Posts by Zola
61 posts • joined Tuesday 13th November 2012 07:52 GMT
Expandable case design
Jolla have hinted that hardware such as better camera flashes could be included in the "other half" case so - user upgradeable phones? A case with a nice, powerful Xenon camera flash rather than the puny LED built-in? Maybe a hardware keyboard? Imagination is the only limit. Sounds very interesting to me.
Re: N9 Meego....
The only thing I want it to do that I'm not able to is Viber or Whatsapp.
Regarding WhatsApp, try downloading the N9 version from openwhatsapp.org - not tried it myself (don't know anyone with WhatsApp), I just know it's there and assuming it works it might help you.
Microsoft spent years trying to shoehorn a desktop OS onto a tablet form-factor
Apple recognised the mistake Microsoft made, and instead used their mobile iOS platform for their tablet OS. Apple have wisely left their desktop OS largely unscathed from the touchscreen nonsense.
I still don't think Microsoft have realised where they went wrong, as they should have left their desktop OS as it was, rather than alienate most non-touchscreen users with Windows 8, and should have upgraded/improved Windows Phone so that it could operate as a tablet OS. But they knew/know best, and have had their arses handed to them on a plate.
Re: Everyone's out, bitch!
It was on Indiegogo, not Kickstarter as...
...it wouldn't have been accepted on Kickstarter as they have more stringent rules detailing what can go on their site.
Really? You think?! Looks to me like Kickstarter will accept any old scam if MediaBox is anything to go by.
This will struggle to compete with low-end Android devices
Nokia would have been better served by producing a low end Android device. Doh!
Re: No Shit Sherlock
Microsoft/AQuantive: $6.2bn writedown last year
Microsoft/Skype: $8bn writedown waiting to happen
Microsoft/Nokia: $XXbn writedown in 2015.
Ferranti/International Signal & Control?
About time Britain got its own back. Nice.
Re: Two years too late
No it wouldn't. It would be a Nokia. That name still rings a bell with a lot of people.
As evidenced by it's continued declining smartphone marketshare. The Nokia brand alone isn't enough to sell smartphones that run a platform that consumers aren't interested in buying. Don't make the same mistake that Nokia did, which is to believe that Nokia customers will continue to buy Nokia come what may. Customers are a lot more savvy than you - and sadly Nokia - give them credit.
Re: tri-gate advantage
so a future generation of ARM processors may use it but it won't be the current processors re-engineered.
Correct on the first count, wrong on the second... :)
Samsung completes tapeout of Cortex-A7 using 14nm FinFET process technology (Feb 2013)
TSMC tapes out Cortex A-57 using 16nm FinFET process technology (April 2013)
Re: Price - are Intel willing to compete?
The margins are higher relative to the margins on ARM SoCs. This isn't such an issue in higher value non-mobile applications, but for mobile, where Atom tries and fails to compete more directly with ARM and the volumes are so much higher, unless Intel cut their margins to suit their cloth they will continue to struggle against ARM. Mobile devices are already "fast" enough, so does Silvermont really bring enough to the table to justify a higher BOM price than an equivalent ARM SoC?
Re: What is vs what should be
Really sounds like something MS would say, you know, someone who is trying to push an OS rather than handsets.
Past comments from Elop have always given the impression that his primary objective is to make Windows Phone a success - the performance of Nokia always seemed of secondary importance.
Two years too late
An Android 920 would make Lumia 920 sales look like a rounding error (which isn't far off what they are already).
Price - are Intel willing to compete?
Atom has always had a hefty margin to maintain Intels bottom line, and while this new architecture looks impressive on paper I seriously doubt it will be competing at the same price points as ARM SoCs unless Intel are willing to take the hit.
Also, AMD were publicly discussing tri-gate transistor tech a few years before Intel, it will be interesting to see what they can achieve with it both in x86 and ARM, plus others such as TSMC are already up to speed with tri-gate so I doubt ARM will lose much sleep over Silvermont.
Given the rectangular shape of phones
and the circular shape of ingots, that's going to mean an absolute boat load of wastage while they make a round ingot fit a rectangular hole. Maybe the offcuts can be sold on to the watch industry...
Of these DAU/MAU figures, what would be really interesting
is knowing how many of these "active" users haven't actually posted anything in the last 6 months, or longer.
I bet there are a large number of people that setup Facebook accounts years ago, when it was new, then adding the account to their smartphone, and have long since gotten over Facebook - but would still be counted as "active" users today, because their smartphone devices continue to automatically log in to their account.
Re: 3rd place is still very much up for grabs@Zola
@Ledswinger:
In order to innovate on mobile, Microsoft are faced with the challenge of selling low(er) value smartphones that can (in theory at least) capably do the job of more expensive laptops/desktops when docked either as a desktop, or in a tablet/laptop "shell". Admittedly, a decent desktop UI is required, and Windows 8 Metro isn't a decent desktop UI, but scrap Metro on the desktop and Microsoft could be on to a winner at last.
