Funny how you operate on false premises while basing all your critique on the basis that others do. Look at recent response of Apple regarding antenna problems, for a good case scenario - it shows how everything the iPhone can't do, or does badly, is the customer's fault. In an apple-shaped world, the customer (or developer) is always wrong.
Hey, maybe everybody should just shut up, don't point out flaws anywhere and go with the flowe?
PS. And overall, when looking at some mobile topic, remember that you most likely see it from a perspective of a very atypical market; your experiences with US one don't translate that well.
I covered tethering & non-castration of phones already. Few other things which are at least close to a rule worldwide, in a way that might be a surprise to you: basically nonexistence of "unlimited" plans, data-only SIMcard being often much less expensive than dataplan coupled to voice SIMcard, people owning their phones (often without SIMlock, which comes in handy when 2+ SIMcards are used regularly) & using prepaid (credits of which are becoming a form of banking here and there BTW), generally quite different landscape of manufacturers & mobile operating systems, the old "you don't pay if you're not the one who initiates the communication" difference, QWERTY phones being a rare sight (fliphones also quite rare)...and those are probably still not all of notable differences.
Well, if that is his plan (from the description and number & type of messages sent - I don't think so), then he's a bit late...
Few links: 1, 2, 3, 4; plus IIRC that's not the only type of such service even from Nokia (at least in India, where local division cooked their own version), and there are many other. Hell, there is even software (running on a laptop and interfacing with supported mobile phone) for conducting polls or generally independent information dissemination / basic service on request. Or providing email via SMS. It's a dynamic landscape of production solutions. So...he hasn't heard about them or indeed does "IP via SMS"? Or...look at menu position typically provided by SIM card ("SIM services"/etc.), there is a cheap, on demand information retrieval right there; basically since the inception of GSM.
And that quote doesn't really mean SMS is very cheap per se, in some stark contrast to voice & data; it means SMS is the most affordable (when used as intended, few messages here and there) out of all options.
"Tethered"? Carriers throughout the world generally don't recognise the distinction between "tethered"/non-"tethered", for one. Don't really castrate phones.
And sure, data access is expensive for many people in developing places. So is SMS or voice (the latter is the reason why the former is quite popular, but certainly not in quantities required for this "IP via SMS" thing)
Sony hardware meant for music playback is pretty much as open as they get (nvm Ogg/etc. stuff, that's a niche). One other part of Sony would only like to change that, it seems.
Generally they are one of the best examples of how such companies are far from monolithic. Some divisions and their products are great; some...meh.
It's very much the wrong solution. If a phone can be connected to any PC at all, it almost certainly supports WAP, among it WTP; meaning it can already transfer data via channles used also for sms.
Of course they make a profit in lower segments; the point is - it is necessarily much more limited. But their whole development, manufacturing, logistics, etc. (which aren't that much less expensive for low-end devices) has to serve it too. Plus it hugely complicates marketing - promoting one class of devices is easy, but how do you pitch clearly better, all around, class without making the lower segment look worse?
And the latter part would have consequences, because that segment is actually quite competitive; people demand great value for the price, aren't getting locked in any way to particular family of devices. There is huge opportunity for innovation there (within certain limitations of course - that makes it only harder)
"Investors" not overlooking long term (really long term) societal factors?... Where?...
And you're trying to be very dishonest in the last part... (it's funny how outsourcing and sweatshops are universally bad on/. otherwise...) Nokia owns their fabs, in many places throughout the world - is directly responsible for well being of their employees. That's a far cry from outsourcing to lowest bidder. And with their scale (almost half a billion mobile phones sold annually, one of the largest providers of cellular infrastructure), they certainly directly benefit, even when looking at a singuler example of China, quite a lot of people they employ. Not to mention benefits their services and products bring.
"back in 1995, I assume 90% of anybody who had a computer connected it to the internet" - 90% in 1995? You would really need to back it up with something...
Also, don't really expect "that core will always stay"; the difference in CPU power becomes less and less noticeable; solutions like Fusion will give nice GFX boost and probably commoditise the area; the addition of SSD will bridge the gap in storage performance. Not saying all people doing stuff you mention will move away from desktops, but quite rapidly ever larger proportion of them will be able to do that.
