Android also uses its own video driver architecture, its own window manager, its own desktop, and its own virtual machine. The statement that 'Android is "orthodox"
So what you're saying is, the majority of Linux installs are all unorthodox. Keep in mind the majority of Linux installs are server systems, not desktops. You metric seems to be, if its not a desktop system its unorthodox, which is beyond silly.
Also, you quote is misleading and inaccurate. By your definition, python is "unorthodox", as is Java, as is almost every language or tool which implements an abstraction layer. Simply put, that position is garbage.
Custom drivers hardly makes systems "unorthodox". By that definition, every computer in the world is unorthodox. The reality is, you are hard pressed to find any embedded system which does not have a custom driver of some type. Likewise, most desktop and server systems typically have one or more custom drivers. Inclusion is anything but unorthodox.
Come on, we all know he wasn't referring to the kernel. Android is not a real Linux distro like people understand the term. KDE and Gnome are also not complete distros on their own.
I think you misunderstand. KDE and Gnome are to Linux as Android is to Linux. KDE, Gnome, and Android are not complete distros on their own, but all sit atop Linux. Just the same, technically, Android can run on something other than Linux just as KDE and Gnome do.
So one need not simply refer "to the kernel" here. Simply put, his statement is factually incorrect and technically misleading anyway you choose to look at it.
Most Linuxes are GNU/Linux, including such things as a standard libc. Android uses its own.
Once again, that's simply not true. Many different Linux distributions use different libraries and even variants.
Moblin also uses X, I think. Android doesn't.
So what! X is not Linux. X is not Unix. X is X. Such a statement pretty well validates you have no idea what you're talking about. X is not required to qualify as "Linux" or even "Linux-like". Under your definition, almost all system services, any application which uses curses, or even any application which uses the frame buffer is unorthodox; which is flatly incorrect.
X is a window abstraction and protocol which sits on top of Linux, Unix, Windows, and a variety of other platforms. X is in no way, shape, or form a requisite to qualify anything to be "Linux-like", let alone, "orthodox."
So, you're technically right (Linux is just a kernel), but functionally wrong.
No, I'm technically and functionally correct. You are technically and functionally incorrect on every account.
and a substantially more "orthodox" Linux than android
I have no idea where people get their misinformation from, but that statement is completely false!
Android runs a standard Linux kernel, which is to say, Android is "orthodox" Linux. On Android, the differences are above the "Linux" level. They have their own framework known as Android. To say Android is unorthodox is to say KDE and Gnome are unorthodox Linux, which is of course crazy talk.
Actually its well publicized that its absolutely NOT! Android, at best, is making between 1/8 to 1/2, depending on whos numbers you believe, when adjusted for its market size.
These links are just the tip of the iceberg. Google isn't hard to use. The question is, do you want to know the truth? If you do, its actually fairly trivial to piece the facts together with just about any search engine and web browser.
Beyond that, just about every lie pirates use to justify their position is easily blown out of the water with trivial research. The only valid questions which pertain to piracy, is how much is it actually inflating consumer goods and how much revenue is actually lost as a result of piracy. Just about everything else I can recall which is commonly thrown around is either a lie, a myth, or a straw man to keep you distracted from the truth.
And to be absolutely clear here, I absolutely hate DRM!!! But at least I'm pragmatic about why it exists - because pirates force it to be so. But I speak with my wallet, as you should too. If it has DRM, I generally don't buy whatever it is - and I don't steal it either.
To summarize, I'm wrong because you're too busy lying to yourself? And you're justifying this lie because you hate capitalism? WTF? Their profit is completely irrelevant to any discussion of piracy or theft.
Even worse, your position is, because its okay to steal from large companies which make tons of profit, its therefore okay to put tiny companies out of business. WTF?
Pirates will do anything to rationalize their illegal and immoral theft.
DRM coupled with extremely high cost makes it dumb as hell to purchase many things.
Interesting note, piracy forces prices higher which forces a reaction to integrate ever changing DRM., which in turn drives prices higher. Nasty cycle pirates have created.
Record companies sell millions and millions of copies of a song for $1 with virtually no distribution costs or anything.
Their distribution cost is completely irrelevant. Its a straw man's argument. Likewise is their profit. For it to be even slightly topical is to argue the free market and capitalism is wrong. Are you saying no one is entitled to make a profit?
Imagine if record companies sold songs for $.25 and put them on a server where you could download them if you lost them. In other words 100% DRM free with even assisted recovery of your files
We can already imagine that with iPhone and Android applications. While not 0.25, piracy is live and well for $0.99 apps which have very real costs associated. People pirate because they feel entitled, not because of price.
They are the people that would never have bought music to begin with.
