are very few sources of CDMA phones other than Verizon. Sprint has a few, and for a long time IF you could get the MSL for a Sprint phone and unlock it, you could activate it on VZW. That's how people got Treo 650s on Verizon for the first 9 months it was available. (9 months is how long it took Verizon for "network certification" which really meant "crippling Bluetooth DUN in addition to a few other features"). I've heard VZW started whitelisting ESNs and refusing to activate anything on the whitelist (which Sprint already did, making it impossible to take Verizon's easily-reprogrammable phones and activate them on Sprint.) So VZW is just undoing a policy they started 2-3 years ago for PR purposes. "Network Certification" delays are why I switched to AT&T two months ago when I found out that the phone I wanted (XV6800, Verizon variant of the Sprint Mogul PPC-6800) was delayed for "Network Certification" - I learned the hard way with my Treo 650 what that phrase REALLY means.
2) Using phones on their network requires approval from their labs. See my comment about "NO APPROVAL FOR YOU".
AT&T, on the other hand, lets you use any GSM device that supports the U.S. GSM bands on their network. Pop your SIM into any unlocked GSM phone and go. (For example, no U.S. provider sells the HTC Advantage, but people use it on AT&T with no problem.)
Verizon used to have superior coverage and customer service, but AT&T's coverage has improved VASTLY in recent years (and so far has equaled or even exceeded the coverage I had with VZW), and their customer service is also superior. With Verizon, if you had a corporate discount applied to your phone, you could only make plan changes through special "corporate reps" assigned to employees of the company you worked for. Not online, not in person in a store. Go figure, when I bought a Treo 650 VZW tried to put a $40/month unlimited data plan onto my account without my consent three times in a row. To their credit, they refunded me the cost when I complained. Once I finished grad school and had income AND a discount, I tried for three months to add the data option and gave up.
AT&T, on the other hand, just puts your company's "FAN number" into the system, and from then on you get whatever discount employees of your company are eligible for. You can still manage your plan and features online (with limits - AT&T's OLAM can be a bit wonky sometimes, for normal or corporate users), or in stores.
In that case, a TI OMAP will indeed not allow a worldphone (minus Korea), since they do not support UMTS.
The Qualcomm MSM7k series, on the other hand, does do UMTS, and right now all evidence other than the (almost surely incorrect) article indicates that the initial Android-based handsets from HTC are going to be MSM7k-series based.
There must be a way for a quad-band GSM/multiband UMTS phone to work with Softbank, since they offered the HTC Hermes as the X01HT.
From a horn antenna, emissions are from the INNER parts of the body. The outer skin of the horn is irrelevant. If these parts of the horn had current flowing on them, there would be radiation to the rear of the horn. You could have the horn's face be a hole punched in an infinite groundplane and it would still work - in fact it might work better than a horn with a "sharp edge".
"hy do you think that homes with aerials don't keep the "main body" of the antennae below the roof (in the attic, presumably), rather than above it?" Because the roof of the building would block the signal. Most roofs are made of wood and/or metal, one of which is excellent at blocking RF, and one of which is pretty good at doing so.
Fiberglass, on the other hand, tends to be transparent to RF and makes a good radome (See, for example, the big "golf ball" radomes around many radar antennas). Hence my comment about making the rear of the trunk out of fiberglass.
Another option would be a slotted waveguide antenna, again with a fiberglass radome.
Add to that the fact that there's a good chance that regardless of what inputs you give the voting machine, the outputs will favor the person who gave the most kickbacks to the voting machine's manufacturer.
Not only is there little choice, but what little choice there is will be made by a machine and not you.
"World" means "At least one carrier in every area supports it", not "works with every carrier in existence".
The U.S. supports both GSM and CDMA. Same for Japan - DoCoMo is GSM/UMTS. KDDI is CDMA2000 I believe. Fairly certain Softbank is also GSM, as many HTC GSM devices are rebranded by Softbank.
I think Korea is one of the few (if only) countries that has no GSM service at all. (And they may have a GSM carrier.)
That said - If you read TI's pages carefully, they market themselves as a manufacturer of "3G" chipsets, but somehow despite providing "3G" chipsets, you cannot find any information on UMTS products anywhere. All of their OMAPs depend on an external (TCS) wireless interface chipsets. They have them for CDMA2000 EVDO I think, but not UMTS. GSM capability from TI is limited to EDGE.
