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Smartphones are definitely attractive as an integrated device, which combines phone, organizer, GPS navigator, camera, music player and simple scanner into one unit. But it is a sad day when this gadget become the focus of life and you feel deprived if you can't spend $700 for "latest and greatest iPhone or Samsung Galaxy 4. Units that costs around $200 can do the same things without stretching your credit card balance ;-).
Also there is more to life than getting excited about the latest model of smartphone just launched to the market. It often has warts that will be fixes only after several month of production. Moreover thinner with more pixels in screen and camera smartphone doesn't always mean better. Actually it is quite opposite. Everything is packed tight into a small space with very little airflow and that equals higher operating temperatures inside and a higher likelihood of failure rate compared to something slightly bigger with a better airflow and cooling capability. And the ability to run games on smartphone looks is pretty absurd to me (except Tetris ;-).
I am at a loss to know anyone how doesn't have an extra space in their house or office to put a mini PC form factor to play games. The $500 home PC with 3 GHz i5 CPU, 8GB of memory and onboard graphics will run most games out of the box without any drama. The simple question "Why we need smartphone games" is pretty difficult to answer rationally. As if the amount of time people spend behind the screen in in the office is not enough and they need to "extend the pleasure" to commute or while outside. Although I did saw once a guy who was sitting and playing something on his smartphone on a hiking trail. That's a real perversion, if you think about it.
The lesson is simple: try to save money and ignore fashion propagated by Apple and Co. In simple terms that means never buy a smartphone phone for over, say, $350, and in most cases you can get a decent one for approximately twice less (around $200).
It is known that Apple iPhone 5S costs around $200 to produce. So if you want a smartphone that is not a vanity fair appliance you can try to find a model below $350 that probably will be at least satisfactory (we added $150 for profit margin to the base price). People buying $600-$900 phones are mainly buying "status symbol", not so much technical capabilities (moreover the higher price of smartphone is, the more chances is that the user is a basic user ;-). Here are the data on cost of manufacturing Apple iPhone: (September 25, 2013, Associated Press)
IHS Study Puts iPhone 5S Production Costs at $191 |
While the iPhone 5S includes a handful of new features that set it apart from Apple's previous model, the actual cost to make the phone hasn't changed very much, according to a new study. An IHS Inc. teardown of the new smartphone found that the components that make up a 16-gigabyte iPhone 5S cost $190.70. Manufacturing costs add another $8, bringing the total production cost to $198.70.
Budget smartphones sacrifice little in the area of capabilities, but some components are by definition budget. For example, they usually have screen less or equal 5". On low end you can get lower (but generally adequate) resolution then on higher end, close to upper range of prices ($350 in our case) models.
Please note that smartphones with 5" screen and higher usually are referred as phablets.
At the same time even $150 is substantial money and that means that to buy a cellphone without warranty is to take additional and generally unwarranted risk. One year local warranty (which in the USA means US warranty) is a must. Saving, say, $50 by buying a phone without such a warranty (aka international unlocked version of the phone) is a very questionable move.
There are few people for whom smartphone is the major informational center and they use all spectrum of capabilities, including camera and GPS navigation. But most people use only a tiny fraction of capabilities. Theoretically a smartphone combines functions of a phone, tablet, camera, GPS and hand scanner. But in reality even $800 smartphone will never be as convenient for Internet browsing and playing music as $160 tablet with G3 (such as Lenovo A3000), will never produce photos comparable with $150 camera (such as $135 Nikon Coolpix L610) and might not even be close to the a quality of call and reception of a decent $60 flip phone (flip phones have better form factor and both microphone and speaker are located in much better positions to achieve higher quality). They also will never match specialized GPS in speed of locating satellites and providing detailed "up to the lane" directions (although Google maps are really impressive). Smartphone is by definition a jack of many trades but master of none. That means that it make sense to lower expectations and settle for a midrange or budget smartphones leaving "Cadillac style models" for those who can't withstand the temptation of conspicuous consumption. Consumption for the sake of status.
Another important consideration that favor buying budget models is that only a tiny fraction of users use those four functions of a smartphone on a regular basic. Probably 80% use it mainly as a phone with occasional minimal browsing such as checking weather, checking bus/train schedule and looking at Google maps. Those basic users are badly served by the industry as it is tilted toward "super expensive phones (in $400-$900 range) and expensive plans (in $60-$120 range). In other words in the USA the industry artificially stimulates "conspicuous consumption".
If you read reviews you instantly get the impression that, for example, smartphone camera is very important (despite the fact that many users use it only occasionally when they forgot their camera at home). Smartphone will always be a bad camera due to limitations of the form factor, super short focus length and the absence of viewer. Also typically reviews universally praised is the ability of the smartphone to run complex games is a worthwhile feature. That's nonsense. Similar is a rat race in screen resolutions. Phones below 5.3 generally can't benefit from 1024 x 800 resolution. Or more correctly benefits are marginal, but drop in battery life is very real (energy consumption of the screen is proportional to the total number of pixels). That's simply a powerful PR campaign of stimulation of perverted usage of the device ;-)
On the other hand smartphone reviews typical reflect the excessive greed of both top vendors and the telecom industry.
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May 27, 2020 | www.amazon.com
SpeedTalk Mobile 6 MONTHS SmartWatch SIM Card for 2G 3G 4G LTE GSM Smart Watch and Wearables-Roaming Available
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aitikin ( 909209 ) writes:Jun 21, 2019 | news.slashdot.org
(thehill.com) 73 thwarting the scourge of robocalls dialing up U.S. consumers , about one month after the Senate adopted its own anti-robocall bill . From a report: House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) and ranking member Greg Walden (R-Ore.) on Thursday announced the legislation, which differs from the Senate's version on some points but seems to have significant overlap. Pallone and Walden's Stopping Bad Robocalls Act would require phone carriers to implement technology to authenticate whether calls are real or spam, and allow carriers to offer call-blocking services. The legislation specifies the carriers should make sure that legal calls, such as those from doctors offices or creditors, are not blocked, while opening the door for the government to broaden its definition of what constitutes a "robocall."
The Rizz ( 1319 ) , Thursday June 20, 2019 @04:46PM ( #58795986 )
Or just stop phone number spoofing? ( Score: 5 , Insightful)A better solution would be to put an end to call spoofing, so incoming phone numbers can always be verified. Then, make it easier to sue spammers across state lines or out of country, and that $1,500 - $7,500 per call fine that consumers can sue for (and get the money from) will make robocalls and scams and fraudsters go away quite quickly...
Re: ( Score: 1 )Pinky's Brain ( 1158667 ) writes:A better solution would be to put an end to call spoofing, so incoming phone numbers can always be verified.So you want businesses to have over 1000 different customer facing phone numbers when they have to call a customer back?
Re: ( Score: 2 )The Rizz ( 1319 ) , Thursday June 20, 2019 @05:20PM ( #58796160 )Any company of that size can do it's own infrastructure.
But lets say it's necessary for smaller companies, the phone companies can simply have registries for which phone numbers are allowed to be spoofed. Then any use of that spoofing service beyond their terms of use would result in termination of their contract and exposure of their call records to complainants so they can be sued.
Re:Or just stop phone number spoofing? ( Score: 5 , Informative)Pinky's Brain ( 1158667 ) writes:Exactly this. It's not like phone companies can't set up case-by-case exceptions for legitimate businesses. It's all computerized, so it would take little effort to have a X-to-Y allowed spoof list on outgoing calls.
The issue is the way it is right now: You can spoof your call as coming from ANY number, with no verification, limitations, or penalties. Limiting it to spoofing to a number that leads back to your own company would be a trivial verification step for a phone company to set up in comparison to the spam call blocking they're working on.
Re: ( Score: 3 )ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) , Thursday June 20, 2019 @06:23PM ( #58796478 )Please explain how the phone company bills them
...
Re:Or just stop phone number spoofing? ( Score: 5 , Insightful)arglebargle_xiv ( 2212710 ) , Friday June 21, 2019 @01:37AM ( #58797750 )Exactly this. It's not like phone companies can't set up case-by-case exceptions for legitimate businesses.It doesn't even need to be case-by-case. If a company owns the originating number AND the displayed number, then the telecom (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile) can let it through. Otherwise, it should be illegal for the telecom to allow it.
The important thing is that the penalty for spoofed calls needs to be on the telecom company, not the originator, who is outside American jurisdiction. If the originator can't be 100% verified, then deny the spoofing.
Re:Or just stop phone number spoofing? ( Score: 4 , Insightful)Hentai007 ( 188457 ) writes:I can't believe how bad the text spam/robocall situation is in the US. I mean, I'd read about it, but until a few days ago I'd both never had a US phone number and never had a robocall in my life. Then I activated a US SIM for travel, and within about fifteen minutes had text spam and several voicemails (which I've deleted without listening to them). Asked a US friend who said that she never answers phonecalls on her cellphone and has her SMS set to mute because it's so bad.
How do people live with this? It makes cellphones basically unusable.
Re: ( Score: 1 )ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) , Thursday June 20, 2019 @06:14PM ( #58796444 )Isn't that more of a PBX you are describing and not the call spoofing that robocallers use? I think it would be more them calling you from a number that has the same area code and prefix as you - or from 000-000-0000 or some other obviously fake number is what OP meant.
Re:Or just stop phone number spoofing? ( Score: 5 , Informative)ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) writes:So you want businesses to have over 1000 different customer facing phone numbers when they have to call a customer back?If they want to display 1000 different outgoing phone numbers, then they need to OWN THOSE NUMBERS.
If they want all their outgoing phones to display a single number, that is fine too, as long as they OWN THAT NUMBER, and it is a valid call-back number that leads to a human.
Overlaying calls onto numbers that belong to unsuspecting innocent people should not be allowed, and it is outrageous that this is currently legal.
