Oh, oh....The Dragon Awakes!

from phonescoop.com:

"Nokia to Bring Touch Device to Market This Year

Yesterday, 1:54 PM by Eric M. Zeman

During a press call today, Nokia's head of mobile devices, Kai Oistamo,
confirmed that the company will bring at least one touch-based device to
the market during the second half of this year. The device for this year
will be focused on the mass market, and not high-end, niche customers.
Nokia will later introduce touch devices spanning the entire range of
entry-level to high-end phones over time. Exactly when any of these devices
will become available was not made clear."

So much for closed, proprietary, nanny devices you can't install anything
you want on without hacking and voiding the warrantee....

....They didn't buy Symbian to make it run Windoze.

.....of course, they also own my beloved Maemo! The tablets get phones??

THE GIANT AWAKES! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!

---

› See More: Oh, oh....The Dragon Awakes!

Larry <[email protected]> wrote:

> "Nokia to Bring Touch Device to Market This Year


As always....Apple leads, and the rest just follow.

"anon" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Larry <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> "Nokia to Bring Touch Device to Market This Year
>
>
> As always....Apple leads, and the rest just follow.

I thought Apple just entered the cell phone business a year ago. How is that
leading? They had the benefit of all the technology of their predecessors

Larry wrote:
> from phonescoop.com:
>
> "Nokia to Bring Touch Device to Market This Year
>
> Yesterday, 1:54 PM by Eric M. Zeman
>
> During a press call today, Nokia's head of mobile devices, Kai Oistamo,
> confirmed that the company will bring at least one touch-based device to
> the market during the second half of this year. The device for this year
> will be focused on the mass market, and not high-end, niche customers.
> Nokia will later introduce touch devices spanning the entire range of
> entry-level to high-end phones over time. Exactly when any of these devices
> will become available was not made clear."
>
> So much for closed, proprietary, nanny devices you can't install anything
> you want on without hacking and voiding the warrantee....
>
> ...They didn't buy Symbian to make it run Windoze.
>
> ....of course, they also own my beloved Maemo! The tablets get phones??
>
> THE GIANT AWAKES! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!
>

I thought Nokia already had a touch screen. I was in London a year ago
and wandering around Heathrow waiting for my flight home. I was
site-seeing at one of those overpriced personal electronics stores you
find in airports.

The sales guy tried to get me to buy some Nokia gadget for 400 pounds. I
couldn't justify spending $800 for a phone, even if unlocked and really
cool. I can't remember for sure, but I thought it was a touchscreen.
Don't remember the model number.

Doesn't Nokia bring out a lot of phone models in Europe and Asia that
never make it to the US? I know they had a titanium slider a bunch of
years ago that I would have died for, but it was never available in the US.

In article <[email protected]>, "RBM" <[email protected]>
wrote:

> > As always....Apple leads, and the rest just follow.
>
> I thought Apple just entered the cell phone business a year ago. How is that
> leading? They had the benefit of all the technology of their predecessors

they're leading since they have the top phone. cell companies just don't
have the deep software experience that apple has, which automatically
made all their devices obsolete. you'll see them for the next few years
try and catch up but apple will put many of them out of business in the
process.

RBM wrote:
> "anon" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>> Larry <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> "Nokia to Bring Touch Device to Market This Year
>>
>> As always....Apple leads, and the rest just follow.
>
> I thought Apple just entered the cell phone business a year ago. How is that
> leading? They had the benefit of all the technology of their predecessors

Actually they don't have the benefit in some ways. I was talking to an
ex-GF that works at Motorola, and I was complaining to her about the
voice-dialing on my Motorola phone (their old system of voice-tags where
you train the phone worked much better for names with strange
pronunciations than their new system where it's pure voice-recognition).
I said to her "but at least I have voice-dialing, unlike the iPhone."
She said that the voice-dialing firmware and algorithms are highly
proprietary, and are the result of many man-years of development, by
teams in many different countries (for all the different languages). No
one is giving these algorithms to Apple (or anyone else), nor are they
willing to sell them to a competitor. Perhaps there will be an
extra-cost add-on application sold in the Apps store for voice dialing,
but I doubt it because it's really an application that is tied
inextricably to the phone's firmware. I'm sure that eventually Apple
will catch up with the rest of the industry in terms of the actual phone
part of the iPhone.