Well, there is Net Yaroze (some great games for that one, included in every issue of "Official" PS1 magazine; Youtube should show most of them after searching for "net yaroze"/etc.). Or XNA (funny how MS snatched that niche). Quite full dev environments, overall.
And yet that means its numbers are growing by the greatest value; it's not a zero sum game, the market is getting new players (still; expect bada OS to be bigger than most other quite soon) and expanding. The latter part is what Nokia is agressively doing just very recently btw (look at the current prices of 5230, without contract)
I know somebody who got, quite recently & in a reasonably prosperous place, 1208 handset (and would probably still choose some newer S30 one in the future, if needed). Not a luddite by any stretch - very fluent in PCs, et al. Just...likes the phone to be that way (also uses a dedicated portable media player and digicam)
Isn't 1100 still the bestselling single type of electronic device (nvm "phone") in history?
IIRC, S60 was also rather fine, building on the S40 UI concepts. Of course it got a bit sidelined with passage of time, such UI not so adaptable to the number of new features. At least Symbian^4 UI design proposals look like we might get something nice.
There's also something to say about explaining stupid behaviours of "other people" by some predictable instincts, while perceiving oneself ("team") as only sometimes falling into the same trap. Oh, wait...;)
(and generalisations - for example Nokia is not my main mobile phones (I have an old secondary one that's good for the limited role it has), and yet I apparently "supported" them in this thread - being perceived as some kind of diehard fan by some, while IMHO just trying to see the whole picture; which is of course, TBH, exactly what you wrote about and even more about my little rebuke above:P )
What I glanced once from writings of Nokia anthropologist after stumbling onto his site (can't find the exact posts, the website seems to be in a bit of a mess right now; this one touches on the subjest but is not fully what I have in mind), it's not as clear.
After all, what you mention is also: people liking a product so much that they are willing, for lack of funds, to risk with a "fake"; they do like having the real thing, if they can. There was also another trend emerging - copying the industrial design, but not logos; in the direction of a product which can stand on its own, with manufacturers gaining some legitimacy. If an OS (I'm mostly thinking about Symbian, it fits much better to segment ruled by costs) becomes easily available for inclusion into their phones, that could be interesting. To be fair, it's probably more about the supplier of SoCs enabling those cheap phones (IIRC one large, fabless, Taiwanese manufacturer)
You don't get it that it isn't strictly what "Apple should have done", just dismissing the Apple solution as the end-be-all one, as it seems to be accepted by some. And this is completelly justified and approproate in the context of the story; if you think not then you are allowing to be spoon fed. And specifically scenario not requiring drastic code changes. "Limited"?...heh.
N8 is not completelly a better hardware, it has ARM11. Which is fine for Symbian, and one of its strenghts (when S^4 might, I guess, make the shift in a year due to essentially breaking binary compatibility, I wouldn't be surprised by some Cortex A5 phones beside A8 or A9); but it doesn't really fit Meego...
Nokia modus operandi is rather clear. They still sell quite a lot of S30 devices after all, their mainstray from around a decade ago. S40 is their biggest chunk now, but very clearly being pushed "down" and with Symbian firmly going into middle-segment (c'mon, a thing like 5230 for less than $150 without contract?). Now Meego goes on the top - Nokia toying with it for a few years, with the last effort (doesn't really seem worse than a first semi-serious effort at almost anything) actually being a phone, was a good hint.
Careful what you wish for - N8 has ARM11 CPU. Which is fine for Symbian, but Meego... (I suppose it will change only in a year or so - S^4 basically breaks binary compatibility anyway; and even then many devices might be on, say, Cortex A5, I guess)
Plus, this news seems to mean that the next N device, and that means N8 successor, will be on Meego, no?;p (also, weren't there some Chinese clones already?;) )
My main phone isn't even a Nokia, FYI (though it might be soon, we'll see). And what I talk about is very much present and future; just not perceived through impressions from very few & quite atypical markets.