I was about to make the same comment, for different reasons - I get the impression that it's nearly impossible to implement a UMTS phone without using a Qualcomm MSM, at least while remaining cost competitive with an MSM-based solution. TI's OMAP series are still EDGE-only.
It's not a dual core CPU. There's a second coprocessor core that is for radio functions ONLY. It's not an SMP dual core CPU.
At least for Windows Mobile, Microsoft has declared a minimal amount of platform standardization, which is why developers really only need to write once and compile once to run on any recent WM device.
It used to be that there were a variety of CPUs allowed for PocketPC, but as the market share for many of them declined, everything but ARM was deprecated with recent versions of Windows Mobile. (May have started with PocketPC 2003?) It's kind of similar to how as MIPS and Alpha lost market share, resulting in later versions of NT dropping MIPS and Alpha support.
Despite this standardization, there's still plenty of flexibility available. (Some phones have video accelerators, some don't, some have keypads and lots of buttons, some don't, etc.)
The only major difference where developers have to be careful is the difference between non-touchscreen and touchscreen devices (WM5 Smarphone Edition vs. WM5 PocketPC Edition, and WM6 Pro vs. WM6 Standard). Often this does require a differently written and compiled application due to the UI differences between the two types of phones.
Windows Mobile does the security thing pretty well, unlike its distant (and yes, nowadays it is VERY distant) desktop cousin.
Unlike Symbian which forbids unsigned apps completely, Windows Mobile pops up a big warning the first time you ever try to install an unsigned CAB or run an unsigned app. It remembers that answer until the app's checksum or size changes, at which point it WILL prompt again.
This allows for the security of signed apps, while allowing the "little guy" to still participate and write WM apps. There isn't any known malware, or if there is, it's extremely rare and not prolific. There's an incredibly large third-party dev community centered around WM devices, with a lot of devs being "little guys" - see http://www.xda-developers.com/
I've had a WM device for about two months. Compared to any phone I've used before it's amazing, but it has a lot of flaws. I was hoping Android would be "Windows Mobile done right" - all of its strengths, minus many weaknesses, and OPEN.
Now it appears that Android is targeted more to compete with existing well established Linux-on-phone implementations (MOTOMAGX), and not with the top of the line smartphone OSes, despite the fact that it appears targeted towards "smartphone-class" hardware (see the emulator skin and the rumored HTC Dream). It's really disappointing to someone who was thinking Android was going to be taking convergence devices to the next level.
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Walmart sells ones exactly like you describe for $15. They do have an additional cup holder and a small pocket underneath for storing stuff too.
Borders also sells them in a variety of sizes for $15-30.
IMO the $15 Wally World one is better than any of the ones Borders sells.
Only the antenna aperture needs to be out in the open. The power supplies and oscillator can easily be inside the car.
In fact, the main body of the antenna could easily be inside the car, with the "face" of the antenna being the rear of the trunk. Add a painted fiberglass radome and no one knows there's a microwave horn antenna pointing out the back of the vehicle...
Usually the "holes" are not physical holes, but the I/O and power leads. In cars, the harnesses carrying these are typically not shielded and work as pretty good antennas.
They appear to be relying on the EMI to couple into the ECM via the power or I/O leads. They have a chart showing the frequency response of some truck's ignition switch.
Nothing a little gross overbraid on all wiring harnesses (most of which have either no overbraid in normal cars, or a plastic/fabric overbraid that serves only to provide structural benefits) and some filtering on the ignition switch's wiring can't fix...
"What's to stop it from killing the engine to the police car" 1) For microwave radiation, antennas can be extremely directional. In fact, to achieve decent field strength at the suspect's car with a reasonable amount of power output, it HAS to be directional for this to work.
2) Good EMI engineering can make a car immune to EMI such as this. The police car could have extra shielding on the electronics. Military equipment already does - this device would likely not work against a military vehicle. It's not that hard to do, it just requires extra money and some thought put into the design process. That said, nothing is stopping criminals from installing gross overbraid on their wiring harnesses and EMI filters inline with their power connections, plus other (more effective but more difficult/invasive) EMI protection upgrades.
"Seems like Microsoft might even agree. http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/default.aspx [microsoft.com] Seems like they are moving to.net for mobile devices." I'm fairly certain.NET CF is just a library framework - the code itself is still native.
Native or not, the framework itself is generally considered to automatically cause any app built against it to be bloatware. The most common feature request given to developers of.NET apps is "Please rewrite without.NET - uses too much RAM and flash storage." If it does actually use interpreted bytecode instead of native code, it's yet another example of why native code is the way to go unless you want to write a halfassed quick-and-dirty application and don't care at all about efficient use of a mobile device's limited resources.