"SMS" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> RBM wrote:
>> "anon" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> news:[email protected]...
>>> Larry <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> "Nokia to Bring Touch Device to Market This Year
>>>
>>> As always....Apple leads, and the rest just follow.
>>
>> I thought Apple just entered the cell phone business a year ago. How is
>> that leading? They had the benefit of all the technology of their
>> predecessors
>
> Actually they don't have the benefit in some ways. I was talking to an
> ex-GF that works at Motorola, and I was complaining to her about the
> voice-dialing on my Motorola phone (their old system of voice-tags where
> you train the phone worked much better for names with strange
> pronunciations than their new system where it's pure voice-recognition). I
> said to her "but at least I have voice-dialing, unlike the iPhone." She
> said that the voice-dialing firmware and algorithms are highly
> proprietary, and are the result of many man-years of development, by teams
> in many different countries (for all the different languages). No one is
> giving these algorithms to Apple (or anyone else), nor are they willing to
> sell them to a competitor. Perhaps there will be an extra-cost add-on
> application sold in the Apps store for voice dialing, but I doubt it
> because it's really an application that is tied inextricably to the
> phone's firmware. I'm sure that eventually Apple will catch up with the
> rest of the industry in terms of the actual phone part of the iPhone.

In as much as Apple will catch up to the rest in certain areas, the rest
will catch up to Apple in other areas, and we, the consumer, should get some
fine products as a result of the competition

"David Moyer" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> In article <[email protected]>, "RBM" <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>> > As always....Apple leads, and the rest just follow.
>>
>> I thought Apple just entered the cell phone business a year ago. How is
>> that
>> leading? They had the benefit of all the technology of their predecessors
>
> they're leading since they have the top phone. cell companies just don't
> have the deep software experience that apple has, which automatically
> made all their devices obsolete. you'll see them for the next few years
> try and catch up but apple will put many of them out of business in the
> process.

You, are obviously the consummate fanboy. Cell phone companies are in
business for one reason, to make a profit. Their goal is to sell the most
product, to make the most money. I would consider "the top phone", the one
that most people want to buy. Apple's phone is a "smart phone". Combined,
all smart phones are bought by roughly 11% of all phones sold worldwide,
that means that 89% of phone buyers don't want smart phones. Even if Apple's
phone was able to do all that you claim it does, and did it flawlessly, in
the eyes of non fanbois, they would only be selling to a very small
percentage of cell phone buyers. I prefer competition rather than dominance
by any one company. Nokia, this fall is coming out with a phone that
apparently is designed to compete with Apple's phone. This is good. This
kind of competition will create better phones for all of us consumers.

Larry wrote:
> from phonescoop.com:
>
> "Nokia to Bring Touch Device to Market This Year
>
> THE GIANT AWAKES! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!
>
I know you're a huge Nokia fan, and I agree that the sleeping giant has been
awakened, but I believe you have the wrong company for that title. Keep your
eyes on the Blackberry Thunder, due to arrive in the last quarter of this
year and my guess is you might find an iPhone with many of its flaws fixed,
or at least added functionality, and certainly the (still) better network:

http://crackberry.com/details-touchs...kberry-thunder

Just to be fair, here's a negative take on the prospective Thunder (which,
of course, the author doesn't even have), though he doesn't bother to
explain WHY he's negative on it.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-9990544-62.html

Here's some point-counterpoint:
http://blogs.computerworld.com/why_t...nder_will_fail

"RBM" <[email protected]> wrote in news:[email protected]:

> In as much as Apple will catch up to the rest in certain areas, the
> rest will catch up to Apple in other areas, and we, the consumer,
> should get some fine products as a result of the competition
>
>
>

http://youtube.com/watch?v=rpJQNMBNtOo

Yes we will.....(c;

RBM wrote:

> You, are obviously the consummate fanboy. Cell phone companies are in
> business for one reason, to make a profit. Their goal is to sell the most
> product, to make the most money. I would consider "the top phone", the one
> that most people want to buy. Apple's phone is a "smart phone".

No it isn't. Apple has never marketed the iPhone as a "Smart Phone."