Yet another lie pirates tell each other. If they would have never bought the song in the first place, they would have listened to it once, deleted it, and never listened to it again. Like stock, they effectively devalued it. Go illegally grab up a bunch of stock and when you get arrested, tell them its all okay because you would have never bought it in the first place.
Apps get downloaded used once, then never used again.
Then you failed to read that issue seems to largely on affect iPhone users. And just the same, that's not true for all applications either. If the application remains installed, they are assigning value to it. If they use the application, they are assigning value to it. If an item has value, and it is obtained without paying for it, the item has been stolen. For IP, we call this piracy. For stock, its called theft, fraud and/or embezzlement.
Like the parent said: Give me a good value and the money will flow easier than ever.
Then that's you and not pirates. By you're own admission, you don't pirate. If you do pirate, by your own admission, you're lying to yourself and everyone else who reads your post.
... As a game developer, both indy -and- 'working for the man'... I disagree.
Provides no credibility. What a brave, brave, anonymous troll you are.
The artificial price inflation "because of piracy" is a load of crock.
In your imagination. Obviously your statement is true because while its true in EVERY other business in existence, piracy is the sole exception, for absolutely no reason what so ever. Brilliant!
The cost for the company for 100% of a product's users to be pirates is an absolute 0. Sure they don't make any money, but they lose NOTHING.
You just blew your own position out of the water. According to you, slavery is alive and well and you fully support it! Your false statement also assumes labor is free. Since work is not free, your statement is false.
Why is it so damned hard to understand? You want folks to buy, yes? Then give them a good value for their dollar!
Why is it so damned hard to understand this position has no validity in the least. If this position were true, piracy for iPhone and Android would simply not exist. The simple truth is, piracy is flat out killing Android and even with the major rooting hoops for iPhone users, piracy is very much alive. Even more insulting, most quality applications on these platform provide extremely high bang for the buck. Hell, even many applications which have many hundreds, if not thousands of man hours still cost $0.99, or not far off.
The simply fact is, according to a recent UK study, 60% feel they are entitled to steal anything IP related they want, if for no other reason then they feel they are entitled to do so. And yet despite this unjustified self entitlement, piracy is killing small developers and FORCING prices to be higher. Which brings us to the second lie often used to justify piracy. High prices, just like every other product, are often a reflection of fraud and theft. Pirates steal and justify it by claiming they do so because prices are so high. In reality, prices are often so high because they steal.
The simple truth is, piracy is seriously destroying the commercial potential of Android. Because of piracy, using the App Store for a scaled basis of comparison, even the largest of Android developers are making, at most, 1/8th what they should be making. Many others are simply not making anything despite having huge pirate install bases. I can't stress it enough, piracy absolutely is hurting developers, deters others from entering the market, and forces costs to remain high.
So next time you hear someone justifying piracy because of high prices, kick them in the nuts for being an idiot. The next time you hear someone justifying piracy because no one gets hurt, kick them in the nuts for being an idiot. The next time you hear someone justifying piracy because viral is helping, kick them in the nuts for being an idiot. The next time you hear someone justifying piracy because of DRM, kick them in the nuts for being an idiot.
The simply truth is, pirates are nothing more than selfish, self serving, self entitled, idiots, who are hurting everyone.
The next time a pirate goes to work, I hope they don't get paid...after all, no one got hurt and nothing was stolen. That's EXACTLY the same as piracy. That's how piracy makes developers feel because that's what pirates do to developers. And if it were not for these idiots stealing everything they can touch, there wouldn't even be a need for DRM. These douches are creating all the problems which they then use to justify creating these problems. So go on, have you kicked a douche pirate in the nuts lately? If anyone deserves it, they do!
Verizon has publicly stated they are not nuke the phone's capabilities in any way! Remember, Verizon wants Android to directly compete with AT&T/iPhone. They can't do that if they start nuking features, let alone features every other Android phone on every other network will have.
Put their own UI on them.
And for the record, that's not a bad think. Android is specifically designed to allow for that. Some carriers have plans to brand their phones via their own custom interfaces allowing them to better address niche markets. So rather than the iPhone's one interface fits all, you'll see a variety of interfaces on Android. This is already true. There are already at least two main Android interfaces. One is from Google. One is from HTC.
They started out behind. How can they fall behind? With the exception of market sales, Android has met or beat every significant milestone established by Apple and their iPhone. There are now 10,000+ applications available for Android; though I personally believe maybe only 20%-30% are worth looking at. I hear the same thing about the App Store. So technically, that means its far, far harder to find quality applications on an iPhone. Thus far, Android is on schedule, if not ahead of schedule, to be ahead of the iPhone by 2012.
Google delivered the best competitor in phone OSes, and the handset manufacturers ignored it.