Re: ( Score: 3 )Noah Draper ( 5166365 ) writes:Sorry, but no company is going to have 1000s of call back numbers that lead to a human.Why not? Then can all lead to ONE human. If it takes more than one to deal with all the angry calls, then they have two choices:
1. Hire more people.
2. Stop spamming.The staffing requirement alone would scare them all off.Why is that a bad thing?
Further it would destroy call centers.Only if they are in the business of making unsolicited robocalls.
Re: Or just stop phone number spoofing? ( Score: 2 )fustakrakich ( 1673220 ) writes:
Yes. If they can make my phone ring I should be able to make their phone ring the same one that called me. Or I should be able to set up a charge to call the reversing the billing automaticly for incoming calls registered to businesses. I have a personal phone line for personally is. If a business entity entity calls me and they should have to pay per call. Personal non-business affiliated numbers should continue to work as normal. Make the businesses pay. leave normal people alone.
Re: ( Score: 2 )TimMD909 ( 260285 ) writes:
A working solution is *off the table*
Really, right there in the headline: Compromise Anti-Robocall Bill
"Compromise" means what it always has meant, it's watered down...
Did anybody seriously have higher expectations of this congress? Wanna buy a fine authentic Romex watch?
Great! ( Score: 1 )meglon ( 1001833 ) , Thursday June 20, 2019 @04:54PM ( #58796032 )I love comprise... normally. I'm sure they found a way to combine the worst halves of both into a monstrosity. Well, time to read the damn article...
change ( Score: 5 , Interesting)This...
and allow carriers to offer call-blocking servicesto this....
and require carriers to offer call-blocking services at no charge
...then we'll have something worth talking about.
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Feb 06, 2019 | www.trendingnws.com
Samsung patents S Pen featuring built-in camera with optical zoom With its Galaxy Note 9, Samsung brought Bluetooth functionality to its celebrated S Pen, allowing users to use the stylus as a long-range shutter button – perfect for taking selfies and group photos from a distance.Now, it appears that Samsung is looking to expand the S Pen's photo taking functionality with the inclusion of a built-in camera, according to a patent that was officially granted today by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.As reported by Patently Mobile, the patent, which was originally filed in February of 2017, involves an "electric pen device" with an "optical system including a lens and an image sensor", allowing a camera to be "controlled from the external electronic device." You can check out the various drawings and diagrams from the submission in Patently Mobile's tidy graphic below.
Image credit: Patently Mobile
Optical zoom functionality has long been considered an obstacle for phone manufacturers, due to the added thickness it brings to a handset's form factor. However, moving that optical zoom functionality to an external device (such as the Note Series' famous S Pen) would cleverly side-step this hurdle entirely. If used for selfies, it could also make pinhole cameras and notch cutouts a thing of the past, at least in theory. Of course, it's been two years since this patent was initially filed, so there's no guarantee that Samsung is still planning to implement a camera in its S Pen in the Galaxy Note 10 (or any other Note for that matter). Still, it doesn't hurt to dream!
Galaxy Note 10 may have brilliant camera zoom if Samsung buys this company
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Nov 06, 2018 | news.slashdot.org
(reuters.com) BeauHD on Monday November 05, 2018 @09:30PM from the can't-come-soon-enough dept. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai on Monday wrote the chief executives of major telephone service providers and other companies, demanding they launch a system no later than 2019 to combat billions of "robocalls " and other nuisance calls received by American consumers. Reuters reports: In May, Pai called on companies to adopt an industry-developed "call authentication system" or standard for the cryptographic signing of telephone calls aimed at ending the use of illegitimate spoofed numbers from the telephone system. Monday's letters seek answers by Nov. 19 on the status of those efforts.
The letters went to 13 companies including AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Alphabet, Comcast, Cox, Sprint, CenturyLink, Charter, Bandwith and others. Pai's letters raised concerns about some companies current efforts including Sprint, CenturyLink, Charter, Vonage, Telephone and Data Systems and its U.S. Celullar unit and Frontier. The letters to those firms said they do "not yet have concrete plans to implement a robust call authentication framework," citing FCC staff. The authentication framework "digitally validates the handoff of phone calls passing through the complex web of networks, allowing the phone company of the consumer receiving the call to verify that a call is from the person supposedly making it," the FCC said.
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Nov 05, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
22 minutes ago remove Share link Copy There's still way too much fake liquidity in the system.
Until C/B's pull back their exposure, or rates become so unattractive that lending against yourself [like APPL issuing debt to buy back stock] **** will continue as usual. play_arrow play_arrow Reply reply Report flag
Bricker , 13 minutes ago link
Apple was under severe pressure to pay dividends as apple was buying back stock instead to increase earnings.
Apple has bigger issues...a slowing consumer base that have grown up with adult problems...paying for diapers, mortgages and car payments. All of a sudden that old phone with some nicks and scratches seems just fine instead of shelling out $1100, for a phone call, $10 per month for an insurance plan and $95 for a case and extra charger.
1200 dollars to make a phone call. ATT of 1980 was cheap by todays standards
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Oct 13, 2018 | hardware.slashdot.org
(cnet.com) 38 BeauHD on Saturday October 13, 2018 @03:00AM from the pocket-friendly dept. The CEO of Samsung's mobile business, D.J. Koh, said you'll be able to use its upcoming foldable smartphone as a tablet that you can put in your pocket.
While the phone has been teased and hyped up for several months, Koh stressed that it will not be a "gimmick product" that will "disappear after six to nine months after it's delivered."
It'll reportedly be available globally. CNET reports:
However, the foldable Samsung phone, like the Galaxy Round, will be Samsung's testbed device to see how reviewers and the market react. The Galaxy Round, which bowed vertically in the middle, was Samsung's first curve-screen phone. It's a direct ancestor to the dual curved screens we see on today's Galaxy S9 and Note 9 phones.
The larger screen is important, Koh said. When Samsung first released the original Galaxy Note, he said, competitors called its device dead on arrival. Now, after generations of Notes phones, you see larger devices like the iPhone XS Max and the Pixel 3 XL, proving that consumers want bigger screens.
A foldable phone would let screen sizes extend beyond 6.5 inches.
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Oct 14, 2018 | tech.slashdot.org
(qz.com) 50 While we're now on 4G networks, it was only 35 years ago this week that Ameritech (now part of AT&T) launched 1G , or the first commercial cell phone network. That network, called the Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS), went online on October 13, 1983, allowing people in the Chicago area to make and receive mobile calls for the first time. Ameritech president Bob Barnett, who made the first call, decided to make the historic moment count by ringing Alexander Graham Bell's grandson. A little more than a year later, UK's Vodafone hosted its first commercial call on New Year's Day. Israel's Pelephone followed suit in 1986, followed by Australia in 1987.
Cellphone technology had been around for quite a while before that. AMPS was in development for around 15 years, and engineers made the first mobile call on a prototype network a decade before the first commercial network call. It took that long to troubleshoot the various hardware, software, and radio frequency issues associated with setting up a fully functional commercial network.
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Apr 02, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
The obvious question came up: Should I buy a smartphone to replace my trusted Ericsson?
I tested several of the current top-of-the-line smartphones - Motorola, Samsung, Apple. They were in the same relative price range as my old Ericsson was at its time. But they lack in usability. They either have a too small screen for their multitude of functions or they are bricks that require an extra pocket.
I do not want to give all my data into the hands of some unaccountable billionaires and unknown third parties. I do not want my privacy destroyed.So no - I decided not to buy a smartphone as replacement for my trusted Ericsson companion.
Here is my new phone:
biggerIt is a Chinese product sold in Germany under the Olympia brand. It is a GSM quad-band 'dumb' phone with FM radio and a flashlight. The standby time is 140 hours and talk-time is 3+ hours. The battery is a standardized model and future replacements will be easy to find.
Size and weight are nearly the same as the old Ericsson. The keys are much bigger, illuminated and easier to handle, especially in the dark. It is a robust construction and the sound quality is good.
It cost me €22.00 ($26.40).
Posted by b on April 2, 2018 at 03:28 PM | Permalink
Tian , Apr 2, 2018 3:48:53 PM | 2
I'm not convinced the new generation of retro dumb phones aka feature phones do not also have all the same surveillance capabilities as their smart brethren - even though they don't expose those capabilities as features to the end user.John Zelnicker , Apr 2, 2018 4:05:54 PM | 7b - I only scanned your post, but my answer is: NO!Alan Reid , Apr 2, 2018 4:16:20 PM | 9Don't buy a "smart" phone (or anything else labeled "smart"). They are nothing more than data collectors, part of the Internet of Things that, IMNSHO, is an existential threat to our civilization.