I suspect it's possible that you might be for a surprise with marketshare numbers at the end of year, especially since you seem to particularly blinded anti-nokia...smth ("every manufacturer makes better phones than nokia" said just like that, really?). But I guess you will just dismiss it via "those people don't count, they shouldn't be allowed to get such technology anyway!", etc....
Not even "high end" - look at the 5230, below 150 bucks without contract. Not that much more expensive from dedicated GPS units, but with free & easy map updates. Plus, even if Ovi Maps can work completelly offline, it's nice to have the possibility of traffic updates, et al; smartphone, media player, etc. virtually thrown in for free.
It's firmly in middle segment now; don't be surprised by some interesting numbers at the end of year.
I find it quite unlikely, considering that's significantly less than cheapest Chinese "clones"; plus Android devices from Samsung aren't exactly aiming for low price (that's where their bada OS will be - I suspect a lot of people are for a surprise with its marketshare in the future)
I still think that's mostly a selection bias, noticing boxes which survived. There was also a lot of a crap in the past. Crap which was often used a lot less, overall; and to do a lot less.
"Most of not all phones currently sold are Cortex A8 based"
Far from it. Large part of smartphones, yes, but even there certainly not "most" - Symbian has close to half of sales, and they are all ARM11 (I guess this might change in a year at the earliest - Symbian^4 basically breaks binary compatibility anyway, and with Cortex A5 available...). I don't think Blackberries are very different; and that's already much more than half.
But yeah, ARM has still a bright future. Heck, if one takes a closer look at the new "Atom for smartphones" - a) Intel shows only power usage numbers when the x86 is idling, and omits them from performance graphs b) if you look at diagram of the chipset (actually chipset, 5 chips IIRC), there are probably at least two ARM cores integrated there; doing boring stuff (signalling interface and some "southbridge" controller) and allowing at least some passable power usage.
Slashdot Mirror
Funny how you operate on false premises while basing all your critique on the basis that others do. Look at recent response of Apple regarding antenna problems, for a good case scenario - it shows how everything the iPhone can't do, or does badly, is the customer's fault. In an apple-shaped world, the customer (or developer) is always wrong.
Hey, maybe everybody should just shut up, don't point out flaws anywhere and go with the flowe?
PS. And overall, when looking at some mobile topic, remember that you most likely see it from a perspective of a very atypical market; your experiences with US one don't translate that well.
I covered tethering & non-castration of phones already. Few other things which are at least close to a rule worldwide, in a way that might be a surprise to you: basically nonexistence of "unlimited" plans, data-only SIMcard being often much less expensive than dataplan coupled to voice SIMcard, people owning their phones (often without SIMlock, which comes in handy when 2+ SIMcards are used regularly) & using prepaid (credits of which are becoming a form of banking here and there BTW), generally quite different landscape of manufacturers & mobile operating systems, the old "you don't pay if you're not the one who initiates the communication" difference, QWERTY phones being a rare sight (fliphones also quite rare)...and those are probably still not all of notable differences.
Well, if that is his plan (from the description and number & type of messages sent - I don't think so), then he's a bit late...
Few links: 1, 2, 3, 4; plus IIRC that's not the only type of such service even from Nokia (at least in India, where local division cooked their own version), and there are many other. Hell, there is even software (running on a laptop and interfacing with supported mobile phone) for conducting polls or generally independent information dissemination / basic service on request. Or providing email via SMS. It's a dynamic landscape of production solutions. So...he hasn't heard about them or indeed does "IP via SMS"?
Or...look at menu position typically provided by SIM card ("SIM services"/etc.), there is a cheap, on demand information retrieval right there; basically since the inception of GSM.
And that quote doesn't really mean SMS is very cheap per se, in some stark contrast to voice & data; it means SMS is the most affordable (when used as intended, few messages here and there) out of all options.
"Tethered"? Carriers throughout the world generally don't recognise the distinction between "tethered"/non-"tethered", for one. Don't really castrate phones.