Although Microsoft are wanton to dump on their historical "partners" right now, I'm not convinced this will continue for the longer term, so unless the low-to-medium spec desktop/laptop/tablet market completely disappears, I don't see Microsoft pushing hybrid smartphones any time soon.
On the other hand the new players have nothing to lose and everything to gain as they have no history so can target ever market segment and form factor with impunity and bring the kind of innovation that existing players will only baulk at to avoid cannibalising existing product lines and lines of revenue.
3rd place is still very much up for grabs
and I think you'll see the likes of Firefox, Ubuntu and Jolla/Sailfish working together rather than against each other. Even Blackberry could get a look in here, as Ubuntu, Sailfish and Blackberry OS10 are all based on Qt and with more similarities than differences.
A shared Qt+HTML5 ecosystem/platform could be very compelling for developers, certainly a lot more so than the only other 3rd place contender, Windows Phone, which is a platform dying on its arse.
I'm especially looking forward to "hybrid" devices, the likes of which you'll not see from Microsoft any time soon, if ever - I'm talking about multi-core and ridiculously powerful smartphones that when docked become fully featured desktop PCs, capable of pretty much everything except power-user processing tasks. None of the new players have the kind of baggage that now prevents Microsoft (and to a lesser extent, Apple and Google) from really innovating on mobile.
the ultimate result being a market of only Samsung and Apple... and that, folks, would be a very bad thing for everyone.
I disagree, there will be plenty of alternatives in a few months - Firerfox OS, Ubuntu OS, Sailfish, maybe even Tizen. Most of these operating systems will interoperate with each other too.
The fact that Blackberry and Windows Phone are failing to make much headway against Android and iOS doesn't mean that Android and iOS cannot be challenged, the market just needs an OS that brings something new and fresh to the market - either innovative ideas, or maybe even just a fresh "open" attitude, rather than the Apple-aping control freakery and general toxic baggage that weighs down a bloated and tarnished outfit like Microsoft.
We won't be stuck with just Android and iOS, trust me on that. People are growing bored with iOS already, the murmurings of discontent are growing louder by the day, and users will grow bored of Android too eventually.
Small and nimble outfits that bring something new to market can and will compete, perhaps not in terms of volume but certainly within the same market.
Re: 5.6 million...
Indeed, 2/3rds of the 5.6m were WP8 (3.73mn), while the remaining 1/3rd were WP7 (1.87mn), the latter probably sold off at or below cost.
The Asha 'feature phone pretending to be a smart phone' line will likely sell much better than WP8.
There's no "likely" about it - the Asha in three quarters has outsold the Lumia that has been available for 6 quarters (Asha: 20.5m in 3Qs vs. Lumia: 19.5m in 6Qs).
But then, the Asha is a high-volume/low margin product whereas the Lumia is a low volume/high... err...oh dear... let me start again, the Lumia is a low volume/low (if not negative) margin product...
And the Asha star is also rapidly waning, meaning that Nokia are now royally farked. Of course a budget Android device would sell like hot cakes, but that just isn't going happen while Ballmer is pulling the strings.
Re: So last decade
Yes, that's why touchscreen smartphones never caught on.
A touchscreen smartphone is a very different use case to a TV remote control.
Weak? Their most profitable business is tanking!
Feature phone sales are down 30% (this is the only Nokia phone business that is profitable - for now).
The Chinese market has collapsed (down 56% year-on-year), Africa is down 32% y/y and Latin America is down 24% y/y.
The cheap Android phones that are swamping these markets, particularly Brazil, are clearly having an effect on Nokia's bottom line. Even reducing the Feature Phone ASP by 15% (ie. cutting prices) hasn't altered the dramatic decline in sales.
How will Nokia respond? With bargain basement Lumias? When it has to pay Microsoft $15 a device? Yeah, righto, that's going to succeed.
Even North America isn't interested in Lumias - during Q1, Nokia managed to shift only 400,000 devices (presumably all Lumias) in NA. That is a pitiful figure for what is Windows Phones home market.
Samsung shifted 61mn smartphones in Q1, this is more than all Nokia phones (of all types) combined. Just where would Nokia have been if they'd gone for Android instead of Windows Phone?
Re: So last decade
Phone/tablet as a replacement for a remote control with hard buttons? Are you out of your mind?
Although the touchscreen on a Harmony One is handy for seldom used functions, no touchscreen will ever replace hard buttons that can be found and pressed in the dark, or without looking. Fumbling around with an entirely touchscreen remote is never gonna work.