I just decided to look back at the end of the post. and I see that you took my advice. ;-)
Well you have to ask yourself, Do i want to participate in a mass surveillance system for one, Then you have to ask Is their any reason i would accept constant audio recordings being made of my environment, then you have the camera angle to contend... Then your GPS location is a major issue, add the ultrasonic beacon thing and the cell tower triangulation aspect to consider.... the phone you have from 2001 is not anywhere near as proficient at many of these tasks being built well before the 2006 legislation regarding this series of systems... If it were me and i knew all about this stuff, i would pay a hell of a lot more than a new phone is worth to keep the old unit in service for as long as you could... Any new phone is going to do all the above to your privacy and then some the old one is very limited, so how concerned are you with being an open book to who ever has access to your phone from the hidden parts and functions you never get to use? Me? I have seen a ton of serious problems with the uses of the tech being built into the modern smartphones, some models give you lots of functions to use, some give you a basic lite experience, But ALL new devices give the state running the system a HEFTY pack of features you will never know about until it's damage has been done. Take my advice Keep the 2000 model going for as long as you can if you must have a mobile phone. If you WANT to be the target of every nasty thing the state does with this new tech investigator/spy then by all means get one of the smart type, Any new one is just as bad as any other after 2006 legislation changes went into effect. 2001 was a very bad event for this topic... I will not have one after the events that befell me. A high performance radio computer with many types of real world sensors, using a wide spread and near unavoidable network of up link stations is the states most useful weapon. Everyone chooses to have what they have, You can also choose to NOT have, but few choose NOT, many choose the worst option on old values of this sort of choice and never think about the loss they incur to have the NEW gadget for whatever reason they rationalize it.Whorin Piece , Apr 2, 2018 4:21:54 PM | 12Smart phones are destroyers of information sovereignty. With a PC one can save a copy of every page you visit whereas with the smart phone all you can practically do is view things. It pisses me off.nervos belli , Apr 2, 2018 4:23:24 PM | 13Has anyone noticed how shallow the so called world wide web has gotten these days.,? Search terms which would in the psst throw up hundreds if not thousands of webpages on the subject matter now result in sometimes no more than 3 or 4 entries. Google has stolen the internet of us all. The web is dead. Cunts like zuckerberg should be drop kicked into the long grass.
The main espionage equipment in a smartphone or dumbphone is not the application processor and the programs that run on it. It's the GSM/3G/UMTS/LTE/5G chipset which every single one of them obviously has. "We kill with metadata" is the most important aphorism about phones, no matter which kind, ever.psychohistorian | Apr 2, 2018 4:23:43 PM | 15However, a smartphone gives you lots of convenience which your 22$ chinaphone doesn't give you. A browser when on the road, a book reader, a map device.
You have to take a few precautions, e.g. use LineageOS, install AFWall and XPrivacy. Nothing different from using a PC basically. And you certainly shouldn't shell out 500$ for one. Every dollar/euro above ca. 100 has to be very well justified.Sure, you can live in the 80s, nothing wrong with that. We lived fine back in those days too, but why not take advantage of some of the improvements since then?
Nice post b. Expresses my sentiments exactly.
I had to take my Nokia X2 out of the plastic bag I keep it in so it doesn't get wet to see what model it was....I keep the battery out and pay T Mobile $10/year to have emergency minutes when I need them....I maintain and use a land line for all my calls.
It is not like these devices couldn't be useful but like the desktop OS world, bloatware is a standard now. I have programmed handheld devices since 1985 and my latest was a MS Windoze10/C# inventory management application with barcodes and such.
Prior to the Nokia I have now I was nursing along a Palm 720p until I couldn't get a carrier to support it anymore. So since the Palm I have consciously gone back to a Weekly Minder type of pocket calendar which I had to use before the online capability came along.
If our world were to change like I want it to by making the tools finance a public utility I might learn to trust more of my life to be held by technology than the 5 eyes already know......Everyone has seen the movie SNOWDEN , correct?.....my Mac laptop had tape over the camera as soon as I brought it home.....I have a nice Nikon Coolpix camera with the GPS turned off and the battery out......grin
visitor , Apr 2, 2018 4:41:50 PM | 18
I understand your choice, but you should have looked for a basic phone not just with GSM (2G), but also at least with UMTS (3G).Stephane , Apr 2, 2018 4:49:37 PM | 20GSM is being wound down, and the frequencies reallocated to LTE (4G).
Many operators in several countries have already switched off their GSM networks (Australia, USA...) This means that in about 3-4 years, you will have real difficulties using your new mobile phone, at least in developed countries; in the Third World, GSM will probably last a bit longer.
I have a cheapo Nokia 100 for calls and a YotaPhone 2 as a tablet. The Yota is Russian but I don't mind the FSB 😃 Aldo it has two screens, one being a passive black and white for use in full bright sun light.xor , Apr 2, 2018 4:50:34 PM | 21I think b made a wise decision. Up till now I've also not needed a smart phone and the continious "connection" or being hooked to the "matrix" would not only eat my valuable time away but would also make me feel more bound.aquadraht , Apr 2, 2018 5:19:24 PM | 25"Another disadvantage of smartphones is enormous amount of personal data they inevitably steal for uncontrolled use by third parties. The technical consultant Dylan Curran studied this:
As soon as an Android smartphone is switched on Google will collect ALL data on every location change and on anything done on the phone. Apple does likewise with its iPhones."
That's the basic privacy nullification. There is also what can be described as the invasive potential. Certain companies, next to intelligence agencies, have made it their business to switch a victims own smart phone into a full blown active spy device. Obviously the victims are particular persons of interests like Dilma Roussef. Whenever a person is having a conversation, talks to himself out loud, has a meeting or is intimate, all sounds and conversations can be recorded next to video when the phone is positioned well. As we know, most people will not or can't part from their beloved smart phone.
I can not tell what to do. In fact, when buying a "smartphone", you have to get used that the phone will be discharged during 1 or 1.5 days, you will become dependent to next USB source, or a battery pack (which is somewhat heavy, 1 pound ca. but not too bulky.Jay , Apr 2, 2018 5:59:47 PM | 29Personally, I am using such a device since 5 yrs ca., first a 4.7" HTC one of my daughters gave me. I soon installed Cyanogenmod (now LineageOS) and threw away all the bloat and especially the Google and Facebook dirt and spyware. I do not have an email account on the brick, rather a browser over which I may access the Web representation of my email account, which is NOT gmail or similar. I do not use Google playstore.
The "killer apps" for me are mainly FBReader, a free ebook reader, VLC for audio and video, and OSMand, an OpenStreetMap client. Some simple calendar, picture etc. apps are on as well. My recent phone is a Samsung S4 mini, bought used for 50€.
This is a minimalistic setup, but makes tracking and spying other than by government agencies difficult. LineageOS is updated nearly every week, so fairly safe against Android malware.
With a "regular" smartphone, you will lack updates after a few years, have a lot of bloat on board you cannot get rid of, be forced to have a Google account for access of the software repository Google playstore, which is deeply integrated into Android. If one does not care to be spied and sniffed not only by the FBI and NSA, but by Brin and Zuckerberg in addition, ok.
Greetings, a^2
Provided one has access to good public WiFi: It seems to me that Wifi and a tablet, or laptop (with a good battery) + the use of a virtual proxy network, VPN, which are almost always encrypted, is better than a smartphone. (Of course if the tablet is Android don't use the Chrome web browser.)xor , Apr 2, 2018 6:17:31 PM | 30Then just buy a 25 euro Samsung or LG flip phone for the talking part of phone use. It won't last 17 years, but one can still get batteries for them.
Of course this approach doesn't work if you don't have solid public WiFi where you'd normally use a smartphone in public.
@mh505 #27 Even with a SIM card not linked to your personal ID card it's fairly easy to automatically tie your smartphone to your person whereby you end up in the drag net you try to escape. Not in the least thanks to your close ones whom probably have you listed with your full name + phone number (thus SIM) in their smartphone. And that's even besides you connecting to all kinds of services offered by Google and the likes that know where you personally hang out because of WIFI access points, GPS location (if enabled), connected IP address where someone else connected to who has GPS enabled etc.Piotr Berman , Apr 2, 2018 6:35:20 PM | 32Unfortunately your list of EU countries that don't require personal ID to purchase a SIM card is incorrect.
It depends on the prices in your phone market.Dee Wrench , Apr 2, 2018 9:08:38 PM | 42In USA it pays to be stupid. The choice I have is to use a smart phone with a monthly charge ca. 100 dollars or a stupid phone with a monthly charge of 8 dollars (or is it 15? and the phone for 8). And if you are old enough you can bear with hardships like memorizing the map of the area were you live, having to check stuff on your own desktop computer before you leave home etc. And the difference in costs can be spent on cigarettes, beer, donations to OxPham, it is your pick.
Concerning surveilance, a stupid phone is used sparingly, so it definitely provides less tracking info.
I'm a 53 year old dog and try to keep things simple for myself. Being paranoid about being tracked and watched isn't my thing. I use my smart phone as a phone when I need to talk to an asswipe at work or my only friend to schedule a meetup or the wife unit when she calls. I have limited data so I usually wait until I'm home to view porn and news websites on the pc. I don't do any financial tasks on the phone, rarely text anyone, rarely use the camera, have only a few apps for things like weather and writing myself a note to remember to pick up milk or dog food on the way home from work. My life is so boring and my bank account so empty I'm not worth a bother to "them".
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Mar 27, 2018 | hardware.slashdot.org
(cnbc.com) BeauHD on Wednesday February 14, 2018 @05:45PM from the heads-up dept. The heads of six top U.S. intelligence agencies told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday they would not advise Americans to use products or services from Chinese smartphone maker Huawei . "The six -- including the heads of the CIA, FBI, NSA and the director of national intelligence -- first expressed their distrust of Apple-rival Huawei and fellow Chinese telecom company ZTE in reference to public servants and state agencies," reports CNBC. From the report: "We're deeply concerned about the risks of allowing any company or entity that is beholden to foreign governments that don't share our values to gain positions of power inside our telecommunications networks," FBI Director Chris Wray testified. "That provides the capacity to exert pressure or control over our telecommunications infrastructure," Wray said. "It provides the capacity to maliciously modify or steal information. And it provides the capacity to conduct undetected espionage."
In a response, Huawei said that it "poses no greater cybersecurity risk than any ICT vendor." A spokesman said in a statement: "Huawei is aware of a range of U.S. government activities seemingly aimed at inhibiting Huawei's business in the U.S. market. Huawei is trusted by governments and customers in 170 countries worldwide and poses no greater cybersecurity risk than any ICT vendor, sharing as we do common global supply chains and production capabilities."