With just cause. Frankly, version of Android less than 1.5 were never ready for public consumption. And even Cupcake has some serious technical failings; though it does continue to get better and better. It appears the up coming release of Donut will finally allow the Android platform to exceed or meet iPhones in every category, not counting the categories where iPhone is simply not allowed to compete. Really, Android is brand new and the carriers were right to pass on it until recently, as frustrating as that is.
HTC reserved it's best work for Windows Mobile
That's not surprising. HTC, just like everyone else has been putting their toes in the water. Response has far exceeded expectations for HTC handsets and it now looks like at least one high end HTC handset will be available before the end of the year. Sorry, I don't recall the name...something HD and possibly another from that line. HTC needs MS until Android has proved its staying power. And even then, MS still sells units for them. It would be a bad decision for them to piss on MS while riding an unproven horse in the market.
Also, while T-Mobile is an OK cell phone service provider
By the end of this year, three of the largest US carriers will have at least one Android handset available. Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile are all excited about their Android offerings. Verizon and Sprint have both announced plans. T-Mobile has announced a third handset. Even AT&T has publicly stated they misstepped with Android, and withdrew two handsets before they launched. Some are speculating AT&T will have an Android offering by Christmas...but that's just speculation. The more reasonable expectation is for AT&T to have an offering by first or second quarter of next year. Having said that, most expect AT&T to play the low to mid field for Android handsets, so as to not compete with their iPhone cash-cow. Furthermore, depending on whos paperwork you believe, Verizon is poised to have as many as three Android handsets available between now and the second quarter of next year.
Worldwide, over twenty Android handsets will be available before the end of this year. Its safe to say, unless something really horrific happens, 2010 will be the year of the Android.
Attention! Verizon has already announced at least one Android phone will be available this year. Leaks suggest Verizon will have one to three phones on network, this year. If only one shows this year, expect more Android offerings on Verizon from the first and second quarter of next year.
Verizon has been begging Apple for a piece of the iPhone pie for a while now. Each time they get the middle finger from Apple. Android is thought to be Verizon's F-U reply. Most are expecting Verizon to push Android very hard this holiday season.
You might bother to read before you look like a total douche. Much was ignored, exactly as I said, where I said. Or are you making light of the fact I acknowledged a portion I said I ignored?
There is a modified Android image growing in popularity, for those willing to root their phone, called Cyanogen Mod. The developer has incorporated the BFS scheduler, by Con Kolivas. By replacing CFS with BFS, the performance boost and latency decreases is said to be HUGE; contrary to the petty retort by Ingo Molnar, to which I linked. While both Cyanogen Mod and BFS are still actively developed, IMO, they do wonders to validate Google's approach. First and foremost, is the fact it runs Linux, which is freely available and heavily developed. Secondly is the fact, both Linux and Android are open source which allows for such pairing and experimentation. I fully expect both camps will be richly rewarded from shared cooperation.
crank up the sensitivity so people can take shake-free snapshots
For what its worth, there is a free and pro version of an Android application called Snap Photo which uses the device's accelerometers to ensure the camera is stable before its snaps the picture. If you don't have stable hands it can take annoyingly long to take a picture but the quality is notably better without undo hand-shake messing with photo quality. But you're right, there wouldn't be near the problem if the shutter speed was faster.
I also agree the Mp race is dumb. I believe many of the camera makers are finally starting to agree too. Many seem to working hard to up photo quality on even lower Mp count cameras.
Don't forget Android developers desperately need your support. Go buy an application today. Support from your wallet ensures continued growth for developers and a richer application base. Pirating applications is seriously hurting developers.
I must admit I expected a flamed response. Thanks for the surprise.
Keep an eye out for the Galaxy or the Shules (or was it the other upcoming Moto phone). Both are reported to have some nice specs. There are a couple of other models which have been leaked which blow the iPhone's specs out of the water. IIRC, HTC is soon to have a higher end Qualcomm offering too. By year end, world wide, there should be plenty of Android offers which easily excels way past any Apple offering, from a hardware perspective.
I'm with you on that. I bought a RAZR because it was strongly recommended to me by co-workers. It was the worst phone I ever owned. The sound quality was horrible and it was plagued with all sorts of oddities. The battery never really fit properly and it would turn it self off from time to time. Navigation would tedious and painful. Settings were all over the phone. Even worse, reception was simply horrible! The only thing nice about the phone was the form factor.
But I have owned other Motorolas before and they were all nice. One Motorola I had years ago, while clunky by todays standards, was by far the best phone I've ever owned...until I got my G1. The Cliq has peaked my interest. If it continues to get good reviews and user reports, it will likely be my next phone purchase.
One of the common complaints about the G1 was that, while people liked the phone, they decided the battery life was just too short to be useful. How does the cliq fair in this department? You can have great features, but if the battery dies in 2 or 3 hours, no one will care.
