Wireless Archive

Some impressive new stuff from Amazon today. Great hardware, good price points, and, unlike Nokia, Amazon opens up pre-orders right away and gives us shipping dates. Still, I would personally advice waiting with buying one until you can replace Amazon's Frankendroid with Cyanogenmod or something.

If there's one thing I miss in the current smartphone industry, it's design. Honest to good, real design. We basically see one boring slab after another, void of any true identity, whether it's iPhone, Samsung, or any of the others. In this boring world of grey, black, and the occasional white, Nokia is the jester, coming up with its own unique designs and crazy colour selection. Today, the company unveiled the Lumia 920 and 820 to continue this trend.

The announcement says: "The Beta release is comprised of 54 webOS components available as opensource. This brings over 450,000 lines of code released under the Apache 2.0 license, which is one of the most liberal and accepted in the open source community." Now it's time to get this stuff up and running on modern devices. I suggest the Galaxy SII. Not out of self-interest or anything, by the way.

Where can I order? "Nokia's new flagship Windows Phone 8 device has been leaked today, revealed as the Lumia 920. Posted to Twitter by Evleaks, the Lumia 920 appears to include a PureView camera that the company has been hinting at in recent weeks. Codenamed the Phi, Nokia's Lumia 920 is said to include a 4.5-inch display and will likely be available in a number of colors judging by the leaked image." Yes miss, the red one please. No, no need to wrap it, don't need bag - I'll have ripped open the box before I go through the door.

"Jolla, the mobile startup staffed by former Nokia executives who want to keep the company's MeeGo software alive, says it will use existing technology to bring in apps from other platforms - including Android. Will it be enough to boost the plucky company's fortunes?" It won't be a saving grace, but it's a nice bonus. There's something about these guys that fills me with confidence. Can't wait for their devices to hit the market.

As Sammobile reports: "Samsung will not bring any kind of new Bada phones in the second half of 2012. Samsung's latest bada phones showed up last year at IFA 2011 in Berlin. Samsung showed the Wave3, Wave M and Wave Y, all those devices run on Bada version 2.0. The focus of Samsung in the second half of 2012 is fully on Windows Phone 8 and Android. Because the Windows Phone market is in the hands of Nokia they will try to get that share back. Samsung will also try to make their Android position better than before. Thanks to some new Galaxy products in the second half of 2012. Another sad thing is Samsung moved their first TIZEN OS devices to 2013. Samsung already gave away some developers devices with TIZEN 1.0. The only problem is the support from TIZEN itself." Tizen was a lost cause to begin with, and Bada, while actually pretty good, can easily be replaced by Android. As much as it sucks to lose two operating systems (don't kid yourselves - these are EOL messages), it makes sense from a business perspective. Next up: the TouchWiz team.

For me, the two most interesting products in the operating system space to look forward to are Windows 8 (due to just how different it is), and BlackBerry OS 10. BlackBerry? Yes, and it's simple to see why. The BlackBerry Playbook, while not the most successful tablet, seems to be loved almost universally by its users, which bodes well for BB OS 10. On top of that, it's based on QNX, which is some major brownie points right there. The company has released information on which resolutions the operating system will support.

You'll want to see this. "A teardown chronological history of PDA Organisers spanning 17 years: 1986 Psion II Organiser, 1996 Palm Pilot 5000, 2003 HP iPAQ 5550." Very thorough teardowns of the hardware, detailing all the chips and other on-board parts. Hardware porn, basically. Great work by David L. Jones.

One of the major patents being discussed in the Apple vs. Samsung cases all around the world is inertia scrolling. Apple claims to have invented it, but in fact, Sun was working on a PDA in the early '90s called the Star7, which had inertia scrolling. In a demonstration posted to YouTube, you can see this device in action, including the touch screen inertial scrolling. James Gosling (yup, that one), the narrator of the video, even mentions it specifically. This looks like a case of prior art for this patent, and serves to demonstrate that, no, despite all these grandiose claims, Apple did not invent this at all, which further illustrates the complete and utter lunacy of the patent system in the software world. The Star7's interface is reminiscent of Microsoft Bob, and makes me want to forcefully introduce my head to my recently-painted walls. Still, it's an interesting device; 1992 is when the first fully touchscreen PDA was released (the Tandy Zoomer, by what would eventually become Palm), and a year before the Newton arrived on the scene. Luckily for us, the Star7 never made it to market. That interface gives me nightmares...

"I decided to write this post after having too many heated discussions with many users across many blogs. After hearing repeatedly; 'The iPad will have a better display' or 'It sucks because it's not Retina' I figured it was time to break the argument down and dispel the 'Retina' myth." Fantastic post at The Verge.

"It'll be a full x86 device - Lenovo calls a 'joint effort' with Intel and Microsoft - that clocks in at 1.3 pounds with a 10.1-inch 1366 x 768 display. It's billed to have 10-hour battery life, which would be impressive for a device only 9.8mm thick. The standard model is Wi-Fi-only, but there will also be carrier versions including one with AT&T's LTE connectivity." If you see a 1366x768 resolution on a 10.1" display, they blew it.

"Over the past couple weeks, we've read a number of bedtimes stories about RIM's next move. They all start with the same trope: once upon a time, late last century, Apple was on the edge of the precipice and still managed to come back - and how! Today, RIM's situation isn't nearly as dire as Apple's was then. Unlike Apple, it doesn’t need a cash transfusion and, in the words of Thorsten Heins, RIM's new CEO: 'If you look at the platform it's still growing, if you look at the devices we've got a single phone that's sold 45 million units.' RIM will pull off an Apple-like rebound and live happily ever after. Equating RIM 2012 with Apple 1997 is, in so many respects, delusional. Let me count the ways."

Another batch of open source webOS components released - but there's some bad news. "For Open webOS we are aiming for support on future hardware platforms where SoC's support Linux 3.3+ kernel and where open source replacements for proprietary components are integrated. Existing devices cannot be supported because of those many proprietary components, including graphics, networking and lack of drivers for a modern kernel (but of course, there is the Community Edition for those interested in improving the TouchPad)." So, which future hardware platforms? They must have something in mind, right?

It might be a cliche, but sometimes, a picture says more than a thousand words. Over the years, I've often talked about how the technology world is iterative, about how products are virtually always built upon that which came before, about how almost always, multiple people independently arrive at the same products since they work within the same constraints of the current state of technology. This elementary aspect of the technology world, which some would rather forget, has been illustrated very, very well in one of Samsung's legal filings against Apple.