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Mar 27, 2018 | apple.slashdot.org
(wsj.com) Flashy phones of yesteryear, particularly Apple's iPhones and Samsung's Galaxy S handsets, are getting refurbished, and U.S. consumers are snapping them up. Many shoppers are balking at price tags for new phones pushing $1,000, and improvements on latest launches in many cases haven't impressed [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source ] . As more people hold on to devices longer, new smartphone shipments plunged to historic lows at the end of 2017. "Smartphones now resemble the car industry very closely," said Sean Cleland, director of mobile at B-Stock Solutions, the world's largest platform for trade-in and overstock phones, based in Redwood City, Calif. "I still want to drive a Mercedes, but I'll wait a couple of years to buy the older model. Same mentality." Another trend borrowed from the car industry that has helped consumers get around sticker shock: leasing. Instead of buying new phones, Sprint and T-Mobile allow subscribers to effectively lease them, allowing them to trade up for the latest device. That option, though, hasn't yet gone mainstream.
[...] Second-hand phones long found their way to Africa, India and other developing markets. But now, U.S. buyers represent 93% of the purchases made at second-hand phone online auctions run by B-Stock, compared with an about-even split between the U.S. and the rest of the world in 2013. Samsung and Apple together sell more than one out of every three phones globally and capture about 95% of the industry's profits. U.S. consumers, spurred by two-year carrier contracts and phone subsidies, were upgrading every 23 months as recently as 2014, according to BayStreet Research, which tracks device sales. Now, people are holding onto their phones for an extra eight months. By next year, the time gap is estimated to widen to 33 months, BayStreet says.
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Sep 27, 2017 | www.amazon.com
$102 One year plan is $125 and is extra
- SPEED 4G LTE/Wi-Fi®
- USAGE TIME Talk time up to 25 Hrs
- DISPLAY 5.0'' Screen Display
- STORAGE Internal Memory up to 16 GB (device only)
- CAMERA 5 MP Camera
- DIMENSIONS 2.76'' x 5.55'' x 0.34'' inches
The smartphone that does everything you love and still fits our budget.
Enjoy all your photos and videos on a vibrant 5.0'' HD display. Get to everything quickly with the streamlined layout of Easy Mode.
In the next step, you will have the option to bundle your Phone with one of our no-contract plans.
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Sep 27, 2017 | www.msn.com
Poor battery life
Every smartphone owner struggles to some extent with battery life . But when your charge drops by half in just a couple of hours, you're in trouble. This can happen when a battery suffering from old age starts degrading fast. In this case, if you have an older phone, you should look at getting the battery professionally replaced. Or, if you're do for an upgrade, consider buying a new phone model and recycling your old one .
However, before you start researching new phones, try a few tricks to maximize your battery life . First, figure out if you can lay the battery drain blame on one or two apps. In Android or iOS, you can check this via the Battery entry in Settings. If you do identify a few energy hogs, remove them from your phone to see if the problem clears up. While you're poking around the Battery menu, you can access the special battery saver mode (called Battery saver on Androids and Low power mode on iPhones). Turning this on won't fix your underlying problems, but it can give you a bit more time between charges.
To extend battery life even further, at least temporarily, dim the brightness of the display or put the phone in airplane mode periodically. Location tracking can also drain your battery -- switch it off in Android in Settings > Location and in iOS in Settings > Privacy and Location Services. Poor reception
Don't blame your phone if it's having networking issues that make it difficult to connect to Wi-Fi or catch a cellular signal. The culprit could be external. Are you in a notorious dead spot where no one can get any signal? If you're at home, are other devices struggling to connect to the web? You might need to focus your troubleshooting on something other than your handset .
A call to your carrier or Internet Service Provider -- if you can bear it -- could be the next step in trying to get everything working again. They will know more about the issues specific to your phone and service. Alternatively, try a quick web search using the make and model of your phone, and the name of your carrier or internet provider. You might well find solutions from people who've had the same problem as you.
If you've determined that your phone is truly at fault, then start with a simple reboot. This resets all your phone's wireless connections and establishes them again from the beginning. If you'd rather not turn your phone off and on again, try putting it in airplane mode and then turning the mode off -- this will have pretty much the same effect.
For persistent issues, make sure you're running the most recent version of your mobile operating system. This will have the latest bug fixes and be ready to work with the latest settings from your carrier or router. If you've been putting off an operating-system update, then deal with it now.
If both the reset and the update fail, you've exhausted your home-repair options. Connectivity is one of those features that should "just work," so if it doesn't, then you may be looking at a faulty phone, a damaged SIM card, or a problem with the network itself. If the issue started suddenly, and not because you altered any settings on your phone, it's more likely that it's not your phone to blame. In this case, you'll definitely want to call the experts at your phone's manufacturer or your service provider.
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Sep 27, 2017 | www.msn.com
First, the good news. You cant overcharge your phones battery, so dont worry about that. Your phone stops drawing current from the charger once it reaches 100%, according to Cadex Electronics marketing communications manager John Bradshaw. Cadex manufactures battery charging equipment. Go ahead and charge to 100%, Bradshaw says. No need to worry about overcharging as modern devices will terminate the charge correctly at the appropriate voltage.
Edo Campos, spokesperson for battery-maker Anker , echoes that sentiment. Modern smart phones are smart, meaning that they have built in protection chips that will safeguard the phone from taking in more charge than what it should, says Campos. Good quality chargers also have protection chips that prevent the charger from releasing more power than whats needed. For example, when the battery reaches 100%, the protection hardware inside the phone will stop current from coming in and the charger will turn off.
... ... ...
Dont wait until your phone gets close to a 0% battery charge until you recharge it, advises Cadexs Bradshaw. Full discharges wear out the battery sooner than do partial discharges. Bradshaw recommends that you wait until your phone gets down to around a 35% or 40% charge and then plug it into a charger. That will help preserve the capacity of the battery. You should also keep your phone cool, as higher temperatures accelerate the loss of battery capacity. Pro tip: Take off your phones case before you charge it.
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Sep 24, 2017 | www.msn.com
At a business forum in Moscow on Friday she presented "TaigaPhone", a brand new smartphone created by InfoWatch Group, her software development company, costing around 15,000 rubles ($260).
The TaigaPhone is entirely green to represent the Russian northern forest after which it is named and has a five-inch touch screen.
"We have created it for the corporate market," said Kaspersky, president of InfoWatch Group and co-founder of Kaspersky Lab.
... ... ...
"Half of all data loss in Russia happens on mobile devices, we intend to fix that problem with the TaigaPhone," company representative Grigoriy Vasilyev told investors at the forum.
InfoWatch says the device can guarantee the confidentiality of all TaigaPhone users, track the location of each device and prevent information leakage.
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Sep 16, 2017 | apple.slashdot.org
(theverge.com) 115 Posted by BeauHD on Thursday September 07, 2017 @03:00AM from the there's-a-first-for-everything dept. According to analysis by consulting firm Counterpoint Research, China's leading smartphone marker, Huawei, surpassed Apple's global smartphone sales for the first time in June and July . The company is only behind Samsung in sales. The Verge reports: Figures haven't been released yet for August, though Counterpoint indicates sales for that month also look strong. However, it's worth noting that with Apple's new iPhone releases just around the corner, the iPhone maker is almost certain to get back on top in September. Researchers at Counterpoint also point out that Huawei has a weak presence in the South Asian, Indian, and North American markets, which "limits Huawei's potential to the near-to-mid-term to take a sustainable second place position behind Samsung." Its strongest market is China, and it's also popular in Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. Still, Apple doesn't have much to worry about; Counterpoint says the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus remain the world's best-selling smartphones, while Oppo's R11 and A57 claimed the third and fourth spots, respectively, followed by Samsung's Galaxy S8, Xiaomi's Redmi Note 4X, and Samsung's Galaxy S8 Plus. Surprisingly, despite overtaking Apple in global sales, none of Huawei's phones appear on the Top 10 list.
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Jul 11, 2017 | www.msn.com
Engadget Jamie Rigg 10 hrs agoVodafone's own-brand devices have been hit and miss over the past few years. There was the Smart Ultra 6 , which was one of the best affordable phones of its time, and the Smart Platinum 7 , which was an interesting step into more expensive, sub-flagship category. But alongside those, there have been a number of humdrum handsets that failed to impress. As per its yearly update cycle, Vodafone recently released new own-brand hardware, with the Smart V8 in particular slotting into the carrier's roster as one of the best affordable options.
The most immediately striking feature of the Smart V8 when you free it from its box is the build quality. It's almost entirely brushed metal aside from two pockets of textured plastic, with neatly chamfered edges and loudspeaker grilles. While it's not pushing the boundaries of design by any means, it certainly looks and feels like it's punching above the ฃ159 pay-as-you-go price point.
The spec sheet isn't to be taken lightly either. You're looking at a 5.5-inch, 1080p LCD display, an octa-core 1.4GHz Snapdragon 435, 3 gigs of RAM, 32GB of expandable storage, a 16-megapixel primary camera and 8MP front-facer, all powered by a decent-sized 3,000mAh battery. You also get a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor and NFC chip -- hello Android Pay. Perhaps even more important, the Smart V8 is running Android 7.1.1, so it's basically as up-to-date as you can get on the software front.
It's more or less the stock Android experience, albeit with a few borderline-bloatware apps from Vodafone added in. One quirk I've discovered worth noting is I can't seem to resize widgets on the homescreen. Not a huge deal, but it does mean the digital clock widget is naturally off-centre, which is slightly irritating.
In sunny summer conditions, the 16MP camera can be pretty handy. Good colour saturation, clarity, and contrast thanks to the HDR mode. The app is pretty busy with filters and features and settings, from full manual control to long exposure and "active photo" modes (kinda like GIFs/Live Photos). You won't find much help in them in low-light conditions, though, where the camera begins to fall off fairly quickly.