This is a myth and absolutely not true. It has not been true since Android 1.5 was released. Battery life is fine for all available Android phones. If the G1 has a battery life too short, then so does the iPhone. If you run the G1 with an iPhone-like load, the G1 will meet or beat the iPhone.
The problem with the G1 is completely unrealistic user expectations combined with early (pre-cupcake) battery life issues. It is simply not realistic to obtain facebook, twitter, weather, email, text message and mms updates, on 3G and/or WIFI, every every couple of minutes on any smart phone and expect it to last more than a day. No smart phone with capabilities on par with the iPhone or Android can do that. Period. On the other hand, if you want to be more reasonable and allow for far more spurious updates and synchronization, battery life is drastically improved.
As I've been working hard to dispel the poor G1 battery life myth, there is also an application which drastically helps here too. Its WiSyncPlus.
Simply put, anyone who is experiencing poor battery life on a G1 has one or more of the following problems: bad battery, bad applications (some of the more popular qualify here), poor application configuration, poor synchronization configuration. Applications which are especially bad at draining battery life are ShopSavvy, Locale, and various popular weather applications, but there are plenty of others too. And along these lines, users themselves bare a lot of the problems. Do you really need to check weather every five minutes? 99.99% of the time, absolutely not! Refreshing weather once every several hours, or maybe one or twice a day is more than plenty for most.
Likewise, applications like Locale and ShopSavvy constantly detect and report your location to third parties, generally without your permission. And they constantly do so at the expense of your battery life. Now you know why your WIFI is constantly turned on and off. Any application which makes use of SkyHook is going to track your location and drain your battery. Also applications which make use of Ad Mob are also likely to inflict poor battery life on your.
Long story short, there is no excuse to complain about poor battery life on a G1 or any other Android phone. You just need to take responsibility for the applications you install and be reasonable of what you demand your phone to do on your behalf. Expecting it to run (not sleeping) 24x7 on a battery is not reasonable by any measure, regardless of the device in question.
Really shouldn't respond to this either as its 100% opinion and not fact. The hardware, while not stellar, is very nice. There is nothing wrong with the hardware. It absolutely does not "suck big-time".
a honking huge slide-out
More ignored...but believe it or not, many actually like to USE their phone which means a physical qwerty is required for this class ("smart") of use. Many are very excited about form and function on Motorola's Cliq. Is it for everyone? Hardly. But neither is the majority, "look at me, aren't I cool", iPhone owner. It boils down to preference. FACTUALLY speaking, only a qwerty provides maximum usability. Anything else is about style rather than function. If iphone-esk looks were all that mattered to phone owners, 95+% (made up stat to make point) of the market would disappear tomorrow. So once again, it boils down to preference. You prefer form over function, get an iPhone or one of the other iPhone-like Android phones (Hero, Galaxy, MyTouch, etc). You prefer functionality over form, then the iPhone is immediately crossed out and you have Android phones or one of the other smart phones (Palm, WinMo) available to choose from. Again, its preference...
and tiny battery
More ignored... Go get WiSyncPlus and actually use it, and you'll find your battery life is hugely increased. The simple fact is, the battery is plenty big, as is. G1s today can easily meet or exceed iPhone battery life when run under equivalent loads. And that's the problem, all current Android phones, by far, are under much heavier loads than an iPhone, simply because Android-like loads are impossible, because of Apple limitations, on an iPhone. And with those load limitations come huge application limitations. Again, its preference. What's important to you? Form or function? Once again, function and capability tends to always be Android biased.
They are not all targeting the same chips or even CPU.
Android now runs on or is in the process of running on X86 and MIPS. Additionally, alternate ARM-variants (non-Qualcomm CPUs) are also in use for Android phones and devices. With the release of the Android Native Development Kit, you can officially target specific CPUs with native code but it creates additional work and headaches for developers. Not to mention, when the market is upgraded to become NDK aware, applications which use the NDK will only show for those CPUs which are supported. That in turn requires per-CPU releases rather than a single package for all variants. That of course has both its pros and cons.
Ultimately, the NDK is still limited in what it supports. Of course, developers are free to jump the NDK-fence, but that means almost certain application breakage as new Android releases are made available to users. Of course, to some small degree that's true for Dalvik code too - contrary to what Google officially states.
Slashdot Mirror
Android also uses its own video driver architecture, its own window manager, its own desktop, and its own virtual machine. The statement that 'Android is "orthodox"
So what you're saying is, the majority of Linux installs are all unorthodox. Keep in mind the majority of Linux installs are server systems, not desktops. You metric seems to be, if its not a desktop system its unorthodox, which is beyond silly.
Also, you quote is misleading and inaccurate. By your definition, python is "unorthodox", as is Java, as is almost every language or tool which implements an abstraction layer. Simply put, that position is garbage.