The Harmony One
Was their best remote. Reasonably priced at £120 when I bought one two-three years ago and still going strong.
Since then their remote business has been in decline, with Logitech cutting back on the software (the web client is rubbish compared to the native client, which itself isn't brilliant but usable and gives you access to all the features, unlike the web client...). And charging stupidly high prices - no wonder their business is dying on it's arse.
The owner is a mug
Then again, the new "owners" quite possibly had the laptop shipped directly to them by the thief (a family member?) and thus know exactly where this mug lives, so who knows what convinced him to hand over his property and take down their photographs...
I'll be very surprised if he doesn't get turned over again in a few months, now that they know he's a soft touch. Let him restock with goodies, then do him again - but this time disable the spyware in whatever hardware is taken.
Why does The Reg give this tool so much free air time?
He's derided by a large chunk of the open source community.
There's nothing right about Expensive
They're in prime position to exploit one of the hottest retail markets of a generation, and yet I would never consider buying anything from them now or in future. Their brand stinks as far as I'm concerned, they acquired a bad reputation from years ago, and are frankly uncompetitive on pricing and so lose out to smaller, friendlier and more nimble retailers such as Clove.
They've got all the infrastructure to run a successful online business, but their approach to actually doing business is all wrong.
I get feeds on my MeeGo N950 phone
It's got a very nice built-in RSS reader app. Shame the Register RSS feed only contains the heading and first paragraph of each article though - most other RSS feeds contain the entire article. Don't suppose there's any chance of The Reg improving their feed to contain full articles?
Sod Reader, they've killed CalDAV!
Now you see the logic behind their ActiveSync killing move, which ostensibly wasn't a problem as you could use CalDAV but now it seems Google are pushing users towards their own proprietary protocols rather than using open standards. This is not good.
Re: free copies of Office 2013
You keep up. The copy you get with a new PC is not covered by that revision.
Which is fair enough when talking about OEM copies supplied with hardware, of course the software should be tied to the hardware. You can re-install the software too, as often as you like, just restore the system image. On the same hardware.
However buying Office separately is a completely different kettle of fish, and Microsoft have now done the sensible thing and revised their licensing terms for standalone purchases.
Samsung cancels WIndows RT tablet in Europe
due to lack of interest - not sure this move will help much.
Re: Isn't it open source
Does this mean HP had sold off gram ? Will this influence community development on Openwebos?
WebOS Dev Relations tweeted the following last night:
We're happy to report that the Open webOS and Enyo open source projects will continue under the stewardship of @LGElectronics
So it looks like LG will continue to develop Open WebOS, although as you are a Touchpad owner it will make no different to you as there will be no official Open WebOS released for Touchpads. This was, IMHO, the final absurdity of the HP open source WebOS strategy, to completely ignore up to 1 million devices that could have jump started interest in a dying (if not already dead) platform.
If you're lucky (?) there might be a Franken-version of Open Web OS for Touchpads hacked together by the community, but honestly, what would be the point when there is no future for this platform on tablets (certainly not now, and if WebOS fans are brutally honest with themselves, there probably never was prior to this LG sale).
The best option now for Touchpad owners is to hope that a build of Ubuntu for Tablets materialises, or just cut your losses and flash it with Android.
Re: Hmmm
Thants because the Sandisk SD cards have a big problem - Amazon have had thousands returned. Get a Samsung - works fine for me....No issues at all.
Do you have a source for this, because it sounds a bit as though you are trying to shift the blame - he said he also tried a Samsung SD card which also went to fuck, so it doesn't sound like it's a card specific issue (and I've not heard of any problems with Sandisk cards from Amazon).
Re: MS/IE
I wasn't talking about IE6, but IE in general and the way it's rolled out/supported.
And so am I talking about IE in general, in that the fall out from IE6 has reduced the dependency on IE in general, and which now makes it possible for MS to consider a future switch without too much pain (certainly a lot less pain than 2-3 years ago).
If MS announced the end of IE and a switch to Webkit tomorrow, there would be ways to continue running "legacy" IE for those that needed it (vm's, rdp, even plug-ins), and for everyone else there would be rejoicing.
Re: Android
The judge is out if it will be any good for people who appreciate Opera.
I'm sure they'll both get over it eventually.
Re: MS/IE
Enterprises should have learned their lesson after the IE6 debacle - switching away from IE8/9/10 is now a lot easier than it was when businesses were locked into running IE6.
Firms I know that have gone through the pain of IE6 withdrawal are now running browser-based systems that are a lot more standards compliant, and no longer dependent on IE quirks. In a worst case situation they'll continue running IE6 in a VM (or over rdp) to access the ancient and non-standard browser app, but use Chrome/Firefox for everything else.