All in all, there's nothing particularly special about the Smart V8. These days, metalwork, this kind of spec sheet and value-added features like fingerprint sensor and NFC are becoming standard at the mid-to-low end. The new handset does have something going for it, though -- a pretty competitive price tag.
Vodafone's pay-as-you-go range is relatively sparse around the ฃ150 mark. You've got the ฃ149 Sony Xperia L1, which is less attractive enough on paper to justify the jump to the ฃ159 Smart V8. The closest handset beyond that point is the fairly comparable ฃ199 Huawei P8 lite (2017). The Moto G5 gets a nod too, obviously, as well as the Wileyfox Swift 2 , since they can be bought elsewhere for bang on ฃ159. You wouldn't say either of them are significantly better than the Smart V8, though.
Smart N8If you've set yourself a slightly tighter budget, Vodafone also recently launched the Smart N8 , an ฃ85 handset sitting in the crowded low-end of the pay-as-you-go spectrum. It's more than appropriately specced, with a 5-inch, 720p display, quad-core 1.3GHz MediaTek chip, 1.5GB of RAM, 16 gigs of expandable storage, 13- and 5-megapixel cameras, fingerprint sensor, NFC and 2,400mAh battery.
Despite looking a little on the drab side, it's a decent value device. You could always save yourself a London pint and opt for the ฃ79 Moto G4 Play instead, which recently began receiving Android Nougat, but you would be sacrificing the fingerprint reader/NFC combo. But that's true of most other devices dipping below the ฃ100 marker at the moment.
Smart Tab N8While the two smartphones have obvious places in Vodafone's backroom, the new Smart Tab N8 is where things get confusing. The draw of pretty much all own-brand tablets is ultimate portability, thanks to 4G, at a reasonable cost. I wouldn't call the Smart Tab N8 very portable though, because it's massive. It's not that heavy at 465g and it's pretty thin, too, with 8.95mm between the glass front and textured, tactile plastic back -- it's that it's all face.
Not only does the slate carry a 10.1-inch display, but a significant bloating of bezel around it. It's not something you could slip into a handbag and it not be a nuisance, let's say. Worse yet, that 10.1-inch screen runs at a very noticeable 1,280 x 800 resolution, making it easy to pick out individual pixels. Large tablets are typically geared more towards entertainment, but 149 ppi doesn't really cut it nowadays.
The other specs are largely irrelevant: A quad-core 1.1GHz MediaTek processor, 2 gigs of RAM, 16GB of expandable storage, 4,600mAh battery and 5MP/2MP cameras on the appropriate sides. Vodafone is selling the Smart Tab N8 on contracts starting at ฃ16 per month for a 5GB data cap and no upfront payment. I'd sooner get exactly the same plan with Samsung's 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab A (2016), since it's been upgraded to Nougat already and waves a more alluring spec sheet, the 1,920 x 1,200 display being the most important upgrade. Hits and misses for Vodafone again, it would appear.
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www.softpanorama.org
reslez , April 28, 2017 at 8:45 pmHow strange to think the iPhone is 10 years old. How will all those Millennials and Xers maintain their self-image?
You can't be a cutting edge techie warrior when your "hot new" gadget hasn't materially changed in a decade. I think it's pretty indisputable we've entered a period of stagnation. No antitrust enforcement in 15 years - we're paying the price.
The only reason we got the web is because David Boies went after Microsoft before Bill Gates could strangle it in its cradle.
Those tech companies better hurry it up with the flying cars and sex bots. They can only point at plastic WiFi-enabled fitness bracelets and bluetooth juice machines for so long. All the smart people in Silicon Valley are stuck working on better ways to spy on their customers and sell them ads. That is not innovation.
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Jan 11, 2017 | theregister.co.uk
deconstructionist
LotarescoRe: The point stands
the point is flat on it's back just like the sophistic reply.
Lets take apples first machines they copied the mouse from Olivetti , they took the OS look from a rank XEROX engineers work, the private sector take risks and plagiarize when they can, but the missing person here is the amateur, take the BBS private individuals designed, built and ran it was the pre cursor to the net and a lot of .com company's like AOL and CompuServe where born there.
And the poor clarity in the BBC article is mind numbing, the modern tech industry has the Fairchild camera company as it's grand daddy which is about as far from federal or state intervention and innovation as you can get .
Deconstructionism only works when you understand the brief and use the correct and varied sources not just one crackpot seeking attention.
Re: Engineering change at the BBC?
"The BBC doesn't "do" engineering "
CEEFAX, PAL Colour TV, 625 line transmissions, The BBC 'B', Satellite Broadcasting, Digital Services, the iPlayer, micro:bit, Smart TV services.
There's also the work that the BBC did in improving loudspeakers including the BBC LS range. That work is one reason that British loudspeakers are still considered among the world's best designs.
By all means kick the BBC, but keep it factual.
LDS
Re: I thought I invented it.
That was the first market demographics - iPod users happy to buy one who could also make calls. But that's also were Nokia failed spectacularly - it was by nature phone-centric. Its models where phones that could also make something else. True smartphones are instead little computers that can also make phone calls.
In many ways Treo/Palm and Windows CE anticipated it, but especially the latter tried to bring a "desktop" UI on tiny devices (and designed UIs around a stylus and a physical keyboard).
the iPod probably taught Apple you need a proper "finger based" UI for this kind of devices - especially for the consumer market - and multitouch solved a lot of problems.
Emmeran
Re: I thought I invented it.
Shortly there-after I duct-taped 4 of them together and invented the tablet.
My version of it all is that the glory goes to iTunes for consumer friendly interface (ignore that concept Linux guys) and easy music purchases, the rest was natural progression and Chinese slave labor.
Smart phones and handheld computers were definitely driven by military dollars world wide but so was the internet. All that fact shows is that a smart balance of Capitalism & Socialism can go a long way.
Ogi
Re: I thought I invented it.
>That was the first market demographics - iPod users happy to buy one who could also make calls. But that's also were Nokia failed spectacularly - it was by nature phone-centric. Its models where phones that could also make something else. True smartphones are instead little computers that can also make phone calls. In many ways Treo/Palm and Windows CE anticipated it, but especially the latter tried to bring a "desktop" UI on tiny devices (and designed UIs around a stylus and a physical keyboard). the iPod probably taught Apple you need a proper "finger based" UI for this kind of devices - especially for the consumer market - and multitouch solved a lot of problems.
I don't know exactly why Nokia failed, but it wasn't because their smart phones were "phone centric". The N900, N810 and N800 are to this day far more "little computers" than any other smartphone so far. Indeed, as they ran a Debian Linux derivative with a themed Enlightenment based desktop, which is pretty much off the shelf Linux software. While they didn't have multitouch, you could use your finger on the apps no problem. It had a stylus for when you wanted extra precision though.
I could apt-get (with some sources tweaking) what I wanted outside of their apps. You could also compile and run proper Linux desktop apps on it, including openoffice (back in the day). It ran like a dog and didn't fit the "mobile-UI" they created, but it worked.
It also had a proper X server, so I could forward any phone app to my big PC if I didn't feel like messing about on a small touchscreen. To this day I miss this ability. To just connect via SSH to my phone over wifi, run an smartphone app, and have it appear on my desktop like any other app would.
It had xterm, it had Perl built in, it had Python (a lot of it was written in Python), you even could install a C toolchain on it and develop C code on it. People ported standard desktop UIs on it, and with a VNC/RDP server you could use it as a portable computer just fine (just connect to it using a thin client, or a borrowed PC).
I had written little scripts to batch send New years SMS to contacts, and even piped the output of "fortune" to a select few numbers just for kicks (the days with free SMS, and no chat apps). To this day I have no such power on my modern phones.
Damn, now that I think back, it really was a powerful piece of kit. I actually still miss the features *sniff*
And now that I think about it, In fact I suspect they failed because their phones were too much "little computers" at a time when people wanted a phone. Few people (outside of geeks) wanted to fiddle with X-forwarding, install SSH, script/program/modify, or otherwise customise their stuff.
Arguably the one weakest app on the N900 was the phone application itself, which was not open source, so could not be improved by the community, so much so people used to say it wasn't really a phone, rather it was a computer with a phone attached, which is exactly what I wanted.
Mage
Invention of iPhone
It wasn't even really an invention.
The BBC frequently "invents" tech history. They probably think MS and IBM created personal computing, when in fact they held it back for 10 years and destroyed innovating companies then.
The only significant part was the touch interface by Fingerworks.
I was reading a BBC news web article and it was wrong too. It missed out emphasising that the real reason for success in 2007 was the deals with operators, cheap high cap data packages, often bundled with iPhone from the Mobile Operator.
This is nonsense:
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-38550016
"Those were the days, by the way, when phones were for making calls but all that was about to change."
Actually if you had a corporate account, you had a phone already with email, Apps, ability to read MS Office docs, web browser and even real Fax send/receive maybe 5 or 6 years before the iPhone. Apart from an easier touch interface, the pre-existing phones had more features like copy/paste, voice control and recording calls.
The revolution was ordinary consumers being able to have a smart phone AND afford the data. The actual HW was commodity stuff. I had the dev system for the SC6400 Samsung ARM cpu used it.
Why did other phones use resistive + stylus instead of capacitive finger touch?
- 1) Apple Newton and Palm: Handwriting & annotation. Needs high resolution.
- 2) Dominance of MS CE interface (only usable with with a high resolution stylus.)
The capacitive touch existed in the late 1980s, but "holy grail" was handwriting recognition, not gesture control, though Xerox and IIS both had worked on it and guestures were defined before the 1990s. So the UK guy didn't invent anything.