And sure, data access is expensive for many people in developing places. So is SMS or voice (the latter is the reason why the former is quite popular, but certainly not in quantities required for this "IP via SMS" thing)
Sony hardware meant for music playback is pretty much as open as they get (nvm Ogg/etc. stuff, that's a niche). One other part of Sony would only like to change that, it seems.
Generally they are one of the best examples of how such companies are far from monolithic. Some divisions and their products are great; some...meh.
It's very much the wrong solution. If a phone can be connected to any PC at all, it almost certainly supports WAP, among it WTP; meaning it can already transfer data via channles used also for sms.
How many really can't and it still doesn't stop them? (in whatever market)
Of course they make a profit in lower segments; the point is - it is necessarily much more limited. But their whole development, manufacturing, logistics, etc. (which aren't that much less expensive for low-end devices) has to serve it too. Plus it hugely complicates marketing - promoting one class of devices is easy, but how do you pitch clearly better, all around, class without making the lower segment look worse?
And the latter part would have consequences, because that segment is actually quite competitive; people demand great value for the price, aren't getting locked in any way to particular family of devices. There is huge opportunity for innovation there (within certain limitations of course - that makes it only harder)
"Investors" not overlooking long term (really long term) societal factors?... Where?...
And you're trying to be very dishonest in the last part... (it's funny how outsourcing and sweatshops are universally bad on /. otherwise...) Nokia owns their fabs, in many places throughout the world - is directly responsible for well being of their employees. That's a far cry from outsourcing to lowest bidder. And with their scale (almost half a billion mobile phones sold annually, one of the largest providers of cellular infrastructure), they certainly directly benefit, even when looking at a singuler example of China, quite a lot of people they employ.
Not to mention benefits their services and products bring.
Simple share numbers perhaps? Relative growth of HTC as of late seems to propelled primarily by Android devices.
"back in 1995, I assume 90% of anybody who had a computer connected it to the internet" - 90% in 1995? You would really need to back it up with something...
Also, don't really expect "that core will always stay"; the difference in CPU power becomes less and less noticeable; solutions like Fusion will give nice GFX boost and probably commoditise the area; the addition of SSD will bridge the gap in storage performance. Not saying all people doing stuff you mention will move away from desktops, but quite rapidly ever larger proportion of them will be able to do that.
Well, there is Net Yaroze (some great games for that one, included in every issue of "Official" PS1 magazine; Youtube should show most of them after searching for "net yaroze"/etc.). Or XNA (funny how MS snatched that niche). Quite full dev environments, overall.
Still requiring some kind of PC of course...
And yet that means its numbers are growing by the greatest value; it's not a zero sum game, the market is getting new players (still; expect bada OS to be bigger than most other quite soon) and expanding. The latter part is what Nokia is agressively doing just very recently btw (look at the current prices of 5230, without contract)
I know somebody who got, quite recently & in a reasonably prosperous place, 1208 handset (and would probably still choose some newer S30 one in the future, if needed). Not a luddite by any stretch - very fluent in PCs, et al. Just...likes the phone to be that way (also uses a dedicated portable media player and digicam)
Isn't 1100 still the bestselling single type of electronic device (nvm "phone") in history?
IIRC, S60 was also rather fine, building on the S40 UI concepts. Of course it got a bit sidelined with passage of time, such UI not so adaptable to the number of new features. At least Symbian^4 UI design proposals look like we might get something nice.
There's also something to say about explaining stupid behaviours of "other people" by some predictable instincts, while perceiving oneself ("team") as only sometimes falling into the same trap. Oh, wait... ;)
(and generalisations - for example Nokia is not my main mobile phones (I have an old secondary one that's good for the limited role it has), and yet I apparently "supported" them in this thread - being perceived as some kind of diehard fan by some, while IMHO just trying to see the whole picture; which is of course, TBH, exactly what you wrote about and even more about my little rebuke above :P )
And if you mean it had a touchscreen, sure - so there's at least one thing that Apple did before Nokia.
It is not even the case.
What I glanced once from writings of Nokia anthropologist after stumbling onto his site (can't find the exact posts, the website seems to be in a bit of a mess right now; this one touches on the subjest but is not fully what I have in mind), it's not as clear.
