We have certainly attained high standards over the years. We've transgressed beyond astronomical standards and now expect above and beyond from every product, a surplus of features we'll never need, overkill. We all are very spoiled. Take the HTC First, for example. Most laughed at the thought of a phone that came pre-loaded with Facebook Home. No, it didn't have the best specifications possible. No, it was not a flagship. Never mind the fact it was almost exactly what every purist had been begging for all along – a stock Android phone with little to no bloat. Yet just weeks into its ...

Smartphones these days come with virtually endless capabilities. Performance and functionality is no longer strictly determined by the operating system itself, but primarily by the associated ecosystem and digital content available. Between Android and iOS, there are over 1.6 million applications available. Windows Phone has over 145,000 apps, and BlackBerry OS has somewhere north of 105,000 apps. Just take a second and try to quantify those numbers – imagine having to scroll through a list of 800,000 applications every time you want to download a new app, instead of simply searching. ...

When someone uses a particular platform for any given time, they become invested in the ecosystem – the apps, the built-in and related services, and the way everything syncs up perfectly and seamlessly. You become invested in the platform and the user experience. And switching to any other platform is certainly more difficult than just a context switch and getting used to a new interface. It requires stopping, switching gears, and changing directions. You have to spend days (maybe even weeks or months) trying to fill gaps and find compatible and comparable alternatives to all the ...

The captain is the last one to abandon a sinking ship. HTC's Peter Chou promised that he'd resign as the CEO of the company if the HTC One isn't going to bring the Taiwanese manufacturer above the floating line. However, until then, some important crew members have either left, leaving, or urging fellow HTC-ers to leave. Is HTC sinking? Jason Gordon, HTC's vice president of global communications, tweeted that his last day at the job was this Friday. Chief Product Officer, Kouji Kodera, left the company last week, alongside global retail marketing manager Rebecca Rowland, director of ...

Last we checked, there are 52 weeks in a year - but you wouldn't know it, given the announcement schedule of some major players in the tech space. Companies vying for the attention of fickle consumers often stack their events one right after the other in a strategic attempt to undermine competitors, sometimes hosting major announcements just days -or even hours- apart. Sometimes, it's all a tech podcast team can do to keep up. Such a thing happened this week, with Nokia preempting Google's annual I/O developer conference with an announcement of its own: the Lumia 925, a mid-cycle Windows ...

Well, we're about six hours past the announcement of the latest Windows Phone out of Finland, the Nokia Lumia 925, so it's about time to start armchair quarterbacking. Everyone ready? Good. Let's hit it. What do you do when your flagship Windows Phone (indeed, your only flagship phone, period) is well-received by the marketplace, but draws criticism for a few elements of its design? Well, you correct those deficiencies in the next flagship, of course. But what if you want to address those concerns sooner, while also broadening the number of carriers which offer your device? Answer: you ...

On the eve of their big London announcement, Nokia might have a problem. Once, far and away the favorite to take Microsoft on a ride of profit and swing dancing, Nokia has failed to take advantage of it's position as Fresh Prince of Windows Phone to gain any significant market share.  Windows Phone still finds itself an uber-distant third in the smartphone marketplace and while Nokia has done an admirable job making quality hardware, it hasn't quite gotten the job done in the flying off the shelves department. Now Microsoft might have to take the reins and ride this horse to the finish ...

Any respectable company wants to grow its user-base. Companies can't stay stagnant, they have to grow, or they will be eaten up by their competition. Microsoft isn't going to be eaten up any time soon, but their smartphone platform isn't growing -- at least not compared to their competition. It shouldn't come as a surprise for anyone who has been following the news: Windows Phone is still a distant third in the smartphone race. What's a mega-corporation like Microsoft to do in this situation? Try to steal Android users, of course! Android and iOS dominate the market, and Microsoft knows ...