Also irrelevant.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-38552241
Mines the one with a N9110 and later N9210 in the pocket. The first commercial smart phone was 1998 and crippled by high per MByte or per second (or both!) charging. Also in 2002, max speed was often 28K, but then in 2005 my landline was still 19.2K till I got Broadband, though I had 128K in 1990s in the city (ISDN) before I moved.
xeroks
Re: Invention of iPhone
The ground breaking elements of the iPhone were all to do with usability:
The fixed price data tariff was - to me - the biggest innovation. It may have been the hardest to do, as it involved entrenched network operators in a near monopoly. The hardware engineers only had to deal with the laws of physics.
The apple store made it easy to purchase and install apps and media. Suddenly you didn't have to be a geek or an innovator to make your phone do something useful or fun that the manufacturer didn't want to give to everyone.
The improved touch interface, the styling, and apple's cache all helped, and, I assume, fed into the efforts to persuade the network operators to give the average end user access to data without fear.
MrXavia
Re: Invention of iPhone
"Those were the days, by the way, when phones were for making calls but all that was about to change."
I remember having a motorola A920 way back in 2003/2004 maybe, and on that I made video calls, went online, had a touch interface, ran 'apps', watched videos.... in fact I could do everything the iPhone could do and more... BUT it was clunky and the screen was not large... the iPhone was a nice step forward in many ways but also a step back in functionality
imaginarynumber
Re: Invention of iPhone
"The fixed price data tariff was - to me - the biggest innovation".
In my experience, the iphone killed the "all you can eat" fixed price data tariffs
I purchased a HTC Athena (T-Mobile Ameo) on a T-Mobile-Web and Walk contract in Feb 2007. I had unlimited 3.5G access (including tethering) and fixed call minutes/texts.
When it was time to upgrade, I was told that iphone 3G users were using too much data and that T-Mobile were no longer offering unlimited internet access.
"First smartphone"
For fun, I put "first smartphone" into Google. It wasn't Apple's. I think a BBC editor may have temporarily said that it was.
As for Apple inventing the first multitouch smartphone, though -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38552241 claims, with some credibility, that Apple's engineers wanted to put a keyboard on their phone. The Blackberry phone had a keyboard. But Steve Jobs wanted a phone that you could work with your finger (without a keyboard).
One finger.
If you're only using one finger, you're not actually using multi touch?
nedge2k
Apple invented everything... They may have invented the iPhone but they DID NOT invent the "smartphone category" as that article suggests.
Microsoft had Smartphone 2002 and Pocket PC 2000 which were eventually merged into Windows Mobile and, interface aside, were vastly superior to the iPhone's iOS.
Devices were manufactured in a similar fashion to how android devices are now - MS provided the OS and firms like HTC, HP, Acer, Asus, Eten, Motorola made the hardware.
People rarely know how long HTC has been going as they used to OEM stuff for the networks - like the original Orange SPV (HTC Canary), a candybar style device running Microsoft Smartphone 2002. Or the original O2 XDA (HTC Wallaby), one the first Pocket PC "phone edition" devices and, IIRC, the first touchscreen smartphone to be made by HTC.
GruntyMcPugh
Re: Apple invented everything...
Yup, I had Windows based smartphones made by Qtek and HTC, and my first smartphone was an Orange SPV M2000 (a Qtek 9090 ) three years before the first iPhone, and I had a O2 XDA after that, which in 2006, had GPS, MMS, and an SD card slot, which held music for my train commute.
Now I'm a fan of the Note series, I had one capacitive screen smartphone without a stylus (HTC HD2), and missed it too much.
nedge2k
Re: Apple invented everything...
Lotaresco, I used to review a lot of the devices back in the day, as well as using them daily and modifying them (my phone history for ref: http://mowned.com/nedge2k ). Not once did they ever fail to make a phone call. Maybe the journalist was biased and made it up (Symbian was massively under threat at the time and all sorts of bullshit stories were flying about), maybe he had dodgy hardware, who knows.
Either way, it doesn't mean that the OS as a whole wasn't superior to what Nokia and Apple produced - because in every other way, it was.
imaginarynumber
Re: Apple invented everything...
@Lotaresco
"The weak spot for Microsoft was that it decided to run telephony in the application layer. This meant that any problem with the OS would result in telephony being lost....
Symbian provided a telephone which could function as a computer. The telephony was a low-level service and even if the OS crashed completely you could still make and receive calls. Apple adopted the same architecture, interface and telephony are low level services which are difficult to kill."
Sorry, but if iOS (or symbian) crashes you cannot make calls. In what capacity were you evaluating phones in 2002? I cannot recall ever seeing a Windows Mobile blue screen. It would hang from time to time, but it never blue screened.
MR J
Seeing how much free advertising the BBC has given Apple over the years I doubt they will care.
And lets be honest here, the guy is kinda correct. We didn't just go from a dumb phone to a smart phone, there was a gradual move towards it as processing power was able to be increased and electronic packages made smaller. Had we gone from the old brick phones straight to an iPhone then I would agree that they owned something like TNT.
Did Apple design the iPhone - Yes, of course.
Did Apple invent the Smart Phone - Nope.
IBM had a touch screen "smart" phone in 1992 that had a square screen with rounded corners.
What Apple did was put it into a great package with a great store behind it and they made sure it worked - and worked well. I personally am not fond of Apple due to the huge price premium they demand and overly locked down ecosystems, but I will admit it was a wonderful product Design.
Peter2
Re: "opinion pieces don't need to be balanced"
"I am no fan of Apple, but to state that something was invented by the State because everyone involved went to state-funded school is a kindergarten-level of thinking that has no place in reasoned argument."
It's actually "Intellectual Yet Idiot" level thinking. Google it. Your right that arguments of this sort of calibre have no place in reasoned argument, but the presence of this sort of quality thinking being shoved down peoples throats by media is why a hell of a lot of people are "fed up with experts".
TonyJ
Hmmm....iPhone 1.0
I actually got one of these for my wife. It was awful. It almost felt like a beta product (and these are just a few of things I still remember):
- It had no kind of face sensor so it was common for the user to disconnect mid-call via their chin or cheek;
- It's autocorrect functions were terrible - tiny little words above the word in question and even tinier x to close the option;
- Inability to forward messages;
- No email support;
- No apps.
I think it's reasonably fair to say that it was the app store that really allowed the iPhone to become so successful, combined with the then Apple aura and mystique that Jobs was bringing to their products.
As to who invented this bit or that bit - I suggest you could pull most products released in the last 10-20 years and have the same kind of arguments.
But poor show on the beeb for their lack of fact checking on this one.
TonyJ
Re: Hmmm....iPhone 1.0
"...The original iPhone definitely has a proximity sensor. It is possible that your wife's phone was faulty or there was a software issue...."
Have an upvote - hers definitely never worked (and at the time I didn't even know it was supposed to be there), so yeah, probably faulty. I'd just assumed it didn't have one.
Lotaresco
There is of course...
.. the fact that the iPhone wouldn't exist without its screen and all LCD displays owe their existence to (UK) government sponsored research. So whereas I agree that Mazzucato is guilty of rabidly promoting an incorrect hypothesis to the status of fact, there is this tiny kernel of truth.
The government was looking for a display technology for aircraft that was rugged, light, low powered and more reliable than CRTs. They also wanted to avoid the punitive royalties taken by RCA on CRTs. It was the work done in the 1960s by the Royal Radar Establishment at Malvern and George William Gray and his team at the University of Hull that led to modern LCDs. QinetiQ, which inherited RSRE's intellectual property rights, is still taking royalties on each display sold.
anonymous boring coward
Re: There is of course...
I had a calculator in the late 1970s with an LCD display. It had no resemblance to my phone's display.
Not even my first LCD screened laptop had much resemblance with a phone's display. That laptop had a colour display, in theory. If looked at at the right angle, in the correct light.
Innovation is ongoing, and not defined by some initial stumbling attempts.
juice
Roland6Apple invented the iPhone...
... in the same way that Ford invented the Model T, Sony invented the Walkman or Nintendo invented the Wii. They took existing technologies, iterated and integrated them, and presented them in the right way in the right place at the right time.
And that's been true of pretty much every invention since someone discovered how to knap flint.
As to how much of a part the state had to play: a lot of things - especially in the IT and medical field - have been spun out of military research, though by the same token, much of this is done by private companies funded by government sources.
Equally, a lot of technology has been acquired through trade, acquisition or outright theft. In WW2, the United Kingdom gave the USA a lot of technology via the Tizard mission (and later, jet-engine technology was also licenced), and both Russia and the USA "acquired" a lot of rocket technology by picking over the bones of Germany's industrial infrastructure. Then, Russia spent the next 40 years stealing whatever nuclear/military technology it could from the USA - though I'm sure some things would have trickled the other way as well!
Anyway, if you trace any modern technology back far enough, there will have been state intervention. That shouldn't subtract in any way from the work done by companies and individuals who have produced something where the sum is greater than the parts...
Re: Apple invented the iPhone...
... in the same way that Ford invented the Model T, Sony invented the Walkman or Nintendo invented the Wii. They took existing technologies, iterated and integrated them, and presented them in the right way in the right place at the right time.
And that's been true of pretty much every invention since someone discovered how to knap flint.
Not so sure, Singer did a little more with respect to the sewing machine - his was the forst that actually worked. Likewise Marconi was the first with a working wireless. Yes both made extensive use of existing technology, but both clearly made that final inventive step; something that isn't so clear in the case of the examples you cite.
Equally, a lot of technology has been acquired through trade, acquisition or outright theft.
Don't disagree, although your analysis omitted Japanese and Chinese acquisition of 'western' technology and know-how...
Anyway, if you trace any modern technology back far enough, there will have been state intervention.
Interesting point, particularly when you consider the case of John Harrison, the inventor of the marine chronometer. Whilst the government did offer a financial reward it was very reluctant to actually pay anything out...
Aitor 1
Apple invented the iPhone, but not the smartphone.