It is given as an option for developers who want to write "quick and dirty" apps for Windows Mobile, and is SEVERELY limited in its capabilities on Windows Mobile devices. For example, it's either not possible or extremely difficult to write a Today screen plugin using.NET CF.
"And the Blackberry uses Java and works just fine. In fact I would bet that most people would claim that it is a better smartphone than most Mindows Mobile devices. And then you have the example of Palm. They are still living with emulation the 68000.dragonball on the ARM," In the case of still living with m68k - Palm made migrating to native ARM code a NIGHTMARE. There is no way to write a 100% native PalmOS ARM app, and linking in "ARMlets" is an unholy nightmare.
BlackBerries do a few things extremely well. (Email, calendar, and... That's about it.) They're not very expandable/flexible.
""Oh wait, they're all ARM devices! Windows Mobile does just fine using native code. I was hoping that this would have the native code performance advantages of Windows Mobile, but with an improved UI, open architecture, and speed improvements."
And the Palm shows that could be a problem in the future." It's only a problem if you're 100% stupid and make it impossible to run 100% native code on the new platform, and make it an unholy nightmare to even make parts of a program native.
Apple, on the other hand, shows that it's not difficult at all to maintain backwards compatibility with old apps (Palm did that) AND allow new apps to be written in fully native code for the new platform (Palm bombed that one royally. PalmOS 5 for ARM devices has been out for years and writing native ARM code is still hell.)
"I also think the Neo1983 is a horrible looking phone, and with a projected price tag of $350, will simply face too much competition should it ever actually make it to market."
$350 for unlocked, un-subsidized is pretty cheap. That translates to $99 or less contract-subsidized.
Java is the entrenched standard for mobile development. Google isn't pushing Java here, they're trying to maximize their reach to existing mobile developers." It's the standard for cripplephone development, not smartphones.
Look at the hardware that's going to be supporting Android - not cripplephones. Java is a non-starter in that market segment. Windows Mobile and Symbian (which dominate in that area, with iPhone being the only other player) are almost 100% native development.
"Windows Mobile is essentially Windows CE +.NET ES..NET ES is a bytecode interpreter platform for VB, C#, J#, etc. ergo, by postulate "Java means Real slow phones," Windows Mobile also means real slow phones.
Anyone have a problem with that?:)" I wish it were possible to mod you "just plain wrong"
Despite what you claim, bery few, if any, Windows Mobile apps are bytecode interpreted. Those that are bytecode interpreted are Java MIDlets. I'm fairly even.NET CF apps are native code (although generally regarded as bloated native code, which is why developing with.NET CF is generally frowned upon)
I have a total of one bytecode interpreted app on my Windows Mobile phone (Gmail Mobile), everything else is 100% native.
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While the locations of cell towers are usually of public record (at least in the U.S. - there's a searchable FCC database somewhere), it probably is missing critical information needed for geolocation, such as (for GSM systems) the GSM CellID, and also a detailed coverage map of that tower (signal strength may not be easily predictable as a function of location due to obstructions and such.)
Getting this information would require some data collection, and the easiest way (since most carriers want to force users to use some sort of for-pay service such as TeleNav and hence wouldn't give it to Google) is to collect it from users who have real GPS units in their phones.
Except that most CDMA phones had the ability to use 2G circuit switched data, in which case you used the phone as a modem (with standard AT commands) and it was all-digital up to the analog modem at the other end. There was a 14.4k speed limit on this.
This would allow people to dial up a modem or ISP and get slow circuit-switched data only using their airtime minutes (instead of the per-kilobyte charges for packet switched data). It was slow but it was cheap, and is how I used data occasionally on my Treo 600 and 650.
At some point (around 2005), VZW closed this loophole, forcing people to pay per kilobyte or get an unlimited packet switched data plan. CSD could not be used, whether to Verizon or to another ISP.
"Let's just say it's a no-go."
It may have changed in the past two years (and in fact I've heard indications that it has changed and VZW started ESN whitelisting just like Sprint), but at least back in 2005 (the era when the Sprint Treo 650 was released 6-9 months before Verizon's) all barriers to activating a Sprint phone on VZW were on Sprint's side (random MSL codes for Sprint phones, instead of Verizon's universal 0000 MSL code.)
If you could manage to MSL-unlock a Sprint phone (required some heavy duty hacking), people were able to activate them on VZW without problems.
