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by Joe Levi | May 23, 2012 11:31 PM"No one will ever need more than 640KB of RAM", at least that's what many think Bill Gates once said. Whether or not he actually said that is up for debate, but the quote holds a more pointed question: how much RAM is "enough"? Unfortunately the answer to this question brings up even more questions, the foremost of which: what is RAM? RAM, or Random Access Memory, is one of the four major components in any computer. The other parts are the CPU, GPU, and storage ("ROM" or "hard disk"). There are other bits and pieces that help all this along, but for the most part, those are the biggies. ...
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by Adam Z. Lein | May 23, 2012 9:28 PMYou may have noticed recently that we've been exploring different reasons as to why people love specific smartphone operating systems such a Windows Phone, iOS, Android, and Palm's Web OS. So this time we're going to look at Symbian. Symbian's an interesting beast. For a long time it was the most popular smartphone operating system in the world. Symbian's market share surpassed everyone else up until recently. There are still plenty of Nokia fans who swear by Symbian even though Nokia has decided to move on to the more modern Windows Phone OS. Why was Symbian so popular during its hayd...
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by Michael Fisher | May 23, 2012 5:08 PMWe've recently run a series of articles discussing the awesome features of certain mobile platforms, and how those highlights drive users to love them. We've covered Windows Phone, iOS, and Android, the platforms with the best combination of mindshare and potential, and today I thought I'd give a shoutout to a lesser-known (but immensely influential) player in the mobile space: webOS. If the details are hazy with the passage of time, here's a brief refresher. webOS was Palm's replacement for its legacy PalmOS, the platform that helped launch the smartphone and PDA revolution via the Palm Pi...
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by Michael Fisher | May 23, 2012 11:34 AMSomething interesting happened to me early this year: I started hating my iPod. It was a second-generation 16GB iPod Touch, running the most recent version of iOS that was available, and it was a heinous pile of garbage. It crashed constantly, the battery life was sub-par, and its infamous soft-metal casing was scratched beyond belief, despite having lived a relatively sheltered, case-protected life. Plus, I hated carrying around two devices when I didn't have to. Granted, this attitude is somewhat at odds with my Twitter moniker, but "Captain2Phones" does not equal "Captain1Phone&1P...
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by Jaime Rivera | May 23, 2012 8:00 AMiOS is not perfect. Those who blindly defend it are either new to the smartphone market or simply want to troll their way around reality. After we've talked about the things that frustrate some of us about Windows Phone and Android, it's time to talk about Cupertino's favorite baby. I come from a time when Multi-tasking wasn't considered a feature, since it didn't even make sense to release an OS that didn't offer a way to work around apps. I'm not sure how Apple was able to sell so many iPhones and iPads when they couldn't do this, but I stayed away from them until they figured that out. I...
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by Joe Levi | May 22, 2012 8:22 PMI'm "Joe the Android Guy". I do a weekly show for Pocketnow called the Android Guy Weekly. Needless to say, I like Android. I've been with the operating system since the T-Mobile G1 and Android 1.6. It might come as a surprise to many of you to hear me talk negatively about Android, so when I talk about my frustrations with Android, it's not blasphemy, it's reality. Lack of Accessories I look at all the Apple minions with their cute little phones in their cute little cases and their cute little keyboards -- and I'm jealous. In my world, a tablet needs a case and a phone needs a dock. I've been...
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by Michael Fisher | May 22, 2012 3:42 PMThose of you who've followed my writing for a while know that I'm a refugee from the Great webOS Collapse of 2011, and there's still a lot I miss and love about the platform. While I try to write about it as often as I can, the sad truth is there's not a lot of news about the "little OS that couldn't" these days - things are pretty quiet as it marches toward open source. So I'm kind of waiting along with everyone else for that to wrap up this fall. Until then, though, I'm still using webOS somewhat often via my HP TouchPad. Sometimes I even pull the tiny HP Veer out of storage and relive th...