The smartphone had been showed before inseveral incarnations, including the "all touch screen" several years before Apple decided to dabble in smartphones. So no invention here.
As for the experience, again, nothing new. Al thought of before, in good part even implemented.
The key here is that Steve Jobs had the guts to force the thought of a useful smartphone, gadget for the user first and phone second into the minds of the Telcos, and he was the one to get unlimited/big data bundles.
He identified correctly, as many had before but before the power to do anything about it, that the customers are the final users, not the telcos.
The rest of the smartphones were culled before birth by the Telecomm industry, as they demanded certain "features" that nobody wanted but lined their pockets nicely with minumum investment.
So I thank Steve Jobs for that and for being able to buy digital music.
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theregister.co.uk
iPhone at 10Apple didn't invent the smartphone. The iPhone wasn't as good as many of the other phones the likes of Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Motorola were selling to the mobile networks. The real breakthrough was that Apple circumvented the buying process.
There has always been a battle between the mobile phone networks and the handset manufacturers. The networks see phones as a necessary evil for selling airtime. Anything which sells more airtime or chargeable services is a good thing. Anything which reduces the customers likelihood to buy such as a high handset price is a bad thing.
And the network wants to own the customer. We'll get back to Apple in a moment but first a bit of a brief history lesson.
Back in the early 2000s, before 3G the mobile networks had the purchasing of handsets down to a fine art. They would look at the cost of the components, know what a handset cost to build and then offer the manufacturer a little less than the total. I saw this when I worked for both Motorola and Sony Ericsson. We'd propose a new handset to a network with a price of $80, and a cost to us of $60, and the network would offer us a huge promo, millions of units at $58. They'd argue that their volumes would let us get the cost down to under $50 and then when we sold to other people at $80 we'd make more money. Sometimes we took the deal, particularly if the order spanned a number of models and some of the other models were more lucrative.
For Motorola "more lucrative" meant clamshell phones such as the V60 and 3G phones such as the A830 (codenamed Talon) and the A920 smartphone (Paragon).
The important thing that was going on here is that 3G shifted the power balance. In 2003 the only manufacturers who could ship in quantity were Motorola and NEC. Vodafone was so desperate for 3G phones it had set up Orbitel, a joint venture with Ericsson to make 3G handsets. Unfortunately these were made by people used to building high spec military equipment so while the manufacturing was superb and they worked well, the production rate at the factory in Nottingham was relatively weak.
Suddenly the handset manufacturers could up the ante on what they sold phones for. They could play the volume game the other way. If a network wanted some A830s they would also have to buy some GSM phones at a sensible price.
It set the scene for Apple to make a move even though I suspect Apple never realised this.
The incumbent manufacturers all worked within the framework the mobile network buyers laid out. They had a consumer segmentation model, which classified types of consumers Stay-at-home-mom, smart businessman, blue collar worker and the like. They'd have snazzy names thought up at ideation sessions with lots of Powerpoint and post-it notes.
The segmentation model would then be translated into phone specs. The stay at home mom might be called "Ellie Ballet", and the specs would say she wanted better headphones, a 2MP camera, bar phone with a five day battery life, and a retail price of under $50.
The business phone could be $300 but it needed to be 3G and offer lots of services which would drive more revenue to the network.
All phones had to support the current obsession of the network: Vodafone Live, Orange Signature, T-Mobile My Faves. As ever all driven by usage and loyalty.
So when Motorola touted the ill-fated Odin, Ericsson offered Pamela and Nokia any one of a number of concepts, the networks demurred. They didn't fit in to the consumer segmentation planogram, were too expensive and most importantly moved the ownership of the customer from the network to the handset manufacturer.
Into this war came Apple, with a frankly inadequate phone. It was $300 and 2G, didn't have MMS and the Bluetooth was rubbish. It would never have made it past the handset buyers. Apple wanted customers to use side-loading of music from iTunes. The networks had rebelled against Nokia trying something similar with Ovi. Apple also wanted the networks to re-engineer their voice mail to support Visual Voicemail, something Motorola failed to do with the P1088.
But Apple didn't sell to the handset buyers. Apple had a secret weapon: Steve Jobs, and he met with Ralph de la Vega, the big cheese at AT&T. And de la Vega welcomed the new rival to the evil handset manufacturers he'd been doing battle with. It also had cool. So even though the iPhone had a commercial model which included revenue share and a dozen red flags that would have seen any of the established players shown the door, AT&T took the iPhone.
And Apple was right, customers didn't want Live, Signature or My Faves. Customers did want email, music and open internet access. So the iPhone became an nifty customer acquisition tool. Networks were faced with two options, take the iPhone and give all your portal revenue plus a chuck more cash to Apple or lose customers to a rival who did take the iPhone. The proposition was so powerful, O2 which had decided to go from 2G to 3G and bypass EDGE (kind of 2.5G) reversed the major engineering decision and rolled out EDGE just to support the iPhone.
Even though sales have started to dip, the iPhone still currently dominates, and history has been re-written to say that Apple invented the smartphone. Apple didn't, but the real irony is that when the networks went with Apple to defeat Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola they ended up handing the vast majority of the profits in the mobile phone business to Apple. ฎ
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Dec 26, 2016 | apple.slashdot.org
(theverge.com) 46 Posted by BeauHD on Wednesday December 07, 2016 @05:00PM from the all-in-one dept. An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: T-Mobile just revealed its answer to ATT's NumberSync technology, which lets customers use one phone number across all their connected devices . T-Mobile's version is called Digits and it will launch in a limited, opt-in customer beta beginning today before rolling out to everyone early next year. "You can make and take calls and texts on whatever device is most convenient," the company said in its press release. "Just log in and, bam, your call history, messages and even voicemail are all there. And it's always your same number, so when you call or text from another device, it shows up as you." When it leaves beta, Digits will cost an extra monthly fee, but T-Mobile isn't revealing pricing today. "This is not going to be treated as adding another line to your account," said COO Mike Sievert. "Expect us to be disruptive here." And while its main feature is one number for everything, Digits does offer T-Mobile customers another big perk: multiple numbers on the same device. This will let you swap between personal and work numbers without having to maintain separate lines and accounts. You can also give out an "extra set" of Digits in situations where you might be hesitant to give someone your primary number; this temporary number forwards to your devices like any other call. You can have multiple numbers for whatever purposes you want, based on T-Mobile's promotional video.
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Dec 26, 2016 | apple.slashdot.org
(theverge.com) 118 Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday December 20, 2016 @02:00AM from the very-particular-set-of-skills dept. An anonymous reader writes from a report via The Verge: Dutch film student Anthony van der Meer had the unfortunate pleasure of having his phone stolen while having lunch in Amsterdam. Unsatisfied with the response from the Amsterdam police, who register an average of 300 stolen phones per week , Meer decided to find out what kind of person steals a phone. He downloaded DIY security software on a decoy Android phone, intentionally got the phone stolen, and was able to spy on his thief for weeks . He recorded the ups and downs of his covert investigation and turned it into a 22-minute documentary called Find My Phone . Meer preloaded the decoy device with an anti-theft application called Cerberus , which allows the owner of the device to access any file on the phone remotely, as well as discretely activate the phone's camera and microphone. Meer and his friends were able to navigate the technicalities of surveilling the thief with relative ease. They even snapped a close-up of the guy's face. The hard part, it turns out, was getting the preloaded phone stolen in the first place. It took Meer four days to get his device pilfered in a city with high rates of theft because concerned citizens kept coming to his rescue.
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Dec 26, 2016 | it.slashdot.org
(theverge.com) 66 Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday December 20, 2016 @05:00PM from the access-denied dept. An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Today , ATT introduced a new service for automated blocking of fraud or spam calls. Dubbed ATT Call Protect , the system identifies specific numbers believed to be sources of fraud, and will either deliver those calls with a warning or block them outright . Users can whitelist specific numbers, although temporary blocks require downloading a separate Call Protect app. The feature is only available on postpaid iOS and Android devices, and can be activated through the MyATT system. Phone companies have allowed for manual number blocking for years, and third-party apps like Whitepages and Privacystar use larger databases of untrustworthy numbers to preemptively block calls from the outside. But ATT's new system would build in those warnings at the network level, and give operators more comprehensive data when assembling suspected numbers. More broadly, marketing calls are subject to the national Do Not Call registry . Specific instances of fraud can still be reported through carriers or directly to police.
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Oct 08, 2015 | Zero Hedge reprinted from TrueActivist.com
Submitted by Sophie McAdam via TrueActivist.com,
In an interview with the BBC's 'Panorama' which aired in Britain last week, Edward Snowden spoke in detail about the spying capabilities of the UK intelligence agency GCHQ. He disclosed that government spies can legally hack into any citizen's phone to listen in to what's happening in the room, view files, messages and photos, pinpoint exactly where a person is (to a much more sophisticated level than a normal GPS system), and monitor a person's every move and every conversation, even when the phone is turned off. These technologies are named after Smurfs, those little blue cartoon characters who had a recent Hollywood makeover. But despite the cute name, these technologies are very disturbing; each one is built to spy on you in a different way:
- "Dreamy Smurf": lets the phone be powered on and off
- "Nosey Smurf": lets spies turn the microphone on and listen in on users, even if the phone itself is turned off
- "Tracker Smurf":a geo-location tool which allows [GCHQ] to follow you with a greater precision than you would get from the typical triangulation of cellphone towers.
- "Paranoid Smurf": hides the fact that it has taken control of the phone. The tool will stop people from recognizing that the phone has been tampered with if it is taken in for a service, for instance.
Snowden says: "They want to own your phone instead of you." It sounds very much like he means we are being purposefully encouraged to buy our own tracking devices. That kinda saved the government some money, didn't it?