Yeah, to Verizon's credit, the guy at the store didn't try at all to convince me not to cancel when I went in to stop. VZW management might not be happy with the guy for this, but it gained VZW a few lost brownie points with me, and raised their infinitesimal chances of me returning a little bit.
Admittedly, the AT&T Tilt I was surfing the web on while I was in line might have been a sign to the guy that convincing me to stay was futile...
In my opinion, they've been doing just the opposite. Two years ago, I was an incredibly happy Verizon customer, and evangelized them frequently.
In the past two and a half years, my opinion of them went downhill fast. A laundry list of problems (including but not limited to phone release delays for crippling, phone crippling, and them adding unlimited data to my plan when I explicitly refused it three times in a row) led to me hating them and switching to AT&T three months ago.
I've been much happier with AT&T than I was with VZW for the past two years.
From the announcements, "Devices will be tested and approved in a $20 million state-of-the-art testing lab"
If your phone isn't crippled up to Verizon standards, NO APPROVAL FOR YOU!
This announcement is a bunch of PR that means nothing.
1) There are very few sources of CDMA phones other than Verizon. Sprint has a few, and for a long time IF you could get the MSL for a Sprint phone and unlock it, you could activate it on VZW. That's how people got Treo 650s on Verizon for the first 9 months it was available. (9 months is how long it took Verizon for "network certification" which really meant "crippling Bluetooth DUN in addition to a few other features"). I've heard VZW started whitelisting ESNs and refusing to activate anything on the whitelist (which Sprint already did, making it impossible to take Verizon's easily-reprogrammable phones and activate them on Sprint.) So VZW is just undoing a policy they started 2-3 years ago for PR purposes. "Network Certification" delays are why I switched to AT&T two months ago when I found out that the phone I wanted (XV6800, Verizon variant of the Sprint Mogul PPC-6800) was delayed for "Network Certification" - I learned the hard way with my Treo 650 what that phrase REALLY means.
2) Using phones on their network requires approval from their labs. See my comment about "NO APPROVAL FOR YOU".
AT&T, on the other hand, lets you use any GSM device that supports the U.S. GSM bands on their network. Pop your SIM into any unlocked GSM phone and go. (For example, no U.S. provider sells the HTC Advantage, but people use it on AT&T with no problem.)
Verizon used to have superior coverage and customer service, but AT&T's coverage has improved VASTLY in recent years (and so far has equaled or even exceeded the coverage I had with VZW), and their customer service is also superior. With Verizon, if you had a corporate discount applied to your phone, you could only make plan changes through special "corporate reps" assigned to employees of the company you worked for. Not online, not in person in a store. Go figure, when I bought a Treo 650 VZW tried to put a $40/month unlimited data plan onto my account without my consent three times in a row. To their credit, they refunded me the cost when I complained. Once I finished grad school and had income AND a discount, I tried for three months to add the data option and gave up.
AT&T, on the other hand, just puts your company's "FAN number" into the system, and from then on you get whatever discount employees of your company are eligible for. You can still manage your plan and features online (with limits - AT&T's OLAM can be a bit wonky sometimes, for normal or corporate users), or in stores.
In that case, a TI OMAP will indeed not allow a worldphone (minus Korea), since they do not support UMTS.
The Qualcomm MSM7k series, on the other hand, does do UMTS, and right now all evidence other than the (almost surely incorrect) article indicates that the initial Android-based handsets from HTC are going to be MSM7k-series based.
There must be a way for a quad-band GSM/multiband UMTS phone to work with Softbank, since they offered the HTC Hermes as the X01HT.
From a horn antenna, emissions are from the INNER parts of the body. The outer skin of the horn is irrelevant. If these parts of the horn had current flowing on them, there would be radiation to the rear of the horn. You could have the horn's face be a hole punched in an infinite groundplane and it would still work - in fact it might work better than a horn with a "sharp edge".
"hy do you think that homes with aerials don't keep the "main body" of the antennae below the roof (in the attic, presumably), rather than above it?"
Because the roof of the building would block the signal. Most roofs are made of wood and/or metal, one of which is excellent at blocking RF, and one of which is pretty good at doing so.
Fiberglass, on the other hand, tends to be transparent to RF and makes a good radome (See, for example, the big "golf ball" radomes around many radar antennas). Hence my comment about making the rear of the trunk out of fiberglass.
Another option would be a slotted waveguide antenna, again with a fiberglass radome.
