Posts by Steve Todd

Re: Sorry but...

But no-one in the world is providing a 300Mbit service. The best you're likely to get in practice at the moment is about 40Mbit. Blowing through 512MB on that would take you near 2 minutes, and that's only if you are being foolish enough to download a file that size. It should be good enough for a number of hours of constant web browsing.

@Ledswinger - not just data

Those rates give you unlimited calls and texts, I assume you ascribe some value for them, otherwise you'd have a dongle rather than a phone.

There are both fixed and variable costs in servicing a line. That's why companies like BT charge line rental plus a per call charge. It's hardly unusual that the cost per item comes down the more of them that you buy.

Re: Looks as if i must cross-post myself....

I guess you haven't been following the case much then. The Korean Times has been pretty much Samsung's corporate mouthpiece, quoting the party line and unnamed Samsung execs frequently.

Re: Looks as if i must cross-post myself....

The Korean Times? Obviously a neutral party with no ax to grind then.

Re: To sum up:

There's nothing stopping review sites buying them retail after release (which, unlike some other companies, is normally quite close to the announcement date) and writing what they like about them. El Reg was quite complementary about the iPhone 5 for example, and they never get a launch invite.

@Mark . - Tablet optimised has to do

with screen resolution. Many Android phone apps will run on tablets, but look terrible with huge, unused sections of the screen. In the same way you can run iPhone apps on an iPad, but they look naff.

@4.1.3_U1

There's a saying that goes “There is nothing in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and he who considers price only is that man's lawful prey.”

I guess you are that man's lawful prey if you think that your £40 special will match even a decent spec Android machine.

@Gob Smacked

I don't know what planet you are on, but the Nexus 7 sat in front of me is claiming only 30,000 Tablet optimised apps in the Play store, and many of those seem to be duplicates. The iPad currently runs to about 10x that number.

Re: Wrong on a number of levels - @AC 9:29

Oh, and as to 3GPP membership, you only need to be a member if you are involved in creating the standard, NOT using it. So far Apple hasn't been involved in creating the standard (they simply bought the Nortel patents, and Nortel were), but they have been involved in other standards setting processes like MP4/h.264. When it comes to creating extensions to LTE or developing 5G expect them to start showing an interest.

Re: Wrong on a number of levels - @AC 9:29

The original iPhone not having 3G was nothing to do with the ownership of patents, it was to do with battery life (early 3G chipsets were heavy on power) and the international state of 3G rollout (patchy at best in 2007). The whole point of an international standard and FRAND is that anyone can make a device using it and be guaranteed of receiving a licence after it is launched.

Apple bought a whole stack of Nortel patents, some of which cover 3G and some 4G. The point here is that Samsung have refused to simply cross-licence their 3G patents (which Apple offered) and are trying for terms that definitely don't match the definition of FRAND.

Wrong on a number of levels

Firstly Apple own a whole stack of SEPs, covering h.264, 3G and 4G among others. They've committed not to use these offensively.

Secondly where they have been arguing over licensing, the argument has been over the amount asked. Samsung had, for example, been asking for 2.4% of the selling price of Apple's devices when most of the rest if the market get their licence as part if their $10 baseband chip.

If FRAND can be properly codified, so everyone knows up front what using a standard will cost them, and if companies who fail to pay a court mandated license amount (but only those companies) can have their products blocked then I think the main problems of SEPs are covered.

Re: Apple Strike Again

The 4S could not ever connect to 5GHz, it simply can't see signals at that frequency. A dual band router normally announces a different SID for the same AP at 5GHz so it should have been obvious that the phone never saw the 5GHz signal. The OP also said that it worked just fine at 2.4GHz so it's not a legacy hardware issue, he also said that it worked fine at 5GHz for a short time - it's this bit that implies that he was either doing something stupid and misinterpreting the results or being economical with the truth.

Re: Where are these fuming fanbois, eh?

And many of those 730 posts are from the same users. Your point being?

If it was a general problem there'd be a lot more Internet chatter on multiple forums, not just there. There are going to be SOME 5s with faulty WiFi due to the law of averages. There are going to be some people with poor WiFi setups that they will blame on the 5. There are probably some bugs in the WiFi stack in iOS 6 (it's hard to find any code that is 100% bug free), but the combined numbers don't yet add up to a significant blip.

Re: Quality control...

Sorry, Microsoft have that covered already.

Re: Apple Strike Again

Amazing, I post an easily verifiable fact and someone down votes me. I guess that I could post that the sky is blue and some hater out there would down vote that also.

Re: Woah, hold on there...

Wrong, it's a fault in Android's telephone number recogniser code. It's been patched in the core Android build, but not rolled out to all handsets yet.

Re: Apple Strike Again

Erm, the 4S doesn't support 5GHz, never has, never will. It's there in black and white on Apple's specs page. Either you're lying or being a pillock.

Re: Where are these fuming fanbois, eh?

No, he's saying that 730/5,000,000 (0.01%) does not make it a general problem. You'd expect an early failure rate of more than that for pretty well any electronic device you care to mention.