Apple has an excellent description of the iPhone on their web site,
"Phone, iPod, and Internet in one fast 3G device." No where do they
mention "Smart Phone" or PDA or UPC or handheld computer, because it
isn't any of those things.

In fact, the iPhone is severely limited as far as running the typical
applications used on a "Smart Phone," and the Apps store on iTunes
doesn't begin to solve that problem, at least not yet.

A lot of the iPhone criticism is based on its lack of capabilities
compared to a Blackberry, Windows Mobile based smart phone or Symbian
based smart phone, but this is an unfair comparison because Apple didn't
design the iPhone to compete with these devices in terms of
capabilities, and they never claimed the capabilities of a smart phone.

The iPhone is a phone, music player, and web browser, and Apple seems
intent on keeping it that way for now.

"Carl" <[email protected]> wrote in
news:[email protected]:

> I know you're a huge Nokia fan, and I agree that the sleeping giant
> has been awakened, but I believe you have the wrong company for that
> title.

I'm guilty as charged. My loyalty is not to Nokia, per se, but to the
open source community Nokia has chosen, quite wisely, to support by
opening up its research labs and allowing the vast world network of
really brilliant people to create the products THEY want, not what some
company bean counter THINKS we want, like the very closed environment of
the iPhone.

Case in point....Apple vs Micro$oft. Apple COULD have wiped Micro$oft
off the planet, swept them aside, if it hadn't been so greedy and
proprietary and closed up. The outside dreamers and coders made Bill
Gates the richest man in the world, just because he opened up a tiny
little hole in his company and let them play in his playroom, without
forcing them to do his bidding and telling them what they could and
could not do with his OS. What did we get? By a huge margin, the most
useful and widest range of software ever run on a single OS. Bill Gates
didn't make Micro$oft number 1....the coders outside the company did.
Apple is still too stupid to see that fact.

So, they ride around with training wheels bolted on playing flashlight
games on the little playstation phone. Another 3G owner approached me
just yesterday to ask about the nasty ol' N800 Linux box. I was
watching Sky News on KMplayer/mplayer off the net. I pulled a terrible
trick on him just as he was about to leave. I asked him if he'd every
played with Numpty Physics, the most addictive silly game I ever
encountered. Of course, he hadn't seen it, so I booted it and gave him
a simple tour, then handed the stylus to him so he could play. His
departure got delayed over an hour...(c; Noone got shot playing Numpty
Physics, but all have gotten terribly frustrated...including me. The
games are written by the USERS and posted here:

http://numptyphysics.garage.maemo.org/levels/
See how simple it looks? Damned sadists, every one of them! Chess is
childsplay in comparison. The lack of a manual is part of the game as
you discover things it does and its undocumented controls. I just sat
back and watched him torment with his tongue hanging out trying, mostly
in vain, to get the little red object to hit the little yellow star
against the forces of gravity and time....(c;

"Is this a sellphone?", he asked. "No, it's a Skype phone.", I
admitted. "It makes free calls over sellphone or wifi data channels.
It also has about 25 other message systems, IRC, Gizmo and all the Linux
communicators I've never used. Who did you want to contact?" I booted
Skype and called his Iphone on the speakers, eating up his minutes.
"How many minutes does it have per month?", he asked. "Well, they call
it unlimited, but they question you if you use over 10,000 minutes a
month about what you're doing for the $24/YEAR they charge." I then
booted Google Talk and popped out the little webcam when I saw Tom had
his N800 online and made a video call. He and Tom talked a while.
Tom's my fault. He was looking for a PDA and I let him play with my
N800 on Alltel in a pizza shop with free wifi. He's a total N800 addict
now. My Iphone guy went away shaking his head over the vast array of
useful open source freeware apps listed here:
http://maemo.org/downloads/updated/OS2008/250/
It takes a while to load as it assembles up to 250 apps, more than there
are. None of them are flashlights, though......sorry.