Add to that the fact that there's a good chance that regardless of what inputs you give the voting machine, the outputs will favor the person who gave the most kickbacks to the voting machine's manufacturer.
Not only is there little choice, but what little choice there is will be made by a machine and not you.
"World" means "At least one carrier in every area supports it", not "works with every carrier in existence".
The U.S. supports both GSM and CDMA.
Same for Japan - DoCoMo is GSM/UMTS. KDDI is CDMA2000 I believe. Fairly certain Softbank is also GSM, as many HTC GSM devices are rebranded by Softbank.
I think Korea is one of the few (if only) countries that has no GSM service at all. (And they may have a GSM carrier.)
That said - If you read TI's pages carefully, they market themselves as a manufacturer of "3G" chipsets, but somehow despite providing "3G" chipsets, you cannot find any information on UMTS products anywhere. All of their OMAPs depend on an external (TCS) wireless interface chipsets. They have them for CDMA2000 EVDO I think, but not UMTS. GSM capability from TI is limited to EDGE.
I was about to make the same comment, for different reasons - I get the impression that it's nearly impossible to implement a UMTS phone without using a Qualcomm MSM, at least while remaining cost competitive with an MSM-based solution. TI's OMAP series are still EDGE-only.
It's not a dual core CPU. There's a second coprocessor core that is for radio functions ONLY. It's not an SMP dual core CPU.
Any Windows Mobile device (They exist for all carriers) can already do this.
At least for Windows Mobile, Microsoft has declared a minimal amount of platform standardization, which is why developers really only need to write once and compile once to run on any recent WM device.
It used to be that there were a variety of CPUs allowed for PocketPC, but as the market share for many of them declined, everything but ARM was deprecated with recent versions of Windows Mobile. (May have started with PocketPC 2003?) It's kind of similar to how as MIPS and Alpha lost market share, resulting in later versions of NT dropping MIPS and Alpha support.
Despite this standardization, there's still plenty of flexibility available. (Some phones have video accelerators, some don't, some have keypads and lots of buttons, some don't, etc.)
The only major difference where developers have to be careful is the difference between non-touchscreen and touchscreen devices (WM5 Smarphone Edition vs. WM5 PocketPC Edition, and WM6 Pro vs. WM6 Standard). Often this does require a differently written and compiled application due to the UI differences between the two types of phones.
Windows Mobile does the security thing pretty well, unlike its distant (and yes, nowadays it is VERY distant) desktop cousin.
Unlike Symbian which forbids unsigned apps completely, Windows Mobile pops up a big warning the first time you ever try to install an unsigned CAB or run an unsigned app. It remembers that answer until the app's checksum or size changes, at which point it WILL prompt again.
This allows for the security of signed apps, while allowing the "little guy" to still participate and write WM apps. There isn't any known malware, or if there is, it's extremely rare and not prolific. There's an incredibly large third-party dev community centered around WM devices, with a lot of devs being "little guys" - see http://www.xda-developers.com/
I've had a WM device for about two months. Compared to any phone I've used before it's amazing, but it has a lot of flaws. I was hoping Android would be "Windows Mobile done right" - all of its strengths, minus many weaknesses, and OPEN.
Now it appears that Android is targeted more to compete with existing well established Linux-on-phone implementations (MOTOMAGX), and not with the top of the line smartphone OSes, despite the fact that it appears targeted towards "smartphone-class" hardware (see the emulator skin and the rumored HTC Dream). It's really disappointing to someone who was thinking Android was going to be taking convergence devices to the next level.
Walmart sells ones exactly like you describe for $15. They do have an additional cup holder and a small pocket underneath for storing stuff too.
Borders also sells them in a variety of sizes for $15-30.
IMO the $15 Wally World one is better than any of the ones Borders sells.
Only the antenna aperture needs to be out in the open. The power supplies and oscillator can easily be inside the car.
In fact, the main body of the antenna could easily be inside the car, with the "face" of the antenna being the rear of the trunk. Add a painted fiberglass radome and no one knows there's a microwave horn antenna pointing out the back of the vehicle...
Usually the "holes" are not physical holes, but the I/O and power leads. In cars, the harnesses carrying these are typically not shielded and work as pretty good antennas.
Not too difficult to fix that though...
They appear to be relying on the EMI to couple into the ECM via the power or I/O leads. They have a chart showing the frequency response of some truck's ignition switch.
