Category: Wireless
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Nokia and the Ongoing “War of Ecosystems”
Continue Reading: Nokia and the Ongoing “War of Ecosystems”Is Nokia about to drop its entire mobile platform for Android or Windows Phone 7? Yesterday the buzz in the telecom space was all about an apparent memo to employees from Nokia CEO Stephen Elop that said Nokia was on a “burning platform” and needed to make some hard choices. The text of the memo, which Engadget has in full, is brilliantly written. The metaphor of the worker on a burning oil platform is well done… and I expect we’ll hear more usage of that in the future by others.
The memo is also a very well done and brutally honest assessment of where Nokia stands in the mobile market and where the competition sits. What I found most compelling, though, was the commentary around the “war of ecosystems” (my emphasis added):
The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we’re going to have to decide how we…
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Video: Jon Stewart gets excited about the Verizon iPhone!
Continue Reading: Video: Jon Stewart gets excited about the Verizon iPhone!Yes, I admit to laughing along with this one, found via Engadget. Enjoy: The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon – Thurs 11p / 10cThe Daily Show on Facebook
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Why Verizon’s iPhone 4 is Worse for Google Than For AT&T
Continue Reading: Why Verizon’s iPhone 4 is Worse for Google Than For AT&TOnce upon a time, I firmly believed that the day the iPhone launched on Verizon would be the day you could pretty much count AT&T out. I expected that would be a huge migration of users… and it would be the end…
Usually those thoughts came on days when I was having serious issues with AT&T’s network and could only wish for the end of the AT&T monopoly to come… I live in southwestern New Hampshire and AT&T’s network is merely “okay” in Keene, NH, and gets pretty abysmal – and nonexistent – when you travel not too far out of town. Driving the hour-plus over to the Manchester airport there are 2 or 3 pockets where I literally have no coverage for a few minutes with my iPhone 4 on AT&T’s network.
Meanwhile, of course, Verizon has rock solid coverage throughout our area.
Unless you have been hiding in a cave, you know that today is the day Verizon announced the iPhone, with the actual phone being available on February 11th. There are a zillion news articles in every imaginable media out… the ginormous media feeding frenzy is something to behold. A huge amount of publicity for Apple… for…
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Android 2.3 Includes SIP Stack, Near Field Communications, More
Continue Reading: Android 2.3 Includes SIP Stack, Near Field Communications, MoreVery cool to see that the Android 2.3 release includes a SIP stack:The platform now includes a SIP protocol stack and framework API that lets developers build internet telephony applications. Using the API, applications can offer voice calling features without having to manage sessions, transport-level communication, or audio — these are handled transparently by the platform’s SIP API and services.
The SIP API is available in the android.net.sip package. The key class is SipManager, which applications use to set up and manage SIP profiles, then initiate audio calls and receive audio calls. Once an audio call is established, applications can mute calls, turn on speaker mode, send DTMF tones, and more. Applications can also use the SipManager to create generic SIP connections.
Naturally this SIP stack is only available if the carrier and manufacturer allow it:
The platform’s underlying SIP stack and services are available on devices at the discretion of the manufacturer and associated carrier. For this reason, applications should use the isApiSupported() method to check whether SIP support is available, before exposing calling functionality to users.
Call me cynical, but I could see a number of carriers NOT allowing the SIP stack.
The Android team has also…
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Yep, They’re Buying SmartPhones! Great stats from Black Friday…
Continue Reading: Yep, They’re Buying SmartPhones! Great stats from Black Friday…Great stats out of the Silicon Alley Insider’s Chart of Day for this past Tuesday:There was a 31% increase in active smartphones over the Thanksgiving weekend compared to the week prior…
The SAI post explains the chart and how the data was gathered:
Cool info to see!
(Although the paranoid security guy inside of me is admittedly wondering how many of the apps on my iPhone include Flurry’s “analytics software” and what exactly it is sending to them… )
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The New Breed of Tablets from Cisco, Avaya and RIM – will they matter?
Continue Reading: The New Breed of Tablets from Cisco, Avaya and RIM – will they matter?Cisco, Avaya and RIM are all rushing out “tablet” devices now for the enterprise market – but will they actually matter? Will enterprises really want to use these high-end and high-priced tablets versus all the new consumer tablets like the iPad and all the various Android and Windows tables in the queue?
