Technically Speaking

From  Engadget:

By Vlad Savov posted Jul 15th 2010 1:41AM

Yes, the Droid X has joined the Kin… in being available to buy on Verizon’s online Wireless store. No shock or awe here, it’s a cent under two Benjamins with a two-year deal and you can give it the shopping basket treatment right now. Either that or wait in line overnight like a lovesick puppy, it’s up to you.

I wonder how much work a carrier does to an operating system before they release it to their handsets.  You read about some handsets just getting Android 2.1 when 2.2 is already released.  I would think that Google would make it easy for the carriers to tweak what they want, disable this, disable something else, disable another useful thing, etc.

Now that Android is a ‘standard’ with regular feature releases people are going to learn how much carriers cripple the software on phones…..Android on Sprint can do AB&C, while on Verizon it can only do XY&Z.

Carriers that are quick to release the newest software will come out on top.  People will have two criteria for making  a decision on a mobile phone, the hardware and the version of software it is running; why by great hardware that has to year old software?

Dell has introduced the ‘Streak’, it is a 5-inch tablet.  It looks very nice, not sure about the form factor.  It is larger than a smart phone and smaller than a tablet, is there a need for a device in that space?

It seems too big to hold against your head as a phone, a headset with Skype would be a nice addition.

Here are some of the specs:

• A sharp 5-inch capacitive multi-touch WVGA (800×480) display for a great full-screen experience watching video or browsing the web
• Fast 1GHz Snapdragon ARM-based mobile processor from Qualcomm
• 5 MP autofocus camera with dual LED flash that offers easy point & shoot capability and quick uploads to YouTube, Flickr, Facebook and more
• VGA front-facing camera enables video chat functionality down the road
• A user-removable (and replaceable) battery
• A 3.5mm headphone jack means many of you can use the Dell Streak as the music source (and more) in your car
• Integrated 3G + Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) + Bluetooth 2.1 (think headsets, external keyboards, stereo headsets, etc.)
• UMTS / GPRS / EDGE class 12 GSM radio with link speeds of HSDPA 7.2 Mbps / HSUPA
• A user-accessible Micro SD slot expandable up to 32GB. That means you can store  lots of movies, music, photos or other kinds of files.

You can read more about the device here

In case you can’t wait, here is the end of the review:

“Let us be crystal clear: we love this phone. Nay, we adore it. But the fact remains that it’s still very much an Android device — which means that if you don’t like Android now, odds are good that even Android executed on the most amazing hardware to date won’t do much to change your opinion of it. You’ve also got to be concerned about upgradeability; Froyo is almost certainly around the corner now, and HTC hasn’t done anything to suggest it’s able to push Sense-powered updates in a timely fashion.

That said, this is truly one of the best smartphones ever made, and even spotty 4G — a reality of a young technology that’s going to take years to properly build out — probably won’t do much to hamper your enjoyment of this thing. It’s reasonable to assume that phones like the EVO will ultimately come to every carrier over the next few months… but hey, if you jumped ship for Sprint to pick up this monster, we wouldn’t be able blame you.”

You can read the entire review here

This is a great video from The Onion about Google subsidized phones.  Google listens to your conversations and inserts audio ads relevant to the conversation.  Talking to a friend about where to go to dinner, Google will tell you real time.  Check out the video, very funny.

New Google Phone Service Whispers Targeted Ads Directly Into Users’ Ears

Looks like Google is getting out of the direct hardware sales business.  Soon people wanting to buy a Nexus One will need to buy it directly from a carrier.  Google thinks that people want to see and hold a phone before they make a purchase.

The writing was on the wall when Google released a statement that they will not be releasing a Nexus One for the Verizon network.

No doubt they will continue with the Android OS, but they might get out of the hardware business altogether.

Read more details here

A lot of people are talking about the recent Mobile Beat story claiming that Android outsold the iPhone in Q1 2010.

Since at least 2000, it has been the year of the Linux Desktop….as you know that never happened – why not?

1. GUI was never good enough
2. Drivers for new hardware were not included, users did not want to compile from source, let alone learn what gcc is and where to get it
3. Printing is/was always a problem
4. No real support from major manufacturers

Here is an article that speaks to the death of the year of the Linux desktop

I would like to be the first person to proclaim ’2010 will be the year of Linux on the phone’

There is no question that Google has produced a fabulous product in Android.  It is responsive, stable, good with battery life, and resource responsible.

In three years there will be room for three major phone OS’s

1. Android will have 50% of the market
2. iPhoneOS will have 20% of the market
3. HP-Palm/Microsoft/RIM will have 10%
4. The remaining will be generic OS’s running on basic phones – perhaps a slimmed down version of Android

When we look back, we will see 2010 as the year that Linux invaded, our phones that is.

Mobile Beat has a story that claims Android Sales Surpassed iPhone sales during Q1 2010.

Stories like this bring up more questions than they answer:

1. Are people not buying iPhones because they are waiting for the iPhone HD?
2. Is this a story of open source triumphs over locked down closed source?
3. Does Apple even care?
4. Does Google care?
5. Should I care?!?
6. Is Android going to become the Windows of mobile phones, everyone sells it on different hardware – but Apple does it ‘better’?
7. It is the fact that Google gives Android away for free lets the hardware manufacturers focus on awesome hardware?
8. Is it just a flawed survey…people do tend to fib.
9. And on, and on, and on.