Custom drivers hardly makes systems "unorthodox". By that definition, every computer in the world is unorthodox. The reality is, you are hard pressed to find any embedded system which does not have a custom driver of some type. Likewise, most desktop and server systems typically have one or more custom drivers. Inclusion is anything but unorthodox.
A game company would have to be idiots to raise prices because of piracy.
Then in your book, almost all game companies are idiots. Idiots or not, that's the facts.
Come on, we all know he wasn't referring to the kernel. Android is not a real Linux distro like people understand the term. KDE and Gnome are also not complete distros on their own.
I think you misunderstand. KDE and Gnome are to Linux as Android is to Linux. KDE, Gnome, and Android are not complete distros on their own, but all sit atop Linux. Just the same, technically, Android can run on something other than Linux just as KDE and Gnome do.
So one need not simply refer "to the kernel" here. Simply put, his statement is factually incorrect and technically misleading anyway you choose to look at it.
Most Linuxes are GNU/Linux, including such things as a standard libc. Android uses its own.
Once again, that's simply not true. Many different Linux distributions use different libraries and even variants.
Moblin also uses X, I think. Android doesn't.
So what! X is not Linux. X is not Unix. X is X. Such a statement pretty well validates you have no idea what you're talking about. X is not required to qualify as "Linux" or even "Linux-like". Under your definition, almost all system services, any application which uses curses, or even any application which uses the frame buffer is unorthodox; which is flatly incorrect.
X is a window abstraction and protocol which sits on top of Linux, Unix, Windows, and a variety of other platforms. X is in no way, shape, or form a requisite to qualify anything to be "Linux-like", let alone, "orthodox."
So, you're technically right (Linux is just a kernel), but functionally wrong.
No, I'm technically and functionally correct. You are technically and functionally incorrect on every account.
and a substantially more "orthodox" Linux than android
I have no idea where people get their misinformation from, but that statement is completely false!
Android runs a standard Linux kernel, which is to say, Android is "orthodox" Linux. On Android, the differences are above the "Linux" level. They have their own framework known as Android. To say Android is unorthodox is to say KDE and Gnome are unorthodox Linux, which is of course crazy talk.
Sloppy work.
Yes, I agree you're very sloppy. Go read the fucking articles and then the posts and then the links from the links.
Is it really too much to ask people to use their fucking head?!
Sloppy indeed.
100% beleve you suffer from a social disorder.
Actually its well publicized that its absolutely NOT! Android, at best, is making between 1/8 to 1/2, depending on whos numbers you believe, when adjusted for its market size.
Perhaps you are still trusting the companies to provide fair value.
Then by your own admission you neither buy nor pirate. If you do pirate, you're lying to yourself and everyone that reads your post.
http://androidcommunity.com/android-apps-cost-as-much-as-iphone-apps-or-more-20090807/
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/31/top-developer-reveals-android-markets-meager-sales/
These links are just the tip of the iceberg. Google isn't hard to use. The question is, do you want to know the truth? If you do, its actually fairly trivial to piece the facts together with just about any search engine and web browser.
Beyond that, just about every lie pirates use to justify their position is easily blown out of the water with trivial research. The only valid questions which pertain to piracy, is how much is it actually inflating consumer goods and how much revenue is actually lost as a result of piracy. Just about everything else I can recall which is commonly thrown around is either a lie, a myth, or a straw man to keep you distracted from the truth.
And to be absolutely clear here, I absolutely hate DRM!!! But at least I'm pragmatic about why it exists - because pirates force it to be so. But I speak with my wallet, as you should too. If it has DRM, I generally don't buy whatever it is - and I don't steal it either.
Sorry but you're full of shit.
To summarize, I'm wrong because you're too busy lying to yourself? And you're justifying this lie because you hate capitalism? WTF? Their profit is completely irrelevant to any discussion of piracy or theft.
Even worse, your position is, because its okay to steal from large companies which make tons of profit, its therefore okay to put tiny companies out of business. WTF?
Pirates will do anything to rationalize their illegal and immoral theft.
DRM coupled with extremely high cost makes it dumb as hell to purchase many things.
Interesting note, piracy forces prices higher which forces a reaction to integrate ever changing DRM., which in turn drives prices higher. Nasty cycle pirates have created.
Record companies sell millions and millions of copies of a song for $1 with virtually no distribution costs or anything.
Their distribution cost is completely irrelevant. Its a straw man's argument. Likewise is their profit. For it to be even slightly topical is to argue the free market and capitalism is wrong. Are you saying no one is entitled to make a profit?
Imagine if record companies sold songs for $.25 and put them on a server where you could download them if you lost them. In other words 100% DRM free with even assisted recovery of your files
We can already imagine that with iPhone and Android applications. While not 0.25, piracy is live and well for $0.99 apps which have very real costs associated. People pirate because they feel entitled, not because of price.
They are the people that would never have bought music to begin with.