Don’t get me wrong … it think it is awesome that Cisco, Avaya and RIM are all coming out with new tablets. Ever since getting an iPad back in early May it has become a constant companion on my travels around and I use it for so many different purposes.
The touch interface is also so incredibly “natural”… I watch my daughters using the iPad and just have to think: “Why shouldn’t computers just work this way?”
Any user interface improvements that improve the communications user experience are very definitely a GOOD thing!
So I commend Cisco, Avaya and RIM for coming out with tablets.
I just still find myself wondering why I might want to pay to buy one of these tablets. I had this exchange yesterday with analyst Brian Riggs on Twitter:
As I said, I already have a SIP client on my iPad (and there…
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Skype rolls out more multitasking control with new version 2.1.2 for iPhone
Continue Reading: Skype rolls out more multitasking control with new version 2.1.2 for iPhoneSkype today nicely release version 2.1.2 for the iPhone providing a key change for iPhone 4 / iOS 4 users.
As shown in the screenshot on the right, there is a new “Go Offline” option that allows you to control how Skype behaves when you switch to another application. For those of us who have used Skype on an iPhone 4, this was one of the challenges that was at times frustrating. When you simply switched to another app, Skype went into the background which is good in that you could continue to receive calls, notifications, etc.
However, in my experience I found that sometimes I did not want to keep getting those notifications – and more importantly I found that Skype would suck down the battery with all of the communication it was doing.
You now have an option in the Settings (which you need to access through the regular iPhone “Settings” app versus through the Skype app) where you can change how long it will be before Skype goes offline when it is put into the background. Images of both settings screens are shown below.
I’ve just installed this new version, so I haven’t yet seen what impact…
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Paul Thurrott believes Android will conquer iPhones…
Continue Reading: Paul Thurrott believes Android will conquer iPhones…I own an iPhone. We have two, in fact… one that is my corporate phone provided by Voxeo and one that we bought for my wife as her personal phone. In the couple years I have been using it I have come to truly enjoy the user interface, the AppStore, the ecosystem, etc. It truly has changed how we as a society think of mobile devices.
But though I may be a Apple “fanboy” in many ways, I do have some grave concerns… such as the lock-in to the closed system controlled by Apple, which I wrote about at length related to the iPad. As a believer in open standards and an advocate for the open Internet, I’m glad to see Android out there… even as I read about it on my iPhone.
So naturally I was intrigued to read Paul Thurrott’s piece titled “Droid Attack Spells Doom for iPhone“. I’ve been reading Paul’s writing for years related to various Microsoft and Windows topics… so when one of the chief Windows evangelists I know writes about Android… well, I pay attention to it a bit. Paul relays the story of his wife’s move to a Droid phone and his…
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Will iOS 4.1 really fix the glacially slow iPhone 3G problem?
Continue Reading: Will iOS 4.1 really fix the glacially slow iPhone 3G problem?As readers know, upgrading my iPhone 3G to iOS 4.0 was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done. The iPhone 3G continues to be virtually unusable… this video parody is unfortunately rather accurate.
So when Steve Jobs announced last week that iOS 4.1 would be out soon with a fix for the iPhone 3G, I was thrilled to hear that. Now Mark Gurman over at 9To5Mac has come out with a “Complete iOS 4.1 Walkthrough” that lists off what is in the forthcoming iOS4.1:
All that other stuff in iOS 4.1 looks great, if you have an iPhone 4… but all I want is my phone to start functioning again and not be so insanely slow.
P.S. Yes, I do know, and have written about, that you can downgrade an iPhone 3G. I haven’t done that yet… waiting, mostly for this bug fix from Apple. If it works, I’m all set… if not, then yes, I’ll be downgrading this useless piece of ____ 🙂
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The Skype and Verizon partnership – explained by animated video
Continue Reading: The Skype and Verizon partnership – explained by animated videoBack in February, Skype and Verizon announced a partnership that will be bringing Skype to various Verizon smartphones apparently this month. Last week more details emerged, including the fact that Skype would not be sold in Nokia’s US app store because of the Verizon partnership.Skype and Verizon also released this animated video explaining their partnership:
While I am an iPhone user who left Verizon behind (but would love to return to their network with an iPhone!), I applaud both Skype and Verizon for both their partnership as well as their creative way of explaining it.
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