"This may seem like a bold statement. Apple's just released iPhone is not only very attractive as we would expect from an Apple product, but includes some impressive features and specifications. It's probably unrealistic to claim that anything currently available on the market competes with this offering. However, is it really a revolution in mobile communication devices? Maybe not if there still is something that can overshadow it, and do it very soon."
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Member since:2005-07-08
You know, I completely agree with Eugenia on this issue of smartphones and their network connectivity. That is, all of the current cellular data networks are painfully slow, costly, and locked-down--and that encouraging the build-out of wifi/802.11 networks it the only clear path to a wireless data utopia.
Putting out smartphones that become more than 10x slower when they stray too far from a WAP is a good step. If a lot of people have these kind of phones that support wifi but not the under-built 3G networks, eventually these high-end customers will drive demand for wifi build-out.
Member since:2005-10-09
You know, I would completely agree as well, except not all of us live in the USA, and even some of us that do travel abroad.
However, my point was merely the phone has *no* good network connectivity. I didn't even see 802.11x in the specifications.
EDGE is usable to me in Hawaii, 3G is more than usable for me throughout a lot of Europe. I'd be happy with Wifi and EDGE, if nothing else.
I mostly use data for email, not much else. EDGE is plenty fast for that kind of usage. Yeah, it's not great for surfing and sending huge files around, but I have no intention of doing that on a tiny little phone, regardless.
Member since:2006-04-28
EVDO is pretty quick on Sprint, and not very expensive. Makes the Treo 700p a joy to use. Locked down? Probably. I haven't run into any issues yet, but I've mainly only done web on it. Part of the speed issue comes from the devices themselves, though. If you've ever used builtin wifi on most PDA's, a lot of it comes down to rendering/parsing time.
Wifi is far from the simple answer that everyone makes it out to be. It's quite tough and costly to saturate an area with a reliable network, and that cost is either going to be passed on to you by the companies who roll it out, or to your taxes by municipal wifi projects.
Municipal wifi is great and all (I wouldn't mind my tax dollars going towards this), but I don't think it will ever become mainstream in the US. There's just too much pressure from the telecomms and mobicomms (not to mention cable operators, satelite [the one's who aren't all the same company, anyway] and anyone else who makes money off of the transmission of data) for this to get off the ground. I fear that wifi will always remain a niche technology.
Member since:
2005-10-09
The biggest issue I see with the OpenMoko is the fact that it will be 2.5G at best (plain GPRS, not even EDGE). What's the point of such a fancy phone with such slow network access?
From their site: http://www.openmoko.com/press/index.html#preliminary_specification
Hardware
* 120.7 x 62 x 18.5 (mm)
* 2.8" VGA (480x640) TFT Screen
* Samsung s3c2410 SoC
* Global Locate AGPS chip
* Ti GPRS (2.5G not EDGE)
* Unpowered USB 1.1
* Touchscreen
* micro-sd slot
* 2.5mm audio jack
* 2 buttons
* 1200 mAh battery (charged over USB)
* 128 MB SDRAM
* 64 MB NAND Flash