Yet another lie pirates tell each other. If they would have never bought the song in the first place, they would have listened to it once, deleted it, and never listened to it again. Like stock, they effectively devalued it. Go illegally grab up a bunch of stock and when you get arrested, tell them its all okay because you would have never bought it in the first place.
Apps get downloaded used once, then never used again.
Then you failed to read that issue seems to largely on affect iPhone users. And just the same, that's not true for all applications either. If the application remains installed, they are assigning value to it. If they use the application, they are assigning value to it. If an item has value, and it is obtained without paying for it, the item has been stolen. For IP, we call this piracy. For stock, its called theft, fraud and/or embezzlement.
Like the parent said: Give me a good value and the money will flow easier than ever.
Then that's you and not pirates. By you're own admission, you don't pirate. If you do pirate, by your own admission, you're lying to yourself and everyone else who reads your post.
... As a game developer, both indy -and- 'working for the man' ... I disagree.
Provides no credibility. What a brave, brave, anonymous troll you are.
The artificial price inflation "because of piracy" is a load of crock.
In your imagination. Obviously your statement is true because while its true in EVERY other business in existence, piracy is the sole exception, for absolutely no reason what so ever. Brilliant!
The cost for the company for 100% of a product's users to be pirates is an absolute 0. Sure they don't make any money, but they lose NOTHING.
You just blew your own position out of the water. According to you, slavery is alive and well and you fully support it! Your false statement also assumes labor is free. Since work is not free, your statement is false.
The rest of your non-topical post is ignored.
But lets not forget the arrogant, idiot developer, that believes that his application is worth millions and blames his failure on piracy.
Good thing you don't mean me. Funny how people will go on the attack rather than admit they are themselves the very problem they rail against.
Why is it so damned hard to understand? You want folks to buy, yes? Then give them a good value for their dollar!
Why is it so damned hard to understand this position has no validity in the least. If this position were true, piracy for iPhone and Android would simply not exist. The simple truth is, piracy is flat out killing Android and even with the major rooting hoops for iPhone users, piracy is very much alive. Even more insulting, most quality applications on these platform provide extremely high bang for the buck. Hell, even many applications which have many hundreds, if not thousands of man hours still cost $0.99, or not far off.
The simply fact is, according to a recent UK study, 60% feel they are entitled to steal anything IP related they want, if for no other reason then they feel they are entitled to do so. And yet despite this unjustified self entitlement, piracy is killing small developers and FORCING prices to be higher. Which brings us to the second lie often used to justify piracy. High prices, just like every other product, are often a reflection of fraud and theft. Pirates steal and justify it by claiming they do so because prices are so high. In reality, prices are often so high because they steal.
The simple truth is, piracy is seriously destroying the commercial potential of Android. Because of piracy, using the App Store for a scaled basis of comparison, even the largest of Android developers are making, at most, 1/8th what they should be making. Many others are simply not making anything despite having huge pirate install bases. I can't stress it enough, piracy absolutely is hurting developers, deters others from entering the market, and forces costs to remain high.
So next time you hear someone justifying piracy because of high prices, kick them in the nuts for being an idiot.
The next time you hear someone justifying piracy because no one gets hurt, kick them in the nuts for being an idiot.
The next time you hear someone justifying piracy because viral is helping, kick them in the nuts for being an idiot.
The next time you hear someone justifying piracy because of DRM, kick them in the nuts for being an idiot.
The simply truth is, pirates are nothing more than selfish, self serving, self entitled, idiots, who are hurting everyone.
The next time a pirate goes to work, I hope they don't get paid...after all, no one got hurt and nothing was stolen. That's EXACTLY the same as piracy. That's how piracy makes developers feel because that's what pirates do to developers. And if it were not for these idiots stealing everything they can touch, there wouldn't even be a need for DRM. These douches are creating all the problems which they then use to justify creating these problems. So go on, have you kicked a douche pirate in the nuts lately? If anyone deserves it, they do!
Most definitely a troll post!
Verizon has publicly stated they are not nuke the phone's capabilities in any way! Remember, Verizon wants Android to directly compete with AT&T/iPhone. They can't do that if they start nuking features, let alone features every other Android phone on every other network will have.
Put their own UI on them.
And for the record, that's not a bad think. Android is specifically designed to allow for that. Some carriers have plans to brand their phones via their own custom interfaces allowing them to better address niche markets. So rather than the iPhone's one interface fits all, you'll see a variety of interfaces on Android. This is already true. There are already at least two main Android interfaces. One is from Google. One is from HTC.
Android has fallen very far behind.
They started out behind. How can they fall behind? With the exception of market sales, Android has met or beat every significant milestone established by Apple and their iPhone. There are now 10,000+ applications available for Android; though I personally believe maybe only 20%-30% are worth looking at. I hear the same thing about the App Store. So technically, that means its far, far harder to find quality applications on an iPhone. Thus far, Android is on schedule, if not ahead of schedule, to be ahead of the iPhone by 2012.
