Google’s new iPhone killer

Many rumours have been spreading the web recently about the new gPhone – just a rumour that Google could create a iPhone style smartphone, with it’s own embedded software and technology.

Google have now confirmed that they are to be making a new smartphone-like device which ‘makes it easy to search the web, wherever you are’. Executives from the multi-billion pound UK based phone operator Orange have flown to the Google-plex to attend preliminary talks in a joint venture over the new phone.

It has said that the new phone will feature all the normal feature of a modern smartphone; 3G, GPS, touchscreen, querty keypad – but also offers what the Apple iPhone cannot – to allow 3rd party apps.

The major problem will be for Google will come with identifying who will buy the phone. Will it be converted iFreaks? Converted Win Mobile customers? A huge majority of the users of Google technology only use their search. Will they see Google as a viable brand to trust enough for the average buyer to go with?

For us programmers and expert users, the Google phone will be a huge opertunity to write programs onto it’s platform which will undoubtably come fit with SDK and be open source.

Is it even out of the question for the Goole-Orange partnership to buy such technology and expertise seen in the openMoko.org project?

What ever may happen, Apple and M$ must be crapping themselves at the prospect of open source software becoming common place in the comsumer market, and Google taking another step towards world domination.

Grinds my gears: The decline of mobile phones

The mobile phone business is big. Really big. This in turn generates many competitors in the market for mobile phones. Arguably this is a good thing in terms of MS-style dominance, but bad in an other – it breeds fashion, style and battling statistics.

To some people, the only distinction between old and new handsets is how many features they have, how many different fascias you can buy for it, or how many mega-pixels can the camera capture. Some of my friends have even bought hugely expensive handsets as they looked ‘purty’.

This has meant that some mobile phones have merely morphed into a fashion accessory rather than an object of engineering brilliance. After all the technological advances in voice transmission, it can simple come down to how nice it looks.

Voice-over-IP is one of the best leaps in technology as far as phones go that we’ll see in along time, but why do no phone support it? It could be because each new phone that comes to market is backed by one or a few networks that try they’re best at locking out all competition. This is where my rant this evening lies

Smartphones are the future, but phone locking features heavily in all Windows Mobile OS phones. Devices running this operating system have a bootstrapping-style chip which prevents not only the OS from being replaced, but also forbid the change of network (easily).

You may say that this is only just Microsoft that are being anal about their Operating system’s security but no… Apple’s new iPhone not only block OS and network changes, but they lock out all third party apps from being installed. This is a step down a path that is very difficult to come back from in my opinion. The mobile phone’s future will be locked, proprietary, expensive and slow to progress if this style of OS implementation keeps going.

In my eyes, the future is with a small fully open sourced phone called openMoko. Not only is it stylish, but any programmer or hacker is able to change any part of it’s OS design and functionality. I can’t wait to get my hands on one.

To change the mentality of all phone manufacturers, a major mobile phone producer like Nokia would need to produce a phone which was completely open source and be successful with it. All the hard-nut Linux-followers would buy it, and perfectly normal, Joe Doe users like me would too.

An open source mobile phone future is a much better one – locking for MS phones yes, but also the choice for a free and unrestricted platform with a huge and promising future.

The iPhone – the choice of iFreaks everywhere

The new iPhone was made public at Macworld, with general acceptance and most of the tech critics loving it; I am impressed with the looks, but a little sceptical what going on inside. Something that will feature is nasty DRM software, and the inability to sync the iPhone up with anything other than iTunes… No thanks.

Generally though, on a tech level, the iPhone isn’t too bad, with WiFi a/b/g, touch-screen display, and a 2mp camera. Of course, there is an iPod function to the phone – but will you really want to use it, running the risk of running the battery out?

I think this phone, at least for the first generation, will be for rich-kids or Mac buffs (come on… you all know one), and it’ll be hard for the moment for Apple to enter the mainstream market in phones.

Another problem will come when the phone is released in the UK. Will the chavs of the UK really understand a touch-screen phone? Will they still think the screen will work when lovingly wrapped up in a Burberry pouch?

It’s hard for me to imagine the public embracing the iPhone, because smart-phones are still too niche for the average user.

The World’s First Open Linux Phone

Just announced today is a phone that runs off of the weeks old linux kernel 2.6.18, and is completely open source to everyone, a first for phones. It is not attached to any network, and therefore, should theoretically be allowed to run in the UK. Below is a picture:

Aside from it looking sweet, it comes with a complete package of phone, charger, gps inbuilt, car attachment stuff and bluetooth, more specs below:

Hardware

• 120.7 x 62 x 18.5 (mm)
• 2.8″ VGA (480×640) TFT Screen
• Samsung s3c2410 SoC
• Global Locate AGPS chip
• Ti GPRS (2.5G not EDGE)
• Unpowered USB 1.1
• Touchscreen
• micro-sd slot
• 2.5mm audio jack
• 2 buttons
• 1200 mAh battery (charged over USB)
• 128 MB SDRAM
• 64 MB NAND Flash

Software

• Dialer
• Contacts
• Application Manager
• Calendar
• More…

All the features are accessed through two soft buttons at the front, and the touchscreen

Price: $350 ~ £178.68

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When Win Mobile 03 Crashes

I got this sreen on my o2 xda 2 mini pda running windows mobile 2003….

… lets all wait for the BSOD eh…..