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by Michael Fisher | March 13, 2013 1:00 PMRead OnSometimes ya ain't got time for dilly-dallyin', spit-swappin', or tall-tale-tellin'. Sometimes even dropping in a few time codes is too much to ask. Because sometimes the meat just needs to get out to the masses. This is one of those special times, and the meat we're putting on the market is our jawing. Our opinions. Our stories. And the subject this week is the two biggest Android smartphone launches of the year, coming from the two biggest sworn enemies of the entire Android landscape. That's right: this is the episode where we talk HTC One vs Galaxy S IV. We've had the One for just a ...
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by Michael Fisher | November 7, 2012 7:14 PMRead OnOne of the things we do pretty often on the Pocketnow Weekly podcast is speculate -sometimes wildly-on what combination of factors might effect change in the wireless world. Sometimes that's doom-and-gloom discussion -"what perfect storm of failures could take down Apple?"- but more often we focus on the positive. Because as vibrant and ebullient the tech world usually appears, the fact is that a lot of companies aren't doing well. These are companies we like; many of them helped shape the smartphone revolution, and others were there before it even got rolling. Some of them, like ...
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by Michael Fisher | November 5, 2012 2:15 PMRead OnWhen Microsoft's revamped smartphone OS -then called Windows Phone 7 Series- hit the market a little over two years ago, the mobile landscape was quite different than the one we know today. People were still bullish on new platforms; while iOS had long since found its feet, Android wasn't yet the juggernaut we know today. The market was also more diverse, with BlackBerry and Symbian fading but still important players, and webOS still a contender for "next big thing." The frontier was vibrant and alive with possibilities. All of the various players making up that frontier handled the ...
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by Michael Fisher | October 31, 2012 11:31 AMRead OnWe've been hearing a lot these last few days about Windows 8 and its more-mobile companion, Windows Phone 8, but precious little about the interim OS upgrade, 7.8. The decimal-laden version hasn't gotten much press of late, leading us to wonder just what's in store for owners of the current crop of Windows Phone 7 devices, which won't be able to run Microsoft's newer OS. We already knew 7.8 would offer support for new Live Tile sizes and that it would accordingly look the part of Windows Phone 8, but further details were sparse. Despite the iterative nature implied by its x.x version ...
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by Michael Fisher | October 17, 2012 4:41 PMRead OnWe recently took you on a guided tour of the S Pen, Samsung's special stylus for its Galaxy Note device family, but that's not the only techno-pen on the market from the world's leading handset vendor. The C Pen was announced amid the clamor of the initial Galaxy S III unveiling, alongside a flood of other accessories that have yet to see the light of day, like the bizarre S Pebble and still-mythical wireless charging pad. Unlike those, the C Pen actually made it into the real world, and we've got one in our hot little hands. Does the C Pen hold a candle to its similarly named S Pen ...
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by Michael Fisher | September 14, 2012 11:03 AMRead OnA number of years ago, I remember reading an article in an old-timey magazine (the kind with pages that you flip, which I no longer like very much) about how some car manufacturers were building proximity sensors into their new high-end models. These sensors would monitor the area in front of the car for objects -like, say, the rear bumper of another vehicle up ahead- and if they detected that you were approaching too quickly, the car's computer system would automatically apply the brakes in time to avert a collision. Back when I read that article, I remember that sounding like an ...
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by Michael Fisher | August 22, 2012 12:36 PMRead OnA few months back, I penned a Brutally Honest Question Corner in which I asked, Are Physical Keyboards Dead? That article came -as all good ones do- as a result of a barroom conversation. I was with a handful of BlackBerry-toting friends who bemoaned their antiquated software situation, but steadfastly maintained that they could never give up their stodgy Canadian hardware for one important reason: RIM's world-class physical keyboard. I went on to make the case that touchscreen keyboards were the future, and I still believe that's true. Touch input is faster, it allows for sleeker ...
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by Michael Fisher | June 28, 2012 8:29 AMRead OnGestures in the smartphone world are nothing new, and neither is our commentary on them. Jaime Rivera wrote an iOS-focused editorial about the future of gestures in smartphone interfaces over a year ago, and last spring, Joe Levi took us on a brief video tour of third-party Android apps making use of gesture-based controls. Since I joined the team, Pocketnow has featured some more mentions of the late, great webOS, which featured generous use of non-button-based input. Indeed, Samsung seemed to take notice of webOS when crafting its new Galaxy S III. The world's top handset ...
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by Michael Fisher | May 22, 2012 3:42 PMRead OnThose 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 ...
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by Michael Fisher | May 16, 2012 11:01 AMRead OnYou know what we haven't had in a while? A good old-fashioned #firstworldproblems rant. So here's one. As Q might say, the world of smartphones has always been "wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross" (just making sure you're awake, Trek fans). That magical quality has grown over the years -in fact, Apple effectively co-opted the term "magical" for a while there- and today our portable devices are capable of incredible feats. Along the way, we've lost some things. Progress inevitably demands that certain features be obsoleted in favor of others. The jog dial, or ...
Posts tagged with: UI