Google delivered the best competitor in phone OSes, and the handset manufacturers ignored it.
With just cause. Frankly, version of Android less than 1.5 were never ready for public consumption. And even Cupcake has some serious technical failings; though it does continue to get better and better. It appears the up coming release of Donut will finally allow the Android platform to exceed or meet iPhones in every category, not counting the categories where iPhone is simply not allowed to compete. Really, Android is brand new and the carriers were right to pass on it until recently, as frustrating as that is.
HTC reserved it's best work for Windows Mobile
That's not surprising. HTC, just like everyone else has been putting their toes in the water. Response has far exceeded expectations for HTC handsets and it now looks like at least one high end HTC handset will be available before the end of the year. Sorry, I don't recall the name...something HD and possibly another from that line. HTC needs MS until Android has proved its staying power. And even then, MS still sells units for them. It would be a bad decision for them to piss on MS while riding an unproven horse in the market.
Also, while T-Mobile is an OK cell phone service provider
By the end of this year, three of the largest US carriers will have at least one Android handset available. Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile are all excited about their Android offerings. Verizon and Sprint have both announced plans. T-Mobile has announced a third handset. Even AT&T has publicly stated they misstepped with Android, and withdrew two handsets before they launched. Some are speculating AT&T will have an Android offering by Christmas...but that's just speculation. The more reasonable expectation is for AT&T to have an offering by first or second quarter of next year. Having said that, most expect AT&T to play the low to mid field for Android handsets, so as to not compete with their iPhone cash-cow. Furthermore, depending on whos paperwork you believe, Verizon is poised to have as many as three Android handsets available between now and the second quarter of next year.
Worldwide, over twenty Android handsets will be available before the end of this year. Its safe to say, unless something really horrific happens, 2010 will be the year of the Android.
Attention! Verizon has already announced at least one Android phone will be available this year. Leaks suggest Verizon will have one to three phones on network, this year. If only one shows this year, expect more Android offerings on Verizon from the first and second quarter of next year.
Verizon has been begging Apple for a piece of the iPhone pie for a while now. Each time they get the middle finger from Apple. Android is thought to be Verizon's F-U reply. Most are expecting Verizon to push Android very hard this holiday season.
You might bother to read before you look like a total douche. Much was ignored, exactly as I said, where I said. Or are you making light of the fact I acknowledged a portion I said I ignored?
And it runs Linux!
There is a modified Android image growing in popularity, for those willing to root their phone, called Cyanogen Mod. The developer has incorporated the BFS scheduler, by Con Kolivas. By replacing CFS with BFS, the performance boost and latency decreases is said to be HUGE; contrary to the petty retort by Ingo Molnar, to which I linked. While both Cyanogen Mod and BFS are still actively developed, IMO, they do wonders to validate Google's approach. First and foremost, is the fact it runs Linux, which is freely available and heavily developed. Secondly is the fact, both Linux and Android are open source which allows for such pairing and experimentation. I fully expect both camps will be richly rewarded from shared cooperation.
crank up the sensitivity so people can take shake-free snapshots
For what its worth, there is a free and pro version of an Android application called Snap Photo which uses the device's accelerometers to ensure the camera is stable before its snaps the picture. If you don't have stable hands it can take annoyingly long to take a picture but the quality is notably better without undo hand-shake messing with photo quality. But you're right, there wouldn't be near the problem if the shutter speed was faster.
I also agree the Mp race is dumb. I believe many of the camera makers are finally starting to agree too. Many seem to working hard to up photo quality on even lower Mp count cameras.
Don't forget Android developers desperately need your support. Go buy an application today. Support from your wallet ensures continued growth for developers and a richer application base. Pirating applications is seriously hurting developers.
I must admit I expected a flamed response. Thanks for the surprise.
Keep an eye out for the Galaxy or the Shules (or was it the other upcoming Moto phone). Both are reported to have some nice specs. There are a couple of other models which have been leaked which blow the iPhone's specs out of the water. IIRC, HTC is soon to have a higher end Qualcomm offering too. By year end, world wide, there should be plenty of Android offers which easily excels way past any Apple offering, from a hardware perspective.
I owned a RAZR - for one night.
I'm with you on that. I bought a RAZR because it was strongly recommended to me by co-workers. It was the worst phone I ever owned. The sound quality was horrible and it was plagued with all sorts of oddities. The battery never really fit properly and it would turn it self off from time to time. Navigation would tedious and painful. Settings were all over the phone. Even worse, reception was simply horrible! The only thing nice about the phone was the form factor.
