"For a seventh consecutive month, the Samsung Galaxy S III is the most popular smartphone in the United Kingdom. The data compiled by uSwitch is based on live searches, pre-orders, as well as postpaid sales. Curiously, Apple's current smartphone flagship is not even second. The iPhone 5 is outperformed by its predecessor, whose lower price and improved contract offers helped it remain appealing. The Samsung Galaxy S II completes the quartet at the top. The rest of the top ten smartphones is entirely an Android party. It includes the Google Nexus 4, who entered the rankings a solid fifth. The second half of the top ten includes the Samsung Galaxy Ace, Samsung Galaxy Note 2, Sony Xperia U, HTC One X, as well as the Samsung Galaxy Ace 2." This is getting ridiculous, and it's not good for the market. For the love of Fiona, people, buy something that's not Android. I don't want to live in an Android-dominated smartphone world.
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Member since:2006-05-30
Member since:2006-02-25
Member since:2005-07-06
I had one and would recommend against it. The hardware is fine but the apps are flaky to say the least.
The browser is painfully slow
The Facebook app crashes regularly and has a noticable typing lag (not present in other apps)
Installing some android apps does help, but they dont take advantage of QNX's multitasking which negates any benefits...
I chucked mine on Ebay
Member since:2005-07-11
Yes, absolutely. I initially bought my 64GB PlayBook from Currys for £269 and it was a great buy even at that price. At current prices, they are a steal. (I now also have a 32GB one and bought a 16GB one for a friend)
Anyway I bought it to hold my music collection - I did not really think I'd use it for anything else as I also have an iPhone and iPad. Now though it is with me all the time. Music, videos, email, calendar, contacts, games, ssh/tenet client, etc etc. *love it*
The browser can indeed be slow although mine is usually fine, but it's also incredibly accurate at rendering and supports Flash which is still a useful thing to support for many sites.
The 3rd party app catalogue is now much, much healthier than it was a year ago. Games in particular seem to be plentiful (eg I have recently bought Galaxy on Fire 2 HD, Lara Croft, Angry Birds Space, etc etc). The new and updated Lords of Midnight game is being released simultaneously on iOS and PlayBook, before even Android, so some devs see it as a good bet. Some core apps ars still missing though: Skype being the main one for me. And I'd love 1Password on there too.
The UI is fantastic - swipe gestures do pretty much everything and are learnt in about 2 minutes flat. Once you use them for a while, the button-based interface seems so archaic. Best of all though, RIM have said that BB10 will be available as an update for the existing PlayBook line.
Hardware wise it is nothing special perhaps by the cutting edge of today, but the screen is excellent and crisp, there is strong and very good stereo sound, excellent front and rear cameras and HDMI out. I don't currently have a Blackberry phone (don't like OS 7) but I will probably switch from iPhone to BB10 next year and get a nicely integrated system (BB Bridge allows using the PlayBook to send messages, the phone to be used as a remote control when outputting a movie via HDMI and so forth.
Also I prefer the 7" form factor to our iPad, which I almost never now pick up.
Having said all that, if you already happen to have a 7" tablet, It's maybe not worth it. Except it is! 
Member since:2005-07-06
After the death of stagnating Amiga (devs and users never really went beyond the 500-generation), the economies of scale in Wintel ecosystem brought rapid improvement, great offers, much more powerful hardware in affordable prices.
I happen to be from a place where Amiga 1) was quite popular 2) lived longer than in the Western Europe. Its tightly coupled software & hardware is what killed it in the end. When it finally died at the end of the 90s (here), replaced by PCs, you could almost hear "finally!"...
So if again - this time in mobile - we'll have a death of old-style limited platforms, and great offers from the economies of scale, I'm all for it.
Edited 2012-12-11 23:42 UTC
The day has finally come! Jolla has finally announced the launch device for its Sailfish operating system - and by god this is a looker. It's decidedly different from other phones out there, but it has good specifications and carries a relatively reasonably price tag - EUR 399, and it's up for pre-order today, shipping in the fourth quarter of this year.
Why does Google get so much credit in the technology industry? Why, despite the company's many obvious failings, do many geeks and enthusiasts still hold a somewhat positive view on the all-knowing technology giant? A specific talk at Google I/O this week provides the answer.
OSNews is a sponsor of this year's O'Reilly OSCON in Portland, Oregon, USA. A lucky OSNews reader will win a free three-day pass, including two tutorials days. To win the pass, post a comment on this story saying something about Open Source Software or OSCON. We'll pick a winner at random next week. If you don't have an OSNews account, you may email us your entry. Part of the conference is the 9th annual Open Source Awards, and today the 16th is the deadline for nominations. If you'd like to nominate an outstanding open source contributor, do it here. Read on for more information about OSCON. Update: The 20% discount code for OSNews readers is "OSN."
"Windows is indeed slower than other operating systems in many scenarios, and the gap is worsening." That's one way to start an insider explanation of why Windows' performance isn't up to snuff. Written by someone who actually contributes code to the Windows NT kernel, the comment on Hacker News, later deleted but reposted with permission on Marc Bevand's blog, paints a very dreary picture of the state of Windows development. The root issue? Think of how Linux is developed, and you'll know the answer.
This is one of those news items that's fun to write, fun to read, fun to comment on, and where no one will be able to say anything unkind. It's all just one big ball of awesome fluffiness. TuneTracker, the BeOS radio automation software, has just released something very special: TuneTracker System 5, the first version designed entirely and specifically for Haiku. In fact, it actually includes Haiku in the software package. Better yet, TuneTracker also unveiled several system-in-a-box products - which have Haiku and TuneTracker pre-installed.
Exactly twenty years ago, a document was published that played a huge role in establishing the web as we know it today. Twenty years later, and this simple and straightforward document is proof of an irrefutable fact: while closed technologies can change markets, open technologies can change the world.Oh multitasking. That staple of computing that got thrown out the window with many modern smartphones. We got some rudimentary thing in its place - but even as multitasking on phone and tablets improves, its user-visible side remains cumbersome. Windows 8 has a neat implementation, and now it's time Android follows in it footsteps.They're here! Whether that excites you or not remains to be seen, but the Galaxy S4, which will most likely become the best selling Android smartphone of the year by a huge margin, has been reviewed by all the major sites, and there's lots of interesting conclusions in there - although I think most of you will get the gist.Nokia has posted its quarterly results for the first quarter of 2013, and just like the quarters that came before, there's not a whole lot of good news in there. The rise in Lumia sales still can't even dream of making up for the sales drop in Symbian phones, and when broken down in versions, the sales figures for Windows Phone 8 Lumias in particular are very disappointing. In North America, Nokia is getting slaughtered.The day has finally come: Google has started shipping Google Glass to the lucky few early adopters. Now that it's shipping, Google has also unveiled a lot more about the API and the specifications of the device itself. While the company had already given out substantial details at earlier occasions, there are still a few surprises here.
Member since:
2011-01-09
I agree. One dominating mobile platform is Windows all over again. After the death of Amiga, computers became kinda boring really.
Well, i'm lining up for a Firefox phone. Or a BlackBerry. Whichever comes first.
I tried the BB tablet and was sold. That thing is snappy as hell. And that was 6 months ago.
/Uni
Edited 2012-12-04 10:29 UTC