Wireless Archive

A new wrinkle in the update and fragmentation story emerged today. AndroidSpin is quoting an unnamed T-Mobile employee as saying that the carrier is being told not to release the Android 2.2 update (Froyo) to customers that own the Samsung Vibrant. The reason: to increase sales of the new Vibrant 4G.

While everybody outside of the US has been able to mix and match iPhone and wireless operator, the iPhone was still tied to a single carrier in the US. Today, Verizon and Apple announced the much-hyped Verizon iPhone 4. While the rest of the world collectively yawns, this is good news for American consumers, since there will be more competition, and thus, more choice. Edit: Eh, the other way around. First choice, then competition.

I'm not interested in summing up all the boatloads of tablet news coming out of CES this year, so I'll just point you towards Engadget, Gizmodo, or whatever's your favourite gadget website. The gist? Everybody is unveiling tablets at CES.

"HP has just issued an invitation to the press for a webOS event in San Francisco on February 9th. The minimal email asks attendees to 'Think Big. Think Small. Think Beyond.' -- and that definitely sounds like a multi-product launch to us. If we were betting types, we'd put money on a phone (perhaps rumors we've been hearing about the 'world's smallest' smartphone will turn out to be true), a tablet, and lots of talk about the future of webOS. One thing missing? The name Palm. Looks like that brand could be on the way out."

"Samsung Electronics Co., the world's second-largest maker of wireless handsets, said it met a sales target for its most popular smartphone as the company seeks to narrow the gap with Apple Inc.'s iPhone. Samsung sold 10 million units of the Galaxy S model in 2010 after introducing the device in June, the company said in an e-mailed statement today."

While bored today, I decided to take a look at getting MeeGo running on the HTC HD2.

After a pre-order launch which left much to be desired, resulting in Android Police calling them a scam, Notion Ink have decided to amend themselves by giving up on secrecy and releasing more information on their upcoming tablet, Adam. Originally planned for the product's unveiling at the upcoming CES, these blog posts go into more detail about the software running on top of their product, called "Eden". Note from Kroc: Readers please also welcome OSNews user Neolander (Hadrien) as the new OSNews editor!

I have often wondered why there wasn't a flood of Android portable media players - now the WSJ Reports: "With the move, Samsung will round out a series of Galaxy-named gadgets that matches product for product with Apple Inc.'s line of iPods, iPad and iPhone. Samsung will have the Galaxy Player, Galaxy Tab and Galaxy smartphone. All use a variation of Google Inc.'s Android operating system and work with apps developed for it."

RIM had a complete internal panic when Apple unveiled the iPhone in 2007, a former employee revealed this weekend. . . "Imagine their surprise when they disassembled an iPhone for the first time and found that the phone was battery with a tiny logic board strapped to it."

"The team behind the popular open-source video player VLC is busy working on an Android app, which could be released in early 2011. Lead VLC developer Jean-Baptiste Kempf told me on Thursday that it will be 'a matter of weeks' until the release of the first VLC app for Android-based mobile devices."

Steve Ballmer has promised us Windows 7 tablets in time for Christmas, and this is just what where going to get. Say hello to the ExoPC. The ExoPC, a Windows 7 tablet, is to be sold in partnership with Microsoft straight from its Windows store. The ExoPC is the first of many ushering in a wave of new Wintel tablets.

It's hard to predict the future because we humans prefer to think in terms of familiar paradigms. Even the most brilliant of our species are subject to this flaw. Now, Microsoft faces its turn. The owner of the operating system that likely runs your personal computer, the company that achieved monopoly with Windows and ducked the Department of Justice's scythe to keep it, faces a midlife crisis as the world goes gaga over portable consumer devices. This is the story of what's happening to Microsoft in the handheld operating system markets -- and how it parallels the earlier, similar journeys of IBM Corporation and Digital Equipment Corporation. Can Microsoft achieve dominance on mobile devices?

"At D:Dive Into Mobile this evening, Waterloo's outspoken co-CEO went on record that they'll be taking the PlayBook's QNX platform to smartphones just 'as soon as dual core baseband CPUs', though power consumption remains a limiting factor. At any rate, RIM seems to be fully acknowledging now both that QNX is a little too beefy for today's smartphones and that BlackBerry OS isn't quite beefy enough, which leaves these guys in a bit of a pinch until the dual-core revolution takes hold." It's clear QNX isn't Engadget's forte (I don't blame them - I know jack-all about gadgets compared to them), but of course, we know better. QNX itself will happily run on current-gen mobile phones; heck, even a simple PII will do the job. The problem here is most likely BlackBerry's own userland.

"Symbian Foundation has started dismantling itself. On Dec.17 the organization will shut down its websites, and anyone who wants to get the source code for the current version of the Symbian mobile operating system should download it now or they will have to pay for a copy to be shipped on physical media in the future, its website. Nokia will take over development of Symbian OS, the company said on Nov. 8. The Symbian Foundation will become a licensing operation only."