Wireless Archive

The Galaxy Note confirms it: people want larger screens

Thom Holwerda 2012-03-29 Wireless 172 Comments

Over the years, one thing has been very hard to grasp for some people: the fact that people want smartphones with 4.0"+ screens. These 'some people' seem to believe that because Apple chose a 3.5" display, any display size that isn't 3.5" is wrong. Keep that in mind when you read Samsung's latest little communiquÃ©: the Korean giant has sold (not shipped, sold) more than 5 million Galaxy Notes. Which has a 5.3" screen.

The iPad wins because Android tablet applications suck

Thom Holwerda 2012-03-27 Wireless 35 Comments

"I just gave the new iPad an Editors' Choice award for large tablets, but frankly it was a foregone conclusion. The iPad doesn't get the award because of its hardware, lovely as the hardware is. It gets the award because its apps are generally better than the apps available for Android tablets." The laptop gap may have been closed, but the tablet gap sure hasn't.

Nano-SIM war: here’s what Apple, Nokia want to put in phones

Thom Holwerda 2012-03-26 Wireless 37 Comments

"Last week, Apple and Nokia got into a very public dust-up over the future of the SIM card - a staple in phones all around the world - thanks to a Financial Times article pointing out that the two had filed competing proposals with the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) for the so-called 'fourth form factor (4FF) UICC', more commonly known as the 'nano-SIM'. The nano-SIM proposals seek to standardize a new SIM card that would be even smaller than the current micro-SIM popularized by the iPhone, freeing precious extra millimeters inside the phone's chassis for more circuitry, more battery capacity, and slimmer profiles. We've now had a chance to see the original proposals for the nano-SIM standard from Apple, Nokia, and RIM, and we have a better idea on what the ETSI will be voting on later this week."

The current state of styli and the iPad: does the stylus still blow it?

Thom Holwerda 2012-03-23 Wireless 21 Comments

"Reading Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, it can be argued the creative catalyst for the iPad was not Jobs himself, nor Apple design wizard Jony Ive, but instead some Microsoft engineer who talked too much at parties. At least that's how Steve Jobs told it from 2002. 'But he was doing the device all wrong. It had a stylus. As soon as you have a stylus, you're dead. This dinner was like the tenth time he talked to me about it, and I was so sick of it that I came home and said, "Fuck it, let's show him what a tablet can really be".' Apocryphal dinner story or not, Apple did indeed show Microsoft how tablets are done, and attempted to bury the stylus in doing so. However, a decade later and just after the launch of the new iPad, it turns out the stylus isn't dead at all. In fact, it's getting better."

The Apple of today and the IBM of 1989

Thom Holwerda 2012-03-23 Wireless 103 Comments

I'm currently reading Jerry Kaplan's excellent book "Startup: a Silicon Valley adventure". In this book, Kaplan, founder and CEO of GO Corp., details the founding, financing and eventual demise of his highly innovative company, including the development and workings of their product. What's so surprising about this book is just how timeless it really is - the names and products may have changed, but the business practices and company attitudes surely haven't.

Android Ice Cream Sandwich alpha released for Nokia N9

Thom Holwerda 2012-03-22 Wireless 4 Comments

Are you one of those lucky bastards who own a Nokia N9, yet are suffering from the mother of all first world problems - beautiful smartphone, but want a different operating system? Your prayers have been heard: an alpha release of Android 4.0.3 for the N9. Here's a video, and here's the instructions on how to get it working.

Submitted by gogothebee 2012-03-21 Wireless 8 Comments

"Good news, open source enthusiasts: as they've done with pretty much every one of the Android phones and updates, Samsung has posted the open source code for the Ice Cream Sandwich version of the Galaxy S II's operating system. While the update itself is only available in Europe and South Korea, any international version of the i9100 can apply it, and with the open source code ROM builders and other modders will be able to do more advanced ports and advanced ROMs."

App ads suck battery; does that make it okay to block them?

Thom Holwerda 2012-03-20 Wireless 55 Comments

Because I've been spending days browsing through XDA, reading CM changelogs, and flashing nightly builds, I'm still in an Android state of mind, so excuse me for more talk on the subject. An interesting study has been performed which found that advertisements in Android applications are a huge battery drain - they account for up to 75% of an application's battery usage.

CyanogenMod 9 alpha puts Samsung to shame

Thom Holwerda 2012-03-18 Wireless 79 Comments

This past week and this weekend I've finally found the time to enter into the colorful world of custom Android ROMs. After figuring out just how insanely great and awesome ClockWorkMod Recovery is, I set about to figure out what the best Ice Cream Sandwich ROM is for the Galaxy SII. While the answer to that question became clear quite quickly, this answer also gave rise to a whole bunch of other questions.