Nothing a little gross overbraid on all wiring harnesses (most of which have either no overbraid in normal cars, or a plastic/fabric overbraid that serves only to provide structural benefits) and some filtering on the ignition switch's wiring can't fix...
"What's to stop it from killing the engine to the police car"
1) For microwave radiation, antennas can be extremely directional. In fact, to achieve decent field strength at the suspect's car with a reasonable amount of power output, it HAS to be directional for this to work.
2) Good EMI engineering can make a car immune to EMI such as this. The police car could have extra shielding on the electronics. Military equipment already does - this device would likely not work against a military vehicle. It's not that hard to do, it just requires extra money and some thought put into the design process. That said, nothing is stopping criminals from installing gross overbraid on their wiring harnesses and EMI filters inline with their power connections, plus other (more effective but more difficult/invasive) EMI protection upgrades.
"Seems like Microsoft might even agree. http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/default.aspx [microsoft.com] Seems like they are moving to .net for mobile devices." .NET CF is just a library framework - the code itself is still native.
.NET apps is "Please rewrite without .NET - uses too much RAM and flash storage." If it does actually use interpreted bytecode instead of native code, it's yet another example of why native code is the way to go unless you want to write a halfassed quick-and-dirty application and don't care at all about efficient use of a mobile device's limited resources.
.NET CF.
I'm fairly certain
Native or not, the framework itself is generally considered to automatically cause any app built against it to be bloatware. The most common feature request given to developers of
It is given as an option for developers who want to write "quick and dirty" apps for Windows Mobile, and is SEVERELY limited in its capabilities on Windows Mobile devices. For example, it's either not possible or extremely difficult to write a Today screen plugin using
"And the Blackberry uses Java and works just fine. In fact I would bet that most people would claim that it is a better smartphone than most Mindows Mobile devices. And then you have the example of Palm. They are still living with emulation the 68000.dragonball on the ARM,"
In the case of still living with m68k - Palm made migrating to native ARM code a NIGHTMARE. There is no way to write a 100% native PalmOS ARM app, and linking in "ARMlets" is an unholy nightmare.
BlackBerries do a few things extremely well. (Email, calendar, and... That's about it.) They're not very expandable/flexible.
""Oh wait, they're all ARM devices! Windows Mobile does just fine using native code. I was hoping that this would have the native code performance advantages of Windows Mobile, but with an improved UI, open architecture, and speed improvements."
And the Palm shows that could be a problem in the future."
It's only a problem if you're 100% stupid and make it impossible to run 100% native code on the new platform, and make it an unholy nightmare to even make parts of a program native.
Apple, on the other hand, shows that it's not difficult at all to maintain backwards compatibility with old apps (Palm did that) AND allow new apps to be written in fully native code for the new platform (Palm bombed that one royally. PalmOS 5 for ARM devices has been out for years and writing native ARM code is still hell.)
"I also think the Neo1983 is a horrible looking phone, and with a projected price tag of $350, will simply face too much competition should it ever actually make it to market."
$350 for unlocked, un-subsidized is pretty cheap. That translates to $99 or less contract-subsidized.
" (1) It's Java.
Java is the entrenched standard for mobile development. Google isn't pushing Java here, they're trying to maximize their reach to existing mobile developers."
It's the standard for cripplephone development, not smartphones.
Look at the hardware that's going to be supporting Android - not cripplephones. Java is a non-starter in that market segment. Windows Mobile and Symbian (which dominate in that area, with iPhone being the only other player) are almost 100% native development.
Mobile Java is a joke.
Look at the list of compatible devices for, as an example, iD Software's mobile Java-based games (like Doom RPG).
That's an awfully short list for a "write once run anywhere" platform...
75% of the Java MIDlets I tried in the JVM for my Treo 650 did not work. Probably 25%+ of the ones I've tried in the JVM on my AT&T Tilt don't work.
"Windows Mobile is essentially Windows CE + .NET ES. .NET ES is a bytecode interpreter platform for VB, C#, J#, etc.
:)"
.NET CF apps are native code (although generally regarded as bloated native code, which is why developing with .NET CF is generally frowned upon)
ergo, by postulate "Java means Real slow phones,"
Windows Mobile also means real slow phones.
Anyone have a problem with that?
I wish it were possible to mod you "just plain wrong"
Despite what you claim, bery few, if any, Windows Mobile apps are bytecode interpreted. Those that are bytecode interpreted are Java MIDlets. I'm fairly even
I have a total of one bytecode interpreted app on my Windows Mobile phone (Gmail Mobile), everything else is 100% native.