His revelations should worry anyone who cares about human rights, especially in an era where the threat of terrorism is used to justify all sorts of governmental crimes against civil liberties. We have willingly given up our freedoms in the name of security; as a result we have neither. We seem to have forgotten that to live as a free person is a basic human right: we are essentially free beings. We are born naked and without certification; we do not belong to any government nor monarchy nor individual, we don't even belong to any nation or culture or religion- these are all social constructs. We belong only to the universe that created us, or whatever your equivalent belief. It is therefore a natural human right not to be not be under secret surveillance by your own government, those corruptible liars who are supposedly elected by and therefore accountable to the people.
The danger for law-abiding citizens who say they have nothing to fear because they are not terrorists, beware: many peaceful British protesters have been arrested under the Prevention Of Terrorism Act since its introduction in 2005. Edward Snowden's disclosure confirms just how far the attack on civil liberties has gone since 9/11 and the London bombings. Both events have allowed governments the legal right to essentially wage war on their own people, through the Patriot Act in the USA and the Prevention Of Terrorism Act in the UK. In Britain, as in the USA, terrorism and activism seem to have morphed into one entity, while nobody really knows who the real terrorists are any more. A sad but absolutely realistic fact of life in 2015: if you went to a peaceful protest at weekend and got detained, you're probably getting hacked right now.
It's one more reason to conclude that smartphones suck. And as much as we convince ourselves how cool they are, it's hard to deny their invention has resulted in a tendency for humans to behave like zombies, encouraged child labor, made us more lonely than ever, turned some of us into narcissistic selfieaddicts, and prevented us from communicating with those who really matter (the ones in the same room at the same time). Now, Snowden has given us yet another reason to believe that smartphones might be the dumbest thing we could have ever inflicted on ourselves.
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Sep 16, 2016 | news.slashdot.org
(thenextweb.com) 73Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday September 06, 2016 @07:30PM from the theory-of-relativity dept. An anonymous reader writes from a report via The Next Web: T-Mobile plans to boost its LTE speeds to up to 400 Mbps in the very near future. The Next Web reports: "The company is getting ready to boost its maximum theoretical internet speeds to become the faster carrier in the U.S. by a wide margin. The network will soon support theoretical speeds up to 400 Mbps -- nearly half the speed of Google Fiber. There's a two-pronged approach to the upgrade. First is incorporating 4x4 MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) technology, which will supposedly double the speed from the current 7-40 Mbps customers tend to experience with T-Mobile (about the same as Verizon with LTE-A). This upgrade is available now in 319 cities, although it's a moot point because only the S7 and S7 Edge will be able to use the tech via a software update "later this month." In October, the company will roll out 256 QAM support to the S7 and S7 Edge (and again, more phones later), which increases the amount of bits per transmission. T-Mobile says this will lead to theoretical maximum speeds of 400 Mbps." The Next Web followed-up with T-Mobile to ask about what the real-world speeds would be after the upgrade. The company says "customers can expect to see real world peak speeds of 190 Mbps," which is over four times current peaks speeds, but also far below the theoretical 400 Mbps.
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Nov 16, 2014 | The Independent
In technology, fashion tends to move in one direction: forward. But just as vinyl sales are booming in the age of Spotify, so the iPhone 6 must now compete with the flip-phone, its unlikely rival for the title of 2014's coolest communications handset.Last week, 26-year-old stylista and musical superstar Rihanna was photographed leaving a New York restaurant with a clamshell clamped to her ear. Like flared trousers and facial hair, it appears these antediluvian devices are getting another shot at chicness.
The trend appears to have originated in the handbag of Anna Wintour, who earlier this year was spotted peering at the screen of a flip-phone she had first acquired in approximately 2004 before she switched to a BlackBerry and, later, an iPhone.
Wintour-watchers interpreted her reversion to pre-smartphone technology as a style statement, but the Vogue editor, who is 65, is far from alone among her age group. Iggy Pop, 67, recently told The Cut website that he owns a flip-phone, "because you can drop it a lot and it won't break, and when you want to text it still has three letters to each button".
Meanwhile, in Korea, both Samsung and LG have launched brand new flip-smartphones aimed at the elderly. LG says it designed its Wine Smart handset after a round of market research found that many older consumers were intimidated by the small buttons and complicated features of many modern touch-screen smartphones.
Yet it isn't just the older generation that's turning back the technological clock. Rihanna may be rare among millennial celebrities, for whom Twitter and Instagram connectivity is mostly a must, but a recent study by the US think-tank Pew found that as many as 15 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds and 13 per cent of 25- to 34-year-olds in America don't use a smartphone.
Some surely prefer the tactile "fwap" of an unfolding clamshell to the digital click of an Apple device, while others can't afford the upgrade. But for those who can, argued writer Chiara Atik in a recent essay for online science magazine Matter, "A flip phone represents the ultimate luxury: inaccessibility."
The entertainment world's current "cool girl", 24-year-old Hunger Games actress and Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence, is not on any social media. Even she, however, is outdone by Divergent star Shailene Woodley, 22, who told The Daily Beast, "I don't even have a cellphone! And if I were to have one, it would be a flip-phone... The more you get away from all the technological buzz, the more freedom you have."
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Google is making the two models latest Nexus phone, which will sell starting today for $349 without a contract for the 16 GB model and $399 for the 32 GB model, available in more countries (10) and retailers and carriers (T-Mobile, Best Buy BBY +0.3%, Amazon, Sprint, and Radio Shack) than previous models. It won't be available on Verizon, which uses different cellular frequencies than other carriers, but will work with AT&T.
However, Google's intention is less to gain market share than to provide a reference model that will push the rest of the industry forward faster, Pichai said. Google's flat shares in today's trading may reflect that reality.
Perhaps most important for Google, KitKat was designed to require less memory to run, only 512 megabytes of RAM, which is common to many low-end smartphones. Google did that by reducing memory consumption needed by the software, by taking apps like maps and mail and making them use less memory, and exiting out of apps or processes automatically if they're not being used. In addition, the software will give app developers way to recognize that a particular phone has only a small amount of memory, so they can do a different user interface to make it fit better.
"It's a cutting-edge OS meant to operate on cutting-edge phones, but it can work all the way back on less sophisticated phones, in one version of the OS," Pichai said. "That makes a big difference. We want to reach the next 1 billion people on one version of Android."
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The Register
KitKat, aka Android 4.4, has faster multitasking and full voice control, according to Google, and a smarter caller ID system so that if the number dialing in isn't on your contacts list then Android will take a guess at who it is using businesses listed on Google Maps.
KitKat devices can now send documents to printers directly using Google Cloud Print or HP's ePrint system, and Quickoffice has been redesigned to make finding files easier and editing documents and spreadsheets more simple. The email application has also had a facelift, as has the download function.
The Chocolate Factory promises that KitKat will be able to run on a wider variety of hardware than other versions because it doesn't require the latest and greatest hardware to run. By shutting down background services and trimming memory requirements, Google reckons KitKat will need just 512MB of RAM to run smoothly.
That said, in the near future it's only going to be available for high-end hardware such as the Nexus 4, 7 and 10; the Samsung Galaxy S4; and the HTC One Google Play edition. As for the Nexus 5, of the major US carriers only Verizon isn't carrying the handset, and it is also available unlocked in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Japan and South Korea.
Google has stuck with LG as its hardware maker for the Nexus 5, rather than switching to Motorola as some rumors had suggested. The mobe comes with a five-inch 1920-by-1080-pixel display (that's 445 pixel per inch) and is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor running at 2.3GHz with 2GB of RAM.
LTE and dual-aerial Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g/n/ac) is built in and the handset has two cameras a bog-standard 1.3Mp front facer for videoconferencing and an 8Mp rear camera. For auteurs, there's also a new HDR+ mode that takes multiple shots quickly and combines them into a single photo that takes the best features from each image.
The new Nexus one of the most gossiped-about smartphones in a while is the slimmest one yet at 69.17 x 137.84 x 8.59mm and weighs in at 130g. Google claims the 2,300mAh battery is good for 17 hours talk time, 300 hours of standby and 8.5 hours of use with Wi-Fi, or seven hours on LTE. Wireless charging and NFC is also built in.
The Nexus 5 will cost $349 for the 16GB version and $399 for 32GB of storage, but there's no slot to fit any removable media, presumably since we're all supposed to be cloudy these days. Google has also eschewed Apple and Motorola Mobility's fruity color schemes the Nexus 5 is available in black and white only.
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For current smartphones applications, 32-bit is plenty. But 32-bit will eventually run into a bottleneck for applications needing more than 4GB dynamic RAM memory. This limitation is easily removed with 64-bit OS. PCs and Macs moved from 32-bit to 64-bit some years ago. That is the future for smartphones and tablets running data-intensive applications.
The iPhone 5S sports a new brain, the A7 chip, with a dual-core 64-bit CPU (central processing unit) running at 1.3 GHz, along with 64-bit operating system iOS 7. It is a brilliant move. This is one of the best executions during Tim Cook's tenure as CEO of Apple. Becoming the first to introduce high-volume 64-bit smartphones helps Apple on multiple fronts. 64-bit computing (along with fingerprint sensor) establishes Apple as the technology leader. Many may correctly argue that current smartphone applications do not need as much horsepower. But that is not the point.
Being on the forefront of technology is the right strategy in oligopolies (markets where only a few companies compete). Ten years ago, AMD used a similar approach to launch 64-bit microprocessors for PCs even though Windows XP was not ready for 64-bit. The comments from naysayers today about 64-bit, are reminiscent of initial reaction from Intel to AMD's launch of Athlon 64 in September 2003. Intel realized that AMD was gaining share by being perceived as a technology leader although they were still running 32-bit OS. Intel followed quickly with its own 64-bit PC processors, the correct strategy in oligopoly.
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