We have this perpensity to turn the tablet into other systems with
virtual machines like ScummVM:
http://maemo.org/downloads/product/OS2008/scummvm/
and lots of other game consoles so you can run their games on it.
Garnet VM runs all the Palm software, now in portrait mode full screen.
This one:
http://maemo.org/downloads/product/OS2008/tiemu2/
turns it into many of the Texas Instruments graphing scientific
calculators. I have it on mine, and have yet to figure out how to use
most of its functions and capabilities. When the engine boots, you pick
which of the calculator emulations you want and the engine boots it.
Several versions of full Linux and Googles new Android have all been
installed. Android looks interesting as they are booting it from Maemo.
I'm out of memory, again, so will wait until Android apps make it so I
can't stand being without it...(c;

We don't have an accelerometer like the iPhone, so the boys coded up a
bluetooth interface so I can use the Wii Remote, complete with its
joystick if I like, with the tablet, instead. I don't carry the Wiimote
out because I got some really strange looks fooling with it at lunch in
a restaurant playing Quake II....(c;

Yes, I'm a total Nokia fanboi as long as they keep coming out with open
source products the real geniuses can tear apart and do amazing things
with. When you install one, Nokia pops up a message saying they had
nothing to do with what you are about to install and are not responsible
for what it does or doesn't do....That's just fine by me...

I'm on rdesktop to my XP box sitting out here by the river typing this
on the N800 with the BT folding keyboard. There sure are a lot less
boats zooming around on weekends, especially waterskiiers, now that gas
is $5/gallon at most marinas. Mama alligator is keeping an eye on me
below the seawall. She's about 18' long! She's getting ready to lay
her eggs and we're all anxious to see them hatch. All I see is this
long black thing, underwater with two eyes and a snout sitting perfectly
still, not making a single ripple. Well, Lunch time...Chinese, today.
C'ya.

"SMS" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> RBM wrote:
>
>> You, are obviously the consummate fanboy. Cell phone companies are in
>> business for one reason, to make a profit. Their goal is to sell the most
>> product, to make the most money. I would consider "the top phone", the
>> one that most people want to buy. Apple's phone is a "smart phone".
>
> No it isn't. Apple has never marketed the iPhone as a "Smart Phone."
>
> Apple has an excellent description of the iPhone on their web site,
> "Phone, iPod, and Internet in one fast 3G device." No where do they
> mention "Smart Phone" or PDA or UPC or handheld computer, because it isn't
> any of those things.
>
> In fact, the iPhone is severely limited as far as running the typical
> applications used on a "Smart Phone," and the Apps store on iTunes doesn't
> begin to solve that problem, at least not yet.
>
> A lot of the iPhone criticism is based on its lack of capabilities
> compared to a Blackberry, Windows Mobile based smart phone or Symbian
> based smart phone, but this is an unfair comparison because Apple didn't
> design the iPhone to compete with these devices in terms of capabilities,
> and they never claimed the capabilities of a smart phone.
>
> The iPhone is a phone, music player, and web browser, and Apple seems
> intent on keeping it that way for now.

I can appreciate your point, but while Apple may not market the phone as a
"smartphone", it is certainly considered as one by many groups that do
comparisons of smartphones, and I think it plays to a "similar" group of
phone buyers. Here is a PC world comparison for example :
http://www.pcworld.com/article/12539...rt_phones.html

"Carl" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...

> I know you're a huge Nokia fan, and I agree that the sleeping giant has
> been awakened, but I believe you have the wrong company for that title.
> Keep your eyes on the Blackberry Thunder, due to arrive in the last
> quarter of this year and my guess is you might find an iPhone with many of
> its flaws fixed, or at least added functionality, and certainly the
> (still) better network:
>
> http://crackberry.com/details-touchs...kberry-thunder

I have my doubts on the either the device's existence, or it's supposed
release date of 3rd quarter this year. It's too radical a departure for RIM
to be releasing in just a couple of months- in typical cellphone fanboy
style, someone would've dug up the FCC applications, leaked mock up pictures
etc. if it was due within 60-90 days.

And I REALLY have a hard time believing a completely keyboardless Blackberry
is on the drawing boards. For all of the iPhone's positives, and the love
it's users have for it, a study of early iPhone owners told us the ONE thing
the majority of users wanted to see added to a future model was a "real"
keyboard or at least a dialpad. Why "copy" the competitor's product with
one that has the same achille's heel, particularly when that "heel" happens
to be your company's signature feature (meaning RIM and keyboards!)