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by Michael Fisher | May 22, 2012 1:09 PMAnyone remember the latest attempted mobile 3D resurgence? It wasn't that long ago; just last summer we Americans saw the release of the Evo 3D as a follow-up device to the best-selling smartphone in Sprint's history. The "Evo" branding marked this device for a premium slot and guaranteed its title as one of the most anticipated phones of 2011 (in the US, anyway). Even though I was deeply invested in another platform at the time and had no real use for 3D, the device piqued my curiosity. Indeed, we pegged 3D as one of the trends of 2011 at last year's MWC, alongside "Android" and the more g...
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by Joe Levi | May 21, 2012 7:16 PMAndroid often takes quite a bit of criticism for its "fragmentation". It's got lots of versions currently on the market, it comes in different shapes and sizes, OEMs can customize it to their liking... the sky is the limit with Android. But have you ever looked beyond the chatter and stopped to ask: Why does Google allow Android to be so open? Why the need for ICS, Jelly Bean, and OEM UIs? That's what we'll talk about in today's episode of the Android Guy Weekly!
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by Evan Blass | May 21, 2012 5:19 PMWithout fail, every time a mobile operating system is upgraded, a generation or more of devices is left out of the cycle -- leaving many owners frustrated that their perfectly-functioning gadget has already been deemed obsolete. On the other hand, it would cost manufacturers a plethora of resources to tailor and test new software for each and every product they have ever made, and at some point you're trying to shoehorn software onto hardware that just isn't powerful enough to run it smoothly. So the question naturally arises: what are the criteria which determine a fair period of guarantee...
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by Michael Fisher | May 21, 2012 4:31 PMWhat's more annoying to a mobile-phone user than not having service? If you answered "nothing," you're right. And never is that truer than when a user is trying to share something. Like the awesome photo they just snapped from their courtside or ringside seats as the ... puck hit a ... home run ... through the fullback's legs. Okay, I don't do sports. But according to my basketball-savvy friends, we're in the midst of something called the "2012 playoff season," which I gather is a pretty big deal. In an effort to avoid butchering any sports terminology, I will put this succinctly: The Bosto...
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by Adam Z. Lein | May 20, 2012 8:04 PMThose who know my work know that I've been a big fan of Windows Phones since I first got my hands on a Samsung Taylor developer prototype. There are a lot of reasons to love Windows Phone, but as you might expect with any technology there can also be some frustrations. In this article we'll talk about a few annoyances about Windows Phone that I personally have been frustrated with, however if you're also a Windows Phone user, we'd love to hear about a few of your frustrations in the comments at the bottom of the page. The first big thing about Windows Phone that frustrates me every day is...
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by Michael Fisher | May 19, 2012 9:20 AMA few days back, Brandon Miniman posted a short tribute to the thick phones of yore, and it got me thinking. While I appreciate thin devices and marvel with the rest of you every time an OEM manages to shave a few more millimeters off a casing design, I don't have much nostalgia for the brick-like smartphones of days past. What I really long for are my dumbphones. The reason: I miss that sweet flip action. It's basically impossible to find a modern smartphone in the clamshell form factor. Sure, there are occasional exceptions, but for the most part, the monolithic slab is the rule of the da...
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by Stephen Schenck | May 18, 2012 7:03 PMSoftware patents are the absolute worst. Instead of rewarding innovation, they've instead become a kind of ammunition used by the smartphone heavyweights, trying to chip away at each other's success. If you're wondering why you don't have an HTC EVO 4G LTE at the moment, you can blame just the kind of legal shenanigans these sort of patents enable. The latest unfortunate victim is Motorola, which just got slapped with an import ban on its Androids which violate a Microsoft patent. The United States International Trade Commission has now backed-up an earlier ruling which found Motorola in vi...
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by Evan Blass | May 18, 2012 12:20 PMIt's not easy to admit that you're wrong. Back in 2010 I opined that "your smartphone can't get much better," wherein I argued that handset technology had peaked in many respects, with the newest improvements being mostly incremental in nature. Well I was incorrect: phones have gotten a lot better in that time period, and there's clearly room for improvement still. The biggest reason, I realized, is that there will always be software which pushes the limits of the hardware, along with pretty fierce competition among more than half-a-dozen OEMs. Take processors, for instance. Two years ago I...
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Posts tagged with: Editorial