Wireless Archive

"Yesterday I did my last look at the past, about how the decision was made by Nokia to terminate its smartphone OS platforms etc. That is all water under the bridge. There is no going back. Time to look into the future. And while my instant reaction on Twitter may have been a bit hasty and negative about Nokia-Microsoft partnership for smartphones, I have now done my first full, comprehensive analysis of its near term potential. And I am sorry to tell you, I was too optimistic over the weekend. It is far worse. I will go through every relevant part and analyze it. So lets look at 2011 and beyond, for Nokisoft Microkia."

"While Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop has steered the company into a Microsoft future, not everyone is happy about it. Workers have walked out in Finland, and now a group of shareholders is planning a new strategy called "Nokia Plan B". The new plan has been formulated by a group of young Nokia shareholders who all have experience working for the company. None of them are happy with the decision to embrace Microsoft, and all of them plan to challenge the decision and strategy going forward."

"There was a piece of news that didn't happen to get mentioned at last night's developer event. HP has made a donation to a charity on behalf of the WebOS Internals homebrew group that is valued at over $10,000. A few weeks ago, it became clear that future growth in webOS would outpace the server infrastructure that WebOS Internals currently has in place. They were going to need some beefy hardware to keep up with the demands of acting as the a central repository for webOS homebrew apps, patches, and kernels. So they asked HP's Phil McKinney, who has arranged to donate an HP Proliant DL385 2u server with 32 gigs of RAM and 8 terabytes of disk space. They made the decision a few weeks ago and the server is en route." Very welcome news. Like Palm before it, HP gets it.

A lot of people are wondering why Nokia didn't choose to go with Android. How can Nokia differentiate themselves when Android is a lot more open and free than Windows Phone 7? As usual, the key to this is in the details. If you read the announcements carefully, you'll see that Microsoft offered Nokia something Google most likely didn't. Update: What a surprise. Elop just confirmed Nokia has a special deal with Microsoft. Whereas HTC, Samsung, and so on are not allowed to customise WP7 - Nokia is, further confirming my theory.

It was HP/Palm's - or, as I sould say, HP's - big day today. After a period of silence, the company unveiled three new webOS products - two phones, and a tablet. The Veer, a small but capable 'mini-Pre', the Pre 3, an updated version of the Pre with a 1.4Ghz processor, and finally, finally, finally, the webOS tablet: the HP TouchPad.

Here's some very interesting analysis of why dropping Symbian or MeeGo for Android or Windows Phone 7 would be the closest thing to brand suicide which Nokia could do now.

"Sprint wants you to believe that two screens are better than one. Its new Android-powered smartphone, the Echo, will feature two touchscreen surfaces in a hinged design. Made by Japanese electronics manufacturer Kyocera, the phone’s dual 3.5-inch WVGA screens can be operated independent of one another or combine in 'tablet mode' to add up to a single 4.7-inch integrated display (albeit one with a hinge in the middle)."

Remember last week, when we talked about the rumours that Research In Motion might bring Android application compatibility to its new QNX-based mobile operating system? Well, while the following news seems to have nothing to do with RIM, it does show it's possible to bring Android application compatibility to other platforms. Myriad has announced Alien Dalvik, which allows Android applications to run on other platforms at comparable speed.

Is it really going to happen? Will we see one of the more momentous announcements in the tech world next week? The web's been abuzz about Nokia possibly adopting Windows Phone 7 for a number of handsets, and now even The New York Times has chimed in - at which point it might be time to start taking the rumours seriously.

"Nokia has temporarily closed the MeeGo-themed branch of its Qt Quick components project. Hartz says that moving behind closed doors is a temporary measure and that the code will be published as soon as the developers are permitted to do so. Although the situation is a little bit frustrating for developers, it's arguably an extremely positive sign that Nokia is getting close to finally delivering a MeeGo product."

Well, most of us knew this moment would come, with the only debate left being when this moment would come. Market analyst firm Canalys keeps track of worldwide smartphone shipments, and has concluded that in the fourth quarter of 2010, more Android smartphones were sold than Symbian phones. After a decade of supremacy, the Symbian dominance has been toppled (according to these figures, of course).

Well, this is interesting. Research In Motion is hard at work on its PlayBook tablet, as well as on its new mobile operating system, for the device based on QNX. It's no secret that RIM intends to deliver some form of backwards compatibility for its older BlackBarryOS applications. And that's where a golden opportunity arises.

After the infamous announcement by one of Motorola's YouTube channel moderators that those wanting custom ROMs should "buy elsewhere", it seems that Motorola's PR department has taken control back: "We apologize for the feedback we provided regarding our bootloader policy. The response does not reflect the views of Motorola. We are working closely with our partners to offer a bootloader solution that will enable developers to use our devices as a development platform while still protecting our users' interests. More detailed information will follow as we get closer to availability."

The major U.S. wireless carriers now all have services that, while not 4G under the strictest definition, provide broadband-level speeds without wires. So why not cut the cord entirely and have one broadband connection wherever you go? Here's a look at where 4G coverage is available, what real-world connectivity is like, and how much it will cost you.