We’ve added new accessories to the Pocket PC Central HTC Droid Eris Smartphone Accessories Center. The following pages have been updated with new accessory listings:
Jan 29
When Apple unveiled its “latest creation” earlier this week, I was disappointed. Cautiously expecting paradigm-shifting technology, what I got was a camera-less, non-multitasking, non-AMOLED, DRMed up the Dock Connector, large iPod touch.
Disappointments list aside, I am not dismissing the iPad; it’s just that the device didn’t deliver the expected wow. Matter of fact, I think tablets will be huge in coming decade, and iPad helps set the stage for this new frontier. Molly Wood’s excellent analysis sums up my thoughts on the subject brilliantly.
But I also think Apple’s iPad-punt makes it more likely that other companies will have the chance to dominate the coming tablet market. Google and Microsoft are obvious players, but since moving quickly is antithetical to the Microsoft modus operandi, it’s up to Google for now.
If Google takes the tablet by the – well, gently by the side with just enough thumb pressure – and runs with it, the company will position itself very well very quickly.
Here’s how I think Google and Android can win the Tablet Wars in the coming years.
Jan 27
Apple announced their long-awaited tablet today, the iPad. You can get details on the Apple iPad here.
The iPad will begin shipping in late March and starts at $499 with 16GB of flash storage and no built-in 3G wireless.
Jan 26
We’ve added new accessories to the Pocket PC Central Motorola Droid Smartphone Accessories Center. The following pages have been updated with new accessory listings:
Jan 26
The best current price for the Verizon Wireless Motorola Droid Android 2.0 Smartphone can be found at two online retailers: Amazon.com and LetsTalk.com. With a new two-year service agreement, each retailer is offering the popular smartphone for $109 at checkout.
The retail Verizon price for this smartphone is currently $199 after a $100 mail-in rebate.
Browse Motorola Droid Accessories
Jan 25
HTC has posted an info page for the upcoming T-Mobile version of the HD2 Windows Phone. Aside from giving us our first look at the T-Mobile branded handset, it also reveals updated memory capacities beyond those of the non-U.S. versions of the HD2.
The RAM, system memory, and the flash ROM, file storage, have each received a capacity boost. The RAM has been increased from 448MB to 576MB. More interestingly, the ROM has been doubled to 1GB.
Why make these changes? Most likely to accommodate the version of Windows Mobile 7 expected to be made available for the T-Mobile HD2 later this year.
In addition to its internal memory, the T-Mobile HD2 will also ship with a 16GB microSDHC flash memory card.
Jan 22
Ever installed an app on your Android phone that you wanted to get rid of tout de suite? Us too.
That’s why we’ve posted a new Android Help Center article detailing the process for uninstalling unwanted software apps in the Android OS.
Jan 20
WMExperts has posted a fascinating article concerning Microsoft’s possible plans for Windows Mobile 7. In it, the author makes several new assertions, including the idea that two different versions of the operating system will be released, and one well before the other.
Based on information provided by “several sources,” WMExperts believes Windows Mobile 7 will come in two flavors.
The first, a somewhat barebones version, Business Edition (BE), is designed to be run with a large amount of OEM customization and add-on software. This would make sense given some manufacturers’ history of UI enhancements (like HTC’s TouchFLO, Sense). Windows Mobile 7 BE, lacking some of the features and eye candy of its sibling, would also be ready to deploy sooner. This, the article states, is the version that will be made available for the HTC HD2 later this year.
But it’s the second version of 7, Media Edition (ME), that’s the real story.
Jan 18
Compatibility with 32GB microSD cards has been referenced in countless smartphone spec sheets over the past 18 months or so, but so far we’ve not seen any microSD cards with capacities larger than 16GB. We’ve waited impatiently for the promised doubling of capacity since the first 32GB mention in 2008.
And it now seems that wait is almost over.
Samsung has developed a new process for manufacturing higher-capacity memory chips and plans to begin mass production of 32GB microSDHC flash memory cards next month.
“The 32GB microSD card … stacks eight 32Gb NAND components and a card controller. The industry’s highest capacity, production-ready microSD card is enabled by the use of Samsung’s advanced 30-nm class 32Gb NAND flash memory technology.”
Source: Samsung Press Release
Jan 18
Nature abhors a vacuum, and that goes double for tech news types. When supplied with little or no information, the talking heads will fill the void with any ol’ thing, baseless rumors and guesses being, more often than not, the medium of choice. And, like an anthropologist lecturing on peoples eons-dead, they deliver their speculation with absolute confidence.
And that’s fine – hell, it’s even entertaining – but we usually leave the wild speculation to others. That said, we also like to keep you updated on the latest specumation making the rounds whenever it seems credible.
The latest comes from Gizmodo, which has some interesting ideas on Windows Mobile in the new year. In a nutshell, the story states that Windows Mobile 7 will indeed be shown at the MWC in February, that the OS will ship sometime in late 2010, and that there will be – contrary to recent reports – support for at least some WinMo 6.x applications, probably via emulation.
Each of these assertions seems reasonable given what we’ve been told over the last several months, but we won’t know anything for sure until mid-year. Even if Microsoft shows off 7 in February (and we think they will, in some form at least), changes will come between then and year’s end. The legacy support for existing third-party apps seems the most suspect, although new, fast mobile CPUs could make this a possibility.
We can’t imagine Zune media components not being part of the mix, and there will surely be significant UI changes. There could also be Minority Report-style gesture controls, Windows XP emulators, a Bluetooth neural interface and…
Wild speculation. So tempting.