After all, what you mention is also: people liking a product so much that they are willing, for lack of funds, to risk with a "fake"; they do like having the real thing, if they can. There was also another trend emerging - copying the industrial design, but not logos; in the direction of a product which can stand on its own, with manufacturers gaining some legitimacy.
If an OS (I'm mostly thinking about Symbian, it fits much better to segment ruled by costs) becomes easily available for inclusion into their phones, that could be interesting. To be fair, it's probably more about the supplier of SoCs enabling those cheap phones (IIRC one large, fabless, Taiwanese manufacturer)
You don't get it that it isn't strictly what "Apple should have done", just dismissing the Apple solution as the end-be-all one, as it seems to be accepted by some. And this is completelly justified and approproate in the context of the story; if you think not then you are allowing to be spoon fed.
And specifically scenario not requiring drastic code changes. "Limited"?...heh.
N8 is not completelly a better hardware, it has ARM11. Which is fine for Symbian, and one of its strenghts (when S^4 might, I guess, make the shift in a year due to essentially breaking binary compatibility, I wouldn't be surprised by some Cortex A5 phones beside A8 or A9); but it doesn't really fit Meego...
Nokia modus operandi is rather clear. They still sell quite a lot of S30 devices after all, their mainstray from around a decade ago. S40 is their biggest chunk now, but very clearly being pushed "down" and with Symbian firmly going into middle-segment (c'mon, a thing like 5230 for less than $150 without contract?). Now Meego goes on the top - Nokia toying with it for a few years, with the last effort (doesn't really seem worse than a first semi-serious effort at almost anything) actually being a phone, was a good hint.
Careful what you wish for - N8 has ARM11 CPU. Which is fine for Symbian, but Meego... (I suppose it will change only in a year or so - S^4 basically breaks binary compatibility anyway; and even then many devices might be on, say, Cortex A5, I guess)
Plus, this news seems to mean that the next N device, and that means N8 successor, will be on Meego, no? ;p (also, weren't there some Chinese clones already? ;) )
My main phone isn't even a Nokia, FYI (though it might be soon, we'll see). And what I talk about is very much present and future; just not perceived through impressions from very few & quite atypical markets.
I suspect it's possible that you might be for a surprise with marketshare numbers at the end of year, especially since you seem to particularly blinded anti-nokia...smth ("every manufacturer makes better phones than nokia" said just like that, really?). But I guess you will just dismiss it via "those people don't count, they shouldn't be allowed to get such technology anyway!", etc....
Not even "high end" - look at the 5230, below 150 bucks without contract. Not that much more expensive from dedicated GPS units, but with free & easy map updates. Plus, even if Ovi Maps can work completelly offline, it's nice to have the possibility of traffic updates, et al; smartphone, media player, etc. virtually thrown in for free.
It's firmly in middle segment now; don't be surprised by some interesting numbers at the end of year.
It might be already known as, essentially, iPhone Death in some important markets.
I find it quite unlikely, considering that's significantly less than cheapest Chinese "clones"; plus Android devices from Samsung aren't exactly aiming for low price (that's where their bada OS will be - I suspect a lot of people are for a surprise with its marketshare in the future)
I still think that's mostly a selection bias, noticing boxes which survived. There was also a lot of a crap in the past. Crap which was often used a lot less, overall; and to do a lot less.
BTW, "business class mobos" for AMD?
"Most of not all phones currently sold are Cortex A8 based"
Far from it. Large part of smartphones, yes, but even there certainly not "most" - Symbian has close to half of sales, and they are all ARM11 (I guess this might change in a year at the earliest - Symbian^4 basically breaks binary compatibility anyway, and with Cortex A5 available...). I don't think Blackberries are very different; and that's already much more than half.
But yeah, ARM has still a bright future. Heck, if one takes a closer look at the new "Atom for smartphones" - a) Intel shows only power usage numbers when the x86 is idling, and omits them from performance graphs b) if you look at diagram of the chipset (actually chipset, 5 chips IIRC), there are probably at least two ARM cores integrated there; doing boring stuff (signalling interface and some "southbridge" controller) and allowing at least some passable power usage.