I might be all wet, but I suspect that RIM has something else up their
sleeve- surely a larger/higher-res screen device with better browser and
multimedia, but I doubt they'll copy the iPhone form factor that closely-
I'd think a slide-out keyboard hidden beneath a larger screen would be more
their style than a completely keyboardless device.

Just my gut feeling, (and I'm sure I'm my gut's wrong, as well as being far
too large!)




oesn't bother to
> explain WHY he's negative on it.
> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-9990544-62.html
>
> Here's some point-counterpoint:
> http://blogs.computerworld.com/why_t...nder_will_fail
>
>
>
>
>

SMS wrote:
> RBM wrote:
>
>> You, are obviously the consummate fanboy. Cell phone companies are in
>> business for one reason, to make a profit. Their goal is to sell the
>> most product, to make the most money. I would consider "the top
>> phone", the one that most people want to buy. Apple's phone is a
>> "smart phone".
>
> No it isn't. Apple has never marketed the iPhone as a "Smart Phone."
>
> Apple has an excellent description of the iPhone on their web site,
> "Phone, iPod, and Internet in one fast 3G device." No where do they
> mention "Smart Phone" or PDA or UPC or handheld computer, because it
> isn't any of those things.

Just because Apple doesn't market is such doesn't mean it isn't one.

>
> In fact, the iPhone is severely limited as far as running the typical
> applications used on a "Smart Phone," and the Apps store on iTunes
> doesn't begin to solve that problem, at least not yet.
>
> A lot of the iPhone criticism is based on its lack of capabilities
> compared to a Blackberry, Windows Mobile based smart phone or Symbian
> based smart phone, but this is an unfair comparison because Apple didn't
> design the iPhone to compete with these devices in terms of
> capabilities, and they never claimed the capabilities of a smart phone.

So the BlackBerry is a smart phone?

Okay, I'll bite...

I have a BB 8700g issued to me by my employer. Prior to buying an
iPhone, I had a personal 8700g with T-Mobile for two years prior (still
have it--just dropped the service). I don't have a WinPhone or Symbian
device, so it wouldn't be fair for me to do the comparison with them.
I'll compare only what I personally have and have used extensively.

The BB has a phone. So does the iPhone.
The BB has voice mail (with old-style audio menu access). So does the
iPhone (with visual VM interface)
The BB does e-mail. So does the iPhone.
The BB has a calendar. So does the iPhone.
The BB has an address book. So does the iPhone.
The BB has a memo app. So does the iPhone.
The BB can do SMS. So can the iPhone.
The BB can do MMS. iPhone can't (yet). Not really a fair comparison--why
does the BB handle MMS, but has no easy way to get multimedia onto the
phone (this model)?
The BB doesn't have a camera (other models do). The iPhone does.
The BB can run a downloaded version of Google Maps. The iPhone comes
standard with the same app.
The BB doesn't have A-GPS (other models do). The 3G iPhone does.
The BB has a web browser. So does the iPhone. Neither handles Flash in
websites.
The BB has Java. The iPhone doesn't.
The BB Java development kit is a download from RIM. The iPhone
development kit is a download from Apple.
The BB has an alarm clock. So does the iPhone.
The BB doesn't have a world clock. The iPhone does.
The BB has a simple 4 function calculator. The iPhone has a full
scientific calculator (2.0 firmware only).
The BB has BlueTooth. So does the iPhone. (Although to be fair, the
iPhone only supports BT for handsfree headsets.)
The BB 8700 doesn't have a music/audio player. (Other models do.) The
iPhone has music/audio/video iPod functionality.
The BB can run third-party applications. So can the iPhone.

Funny, isn't it. The iPhone is pretty much equal in just about all
categories of functionality. Better in a few, worse in a few.

>
> The iPhone is a phone, music player, and web browser, and Apple seems
> intent on keeping it that way for now.

Like it or not, it qualifies as a smart phone.

Apple has always done things their own way. They didn't just bring out
another Personal Computer, they brought out "the computer for the rest
of us." I think they are purposely staying away from the "smart phone"
label because most smart phones have lots of complicated little keys and
many run crash prone operating systems by Microsoft. They are trying to
differentiate themselves. It's called "marketing."