Posts by Paul Shirley

a UI so dumbed down it works on all devices?

I'm still struggling to understand why anyone thinks the same UI is a good idea on all sizes of device.

I control my mobile with a thumb and occasional pair of fingers for zooming, that works because the phones in my hand in thumbing distance. Reaching out to the monitor just over an arms length in front of me really doesn't work for me, too much fatigue even if I could reach the screen comfortably. The standard joypad on a console is just a non starter and a mouse on PC or console cant replicate multitouch... do you really want a UI so dumbed down it can cope with all those problems on different platforms?

Kinect might seem the answer, but I'm holding my phone with at least 1 hand so that's half the control missing!

the SD card isn't dumb storage or meant for swapping

The way Android handles SD makes swapping cards a theoretical possibility that no-one would ever actually except for SD size or phone upgrades. So much app data ends up on the card your phone breaks without it, syncing between swaps is time consuming and almost impossible on the road.

Right now the SD card is not dumb storage expansion. That could be changed for devices with large onboard flash but don't hold your breath - or choose a device with a slot and hack it yourself.

O2 are no better

O2 have the same problems with backhaul and worse coverage in my travels. In the 50% of my city I can get a 3G or Edge signal at all it rarely delivers even GPRS throughput, took 10minutes to load a single BBC weather page (mobile version!) yesterday.

I don't know which network is worse, the difference seems more about exactly where the black and brown spots are. Though O2 appear to have no detectable rural coverage in much of the midlands and south west...

Like the others I also carry a 3 SIM to fill in the holes.

Current NoScript also blocks Java,Flash,Silverlight and a metric tonne of other stuff. Try to keep up!

The potential problem with "3" is lack of 2G coverage where they think 3G is good enough to disable the roaming to 2G. Which can be a serious problem with the piss poor performance of 3G in buildings.

Other than that though O2 is still playing catchup on 3G coverage and "3" has given more consistent coverage than O2 for me for the last 2 years. It's amazing how often I pull the phone out in pubs, get no signal and the staff automatically assume I'm on O2!

You should definitely try to test coverage where you expect to use it but O2 has let me down a lot more than "3" so far.

However... I assume you have acceptable O2 coverage now so you have another option, get a SIM free iPhone and switch to giffgaff. A painful £500+ now but if you can make use of their pseudo contract bundles it's a no-brainer for data hungry phones. Just annoying they've given up on PAYG and the service is pretty bare bones, both in supported products and actual customer support.

It's worse than that, the innovation that has escaped from MSFT is all reactionary, desperate scrambling to stop others taking their customers. Biggest example: C# may be a better language than the steaming pile Java is but it exists only because MSFT tried and failed to subvert Java, it's the reaction to Java.

Microsoft copies their competition and reserves innovation as the icing on those copies.

QuinnDexter: "consumers care more about the fact that it's a Samsung or LG or Sony Ericsson"

HTC & LG sell WP7 phones (Samsung just joined up) yet WP7 sales are still hovering around 2%. Apart from Apple (and Nokia in the near future) the manufacturer and the OS on the phone are orthogonal choices. People are choosing Samsung *and* Android, HTC *and* Android, LG *and* Android... they're conspicuously not choosing WP7, Bada, Meego, Symbian or any of the other 2nd tier OS's ;)

@cloudgazer

[My reply was focussed more on the 'what if everyone's infringing' interpretation, should have been more clear on that]

Yes, they may have those defences. Having defences doesn't stop you getting sued and just being sued can cause serious damage. Not being infringing doesn't even stop you being sued in the craziness of the patent system.

What ultimately stops you getting sued is not pissing off the rights holder enough to get sued, everything else just determines how painful the process is, win or lose.

Apple have pissed off a geometrically increasing number of people. If it turns out they're guilty I don't see anyone else getting sued as collateral damage ;)

I for one will continue insisting any phone has vigorous 3rd party firmware support *before* I buy it. At least I'll have frequent fixes AND a choice of who to trust building it... and I trust some of the hobbyists more than any phone manufacturer right now.

Beyond that: it's a phone, a basic assumption is the bad guy will have physical possession of it and access to hardware hacking tools nullifying any security care of a dodgy unlock shop. Putting anything you care to lose on one is a big mistake with or without remote exploits. You want security, buy something secure, it just won't be an affordable smartphone.

The FB app was notorious for quickly draining batteries and a background service that wasn't keen on being stopped, whether you wanted it or not.

Sure you want to encourage these inept clowns to try harder at having the app running permanently?

Even Google can't always get this right, the maps apps background service also has a history as a battery destroyer for example, and also can't be stopped in many versions of the app even if you never start the maps app! I'd bet on FB deliberately trying to run the damn app behind users backs.

The biggest problem I have is dealing with the large number of screen formats and pixel densities. Android tries hard to make it just work but inevitably some loser phone with a 240x320 will trip you up.

The OS layer itself isn't much of a problem and doesn't need much working around ;)

Compare with Java, wrap a poor language in a extensive standard library and require that lib to be in every implementation. In a very real sense those libs *are Java*, the actual language just glue. All the value is in having a consistent library package that's actually useful.

If it takes a new language to deploy a single, consistent library platform, that's not an insane option. When the language you're trying to replace is as hacky and messy as Javascript it starts to look like a damn good idea, if only because Oracle just ensured no-ones going to invest in the obvious option of Java!

fine but not perfect, not consistent

It noticeably slows on our Blade on any complex level, you can see it dropping to 1/2 and 1/3 speed at times - possibly more on recent Seasons levels. TBH it drops frames on all but the simplest, emptiest levels. The physics is too much for 600Mhz ARM6, 800Mhz won't help much.

Not a phone to buy for high end gaming.

Still playable though. Unlike the shocking performance on my ancient ARM11 G1!

@jake: your 1983 phone

...would be 1G and have no relevance to a modern digital phone.

2G turned up in 1991 and is still in use and should still (just) have active patents.

EDGE deployed in 2003 and iPhone 1 was EDGE. Those patents very much in play.

3G around 2001, again patents nowhere near expired.

There's plenty of new phone radio IP to infringe since 1983 ;)

Florian Muller is the anti-Cassandra

You missed Florian Muller from the list, the guarantee there's less to a story than it appears.

Florian is the anti-Cassandra. Always listened to. Never right.

to cheap looking to steal

Yes, it almost looks cheap enough no self respecting , Blackberry wielding rioter would steal it.

portrait mode great for smaller monitors

@Andrew Martin:"Editing documents on a portrait-format screen is rather good."

I imagine it is, unfortunately I get horrible neck and eye ache trying to use my 23" monitor in portrait, it's just too tall!

phones do email

...but my phone is my email reader! Far less painful than climbing out of a comfortable bed/armchair/sofa/bath in the middle of winter and I get to turn off the power guzzling PC and still get mail ;)