CM9 to have root disabled by default, can easily be re-enabled

Thom Holwerda 2012-03-17 Wireless 22 Comments

Due to their very nature, custom Android ROMs have root enabled by default. Up until relatively recently, installing custom Android ROMs was a thing geeks did, and as such, this wasn't much of a problem. However, over the past few days, I've found out just how easy installing custom ROMs and modifying them really is (I'm running this one until CyanogenMod 9 is ready for the SII), and it seems like more and more regular users are engaging in the practice as well. Suddenly, having root enabled becomes a security liability.

Testing Netflix on Android

Thom Holwerda 2012-03-14 Wireless 8 Comments

Netflix talks about what it's like developing and testing their Android application. Biggest surprise? They pay specific attention to making sure the applications runs well on popular custom ROMs such as CyaogenMod. Pretty awesome. Now, if only Samsung, HTC, and so on, could do so as well.

Samsung begins ICS rollout to Galaxy SII

Thom Holwerda 2012-03-13 Wireless 42 Comments

A big day today for 20 million Android users out there: Samsung has started the process of updating the Galaxy SII to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Sadly, only a few European countries and South Korea will get it this week, although you can flash the official ROM yourself if you so desire (like I did today). Sadlier sadly, its TouchWiz is virtually identical to that of Gingerbread. Update: This is what HTC is doing to Ice Cream Sandwich. And I thought TouchWiz was bad. Please... Just - stop. Stop it. Stop doing this. Go away.

Next Android OS Called Jelly Bean

David Adams 2012-03-05 Wireless 4 Comments

It's definitely a few months away from being released, but Google has plans for the next mobile Android operating system on the table. It will be called "Jelly Bean", which follows the alphabetic naming monikers previous such as Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich. The version will likely be 'Android 5.0', according to a comment made by Hiroshi Lockheimer, Google VP of engineering, who stated "After Android 4 comes 5, and we haven’t announced the timing yet, which we’re still sorting out. There’s a lot of engineering work behind it still, and there’s also just the question of how to time it"

Submitted by BloopFloop 2012-03-05 Wireless 1 Comment

There were lots of rumors and leaks indicate that Microsoft will use NT kernel as the operating system of Windows Phone 8 'Apollo'. Now we see some real hard evidence inside Windows 8 Consumer Preview bits. There is a string says 'PhoneNT' inside the binary image of NT kernel: ntoskrnl.exe file. Apparently its a new 'ProductType' of NT system. We've seen 'WinNT'/'ServerNT'/'LanmanNT'/'EmbeddedNT' before, and will see 'PhoneNT' in the future.

Ars Spots iOS 6 in Its Logs

David Adams 2012-03-03 Wireless 6 Comments

Are employees at Apple already using the so-called iPad 3â€”possibly running iOS 6â€”to surf the Web ahead of its expected announcement on March 7? We're not sure, but the Ars magic 8-ball says "signs point to yes."

Guest post by Elv13 2012-02-26 Wireless 18 Comments

"Don't expect RIM to open source its entire operating system, or its radio stack. But the original smartphone company is gambling its future success on open source, and it has an expert on board to help. Mary Branscombe asked Senior Technical Director for Open Software, Eduardo Pelegri Llopart, where open source fits in at RIM."

If Android is a ‘stolen product’, then so was the iPhone

Thom Holwerda 2012-02-23 Wireless 51 Comments

"Jobs called Android a 'stolen product', but theft can be a tricky concept when talking about innovation. The iPhone didn't emerge fully formed from Jobs's head. Rather, it represented the culmination of incremental innovation over decades - much of which occurred outside of Cupertino." Nothing particularly new in there for regular OSNews readers, but still handy to have it in one place.

Submitted by tupp 2012-02-22 Wireless 19 Comments

Lukas Mathis touts many webOS features that he wants other vendors to steal. All this stuff just makes me more sad I never got to try webOS on anything because nobody gives a rat's bum about The Netherlands. WebOS never came to market here. Especially its multitasking with cards looks so much more elegant than the horrible "multi"tasking implementations on Android and iOS. Hopeful note: Matias Duarte now heads the UX team for Android.

PlayBook OS 2.0 released

Thom Holwerda 2012-02-21 Wireless 19 Comments

Research In Motion has just released version 2.0 of their QNX-based PlayBook operating system. This long-awaited update could be seen as making the PlayBook feature-complete, bringing things like a native email client to RIM's 7" tablet.

Open webOS to be governed according to the Apache model

Thom Holwerda 2012-02-15 Wireless 19 Comments

"Last week, I promised you an outline of the webOS governance model. Today, we're publishing that model and announcing the leaders of the Project Management Committees. As you will see below, we've based the model on the Apache Way." Open governance, something Android decidedly lacks. Too bad nobody (with money and factories) seems to give a toss about webOS. The world's an unfair place.