But I have owned other Motorolas before and they were all nice. One Motorola I had years ago, while clunky by todays standards, was by far the best phone I've ever owned...until I got my G1. The Cliq has peaked my interest. If it continues to get good reviews and user reports, it will likely be my next phone purchase.
One of the common complaints about the G1 was that, while people liked the phone, they decided the battery life was just too short to be useful. How does the cliq fair in this department? You can have great features, but if the battery dies in 2 or 3 hours, no one will care.
This is a myth and absolutely not true. It has not been true since Android 1.5 was released. Battery life is fine for all available Android phones. If the G1 has a battery life too short, then so does the iPhone. If you run the G1 with an iPhone-like load, the G1 will meet or beat the iPhone.
The problem with the G1 is completely unrealistic user expectations combined with early (pre-cupcake) battery life issues. It is simply not realistic to obtain facebook, twitter, weather, email, text message and mms updates, on 3G and/or WIFI, every every couple of minutes on any smart phone and expect it to last more than a day. No smart phone with capabilities on par with the iPhone or Android can do that. Period. On the other hand, if you want to be more reasonable and allow for far more spurious updates and synchronization, battery life is drastically improved.
As I've been working hard to dispel the poor G1 battery life myth, there is also an application which drastically helps here too. Its WiSyncPlus.
Simply put, anyone who is experiencing poor battery life on a G1 has one or more of the following problems: bad battery, bad applications (some of the more popular qualify here), poor application configuration, poor synchronization configuration. Applications which are especially bad at draining battery life are ShopSavvy, Locale, and various popular weather applications, but there are plenty of others too. And along these lines, users themselves bare a lot of the problems. Do you really need to check weather every five minutes? 99.99% of the time, absolutely not! Refreshing weather once every several hours, or maybe one or twice a day is more than plenty for most.
Likewise, applications like Locale and ShopSavvy constantly detect and report your location to third parties, generally without your permission. And they constantly do so at the expense of your battery life. Now you know why your WIFI is constantly turned on and off. Any application which makes use of SkyHook is going to track your location and drain your battery. Also applications which make use of Ad Mob are also likely to inflict poor battery life on your.
Long story short, there is no excuse to complain about poor battery life on a G1 or any other Android phone. You just need to take responsibility for the applications you install and be reasonable of what you demand your phone to do on your behalf. Expecting it to run (not sleeping) 24x7 on a battery is not reasonable by any measure, regardless of the device in question.
...personal opinion on looks ignored...
it's the hardware (which so far sucks big-time).
Really shouldn't respond to this either as its 100% opinion and not fact. The hardware, while not stellar, is very nice. There is nothing wrong with the hardware. It absolutely does not "suck big-time".
a honking huge slide-out
More ignored...but believe it or not, many actually like to USE their phone which means a physical qwerty is required for this class ("smart") of use. Many are very excited about form and function on Motorola's Cliq. Is it for everyone? Hardly. But neither is the majority, "look at me, aren't I cool", iPhone owner. It boils down to preference. FACTUALLY speaking, only a qwerty provides maximum usability. Anything else is about style rather than function. If iphone-esk looks were all that mattered to phone owners, 95+% (made up stat to make point) of the market would disappear tomorrow. So once again, it boils down to preference. You prefer form over function, get an iPhone or one of the other iPhone-like Android phones (Hero, Galaxy, MyTouch, etc). You prefer functionality over form, then the iPhone is immediately crossed out and you have Android phones or one of the other smart phones (Palm, WinMo) available to choose from. Again, its preference...
and tiny battery
More ignored... Go get WiSyncPlus and actually use it, and you'll find your battery life is hugely increased. The simple fact is, the battery is plenty big, as is. G1s today can easily meet or exceed iPhone battery life when run under equivalent loads. And that's the problem, all current Android phones, by far, are under much heavier loads than an iPhone, simply because Android-like loads are impossible, because of Apple limitations, on an iPhone. And with those load limitations come huge application limitations. Again, its preference. What's important to you? Form or function? Once again, function and capability tends to always be Android biased.
But at the same time, why bother with Dalvik
They are not all targeting the same chips or even CPU.
Android now runs on or is in the process of running on X86 and MIPS. Additionally, alternate ARM-variants (non-Qualcomm CPUs) are also in use for Android phones and devices. With the release of the Android Native Development Kit, you can officially target specific CPUs with native code but it creates additional work and headaches for developers. Not to mention, when the market is upgraded to become NDK aware, applications which use the NDK will only show for those CPUs which are supported. That in turn requires per-CPU releases rather than a single package for all variants. That of course has both its pros and cons.
Ultimately, the NDK is still limited in what it supports. Of course, developers are free to jump the NDK-fence, but that means almost certain application breakage as new Android releases are made available to users. Of course, to some small degree that's true for Dalvik code too - contrary to what Google officially states.