If there is one good thing that can be said about IE6, it's that it finally focused enterprises attention on how not to be locked into a single vendor solution with no immediate upgrade path. Microsoft are still paying the price for their IE6 mistake, that of ever decreasing browser market share.
Acer: could be better
I've got several Acer Aspire One 725 netbooks here (AMD C70 based) and while it's not possible to disable Secure Boot in the UEFI BIOS, you can select a "Legacy BIOS" mode - better than nothing, but not ideal.
Would love to switch to Libre Office
But when it can't open spreadsheets* that have total wank in them such as:
Application.CommandBars("Task Pane").Visible = False
then it forces the user to pony up the £200 and buy the full MS Office suite. If LibreOffice aims for compatibility with the MS Office suite, then at the very least it should handle gracefully this sort of shit which attempts to disable an Excel toolbar that doesn't exist in LibreOffice.
* A client, using a custom written and password locked spreadsheet, wanted 8 new PCs without the cost of MS Office... I had hoped LibreOffice would do the job but even the latest 4.0.0.3 version I just installed falls at this first and most basic (no pun intended) of hurdles. Shame, as it's 8 more client licences for Microsoft.
Yay! Firesale!
But strangely, I still wouldn't be interested.
Windows (certainly for the consumer) has simply jumped the shark.
Re: Good... Good...
My N950 upvoted your post...
Re: What's the point of either standard, given ubiquitous WLAN?
Try living in an apartment block and see how well WiFi performs at streaming when every channel is in use, sometimes by more than one neighbour. The fact of the matter is that WiFi doesn't work in congested areas (and if it does work, it is unreliable), when Homeplug performs flawlessly come what may (and offers superior performance to even the best 11n WiFi).
I'm confused - AV2 is already here
This article repeatedly states that "AV2 is imminent" and "AV2 is not here yet" however AV2 (500Mb/s) Homeplug kit has been available for well over a year (in the UK, at least).
So is this article referring to something other than AV2, or is it referring to an updated version of the current and in-the-shops version of AV2 (ie. AV2++, AV2.5 etc.)?
As for AV2 vs. G.hn, since the former has been available for so long, the equipment is cheap to buy and seems to offer all the benefits of G.hn, I really don't see the point of introducing another, different, data-over-mains "standard" - it's like Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD all over again (although I don't see the late-comer to the marketplace being victorious this time around).
Also another note, Broadcom seem to have ended further development of their Gigle-based units, which were taking an absolute battering in the marketplace from Atheros-based AV2 kit.
Re: How much RAM?
Yes, but before people post stuff on forums such as this don't they do any research first or just bang away a post in two secs...?
Couldn't be arsed to waste time on research, it's a Lumia for gawds sake. It was easier to ask the question.
Re: How much RAM?
but what made you FUD 256Mb when you had no clue whatsoever.
Because that's what the last "low cost" WP7 device had, half the memory allocation of it's more capable brethren.
How much RAM?
Hopefully more than the 256MB in their other lowcost WP7.5 device, the Lumia 610, which couldn't run popular apps because it didn't have enough RAM. Most outfits would learn their lesson and ship more RAM in future, but this is Nokia, so probably not.
Surface RT Plus / Surface RT Home & Business Edition
It's funny how Apple don't need to artificially differentiate their tablet product in this way, and their single product (disregarding physical size) is a massive success both with consumers and businesses.
Is it so hard for Microsoft to see where they are going wrong with the Surface RT? While the hardware is OK, the software it runs is intentionally crippled. Consumers and businesses alike recognise this, and it's one very large reason why none of them are buying it.
What Microsoft should have done is offer the full Windows OS on both ARM and x86, no differences in the software beyond the capabilities of the hardware (Surface ARM/Surface x86). Punting a crippled version of both Windows and Office on ARM is not turning out to be a winning solution.
As for Outlook RT, perhaps Microsoft could deliver it in a "Service Pack" but honestly I don't think anyone cares, the Surface RT product and Windows on ARM is a dead duck.
Posted in Belkin buys Linksys from Cisco
I avoid Belkin like the plague
Linksys were once an OK brand, but now that they're owned by Belkin I'll never buy them again.
Belkin are renowned for being overpriced, and more often than not incompatible in some small but frustrating way with kit from other vendors. It's as if Belkin introduce these incompatibilities on purpose. Their WiFi gear used to be the worst for this, and that's not a mistake you make twice.
Maybe Linksys will bring some sanity to Belkin but I won't be paying to find out.
Re: Only two questions
Pretty mid-range specs, both in terms of memory (512MB) and processor. I hope it's enough for an environment that is based entirely on interpreted languages.
JavaScript has never been a speed demon even when running on fast hardware so unless Mozilla are making a monumental mistake it should be interesting to see how Firefox OS performs on these devices.
