Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 19th Nov 2010 22:33 UTC, submitted by Governa
Well, this is fascinating. There have been rumours going around for a while now that Apple is working with Gemalto on an integrated sim card, allowing customers to choose their own carrier and then activate the phone through Apple. European mobile phone carriers aren't particularly pleased with this.
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RE[5]: Then I'll go with a different provider
by Ford Prefect on Sat 20th Nov 2010 21:06
in reply to "RE[4]: Then I'll go with a different provider"
Member since:2006-01-16
RE[6]: Then I'll go with a different provider
by kaiwai on Sun 21st Nov 2010 03:07
in reply to "RE[5]: Then I'll go with a different provider"
Member since:2005-07-06
It is the same in Germany. Sim lock is only used for pre-paid plans, where you can opt out at any time by simply not loading new money onto the phone.
The data plans an iphone ships with are not affected by that.
The data plans an iphone ships with are not affected by that.
Even for prepaid's in New Zealand you purchase the phone out right and it isn't SIM locked - of course the $99 phones are the very low end Nokia phones designed for third world markets but if you really want a cheap phone that you fully own it is quite easy. Personally I'd sooner see all phones lose their subsidies and then when you sign up for a contract you get a rebate based on how long the contract is for - for example a 24 month contract might yield a $200 rebate effectively making some phones free.
RE[5]: Then I'll go with a different provider
by phoenix on Sun 21st Nov 2010 04:19
in reply to "RE[4]: Then I'll go with a different provider"
Member since:2005-07-11
"Presently telcos lock you in with their SIM for the period of the contract - the device is locked to their SIM.
New Zealand and Australia are two countries I know of which have contract phones but don't have SIM card locks - just because you have a contract doesn't mean that it has to have the SIM card locked because you're still going to have to keep paying the contract even if you destroyed the mobile phone or moved the sim from one device to another device. "
Canada is the same way, at least with GSM phones.
Telus and Bell, with their old CDMA phone, locked the phone number to the phone to the contract requiring lots of hoop-jumping and paperwork to swap phones mid-contract.
Rogers, though, the phone number is locked to the SIM and nothing else. What you do with the SIM is up to you. Nothing stops you from popping the SIM out of one phone, popping it into another phone, and making calls/transferring data as per normal. We've even used that to transfer phone books between phones when the wife has lost her phone. We regularly trade phones when hers is in the shop, so that I use the crappy loaner.
Don't know how Telus/Bell GMS/HSPA SIMs work, or how any of the PAYG companies work with SIM cards.
I've never understood the reasoning for keeping the SIM card internal to the phone, or locking a specific SIM to a specific card.
RE[6]: Then I'll go with a different provider
by Piranha on Tue 23rd Nov 2010 17:22
in reply to "RE[5]: Then I'll go with a different provider"
Member since:2008-06-24
I've NEVER experienced what you're talking about with Bell/Telus when switching phones mid contract.
I had gone through about 10 phones on the CDMA network. You can call into 611 and a rep will swap it (free, if you sweet talk them). They also have an online site to do it - but it costs $10.
It still sucks, but you're by no means locked to a single phone for your contract.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 13:17 UTC
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 12:06 UTC
"According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.More News »
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2005-07-06
New Zealand and Australia are two countries I know of which have contract phones but don't have SIM card locks - just because you have a contract doesn't mean that it has to have the SIM card locked because you're still going to have to keep paying the contract even if you destroyed the mobile phone or moved the sim from one device to another device. The idea that some how the business model is destroyed because of the lack of SIM lock in simply ignores how a contract operates and the fact that you keep paying regardless of whether you use *THAT* particular phone you pay for. If you want to get out of that contract then you have to pay to get out of it - normally paying the difference between the full price and subsidised price plus a small penalty.