The Mobile Web Tablet

This is just amazing. There will $100 android tablets on the market soon. Digital photo frame makers and GPS device manufacturers – watch out. Your days are counted.
What happens when tablets are even cheaper maybe as low cost as a paperback book? What new products will emerge?

Popularity: 2% [?]

I bought a new phone to replace my old Android Developer Phone that I bought right after it was released more than a year ago.

One year with Android has at least convinced me of one thing: this is a very good mobile OS. I was sceptical when Google announced the Open Handset Alliance but now I’m convinced that Apple and Google both share the future of mobile at the expense of the “traditional” mobile operating system vendors.

So, when considering a new phone there were basically only two options: iPhone or Android. The number of Android devices is growing rapidly and there’s concern for device fragmentation. It’s interesting to see how Android is basically growing in to become the Windows 95 of the mobile world.

Anyhows… so I decided to buy a new phone after more than a year with the G1. The battery strength was getting worse and worse and the device started to feel painfully slow. I was first looking at the Nokia N900 web tablet-mobile phone-computer-thingy but Nokia just kept delaying it (hear this, my Finnish friends: if the original release, back in December 2009 would have been kept, I would have been a Nokia customer, mmkay?).

I ended up buying an Acer S100 Liquid. It has a Snapdragon CPU (fast!), 800×480 resolution (on a beautiful screen!), Android 1.6 (would have preferred 2.0 but an update should be coming) and a very limited set of extra add-ons to the OS (which in my world is a good thing). The one thing I’m missing is the QWERTY-keyboard but I’m getting used to the virtual on screen keyboard.

The price is hard to beat and possibly its best feature: you can buy it for 3400SEK inc VAT (about €330) in Sweden.

The camera is a 5 megapixel one that I haven’t used very much (I still carry around my Sony Ericsson G502 with its 2MP super fast camera – much more fun to take pictures with). One thing I noticed though is the color balance which is awful.

Video is 640×480 but I don’t use that very much.

If you’re looking for a no extra frills, work horse Android phone at a very competitive price, the Acer S100 Liquid is a perfect buy. I’m happy with my purchase.

Update: The reason for the poor whitebalance was that I hadn’t removed the little plastic cover sheet over the camera lens. Yes, I know, I suck at product reviews. Here’s a photo taken with the S100.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Bugs in Android? Photo.

Via MobileCrunch:

Samsung delaying Android offering until late 2009
If you were holding your breath until MWC to see if Samsung would drop its promised Android-based phone, you can exhale. It seems that the Samdroid will have to wait, as they’re still in negotiations with carriers and no hardware has been put forth. Shucks!

How much trouble is there in Android-land? I have gone from sceptic to fanboy and back to a somewhat sceptical position again over the last couple of months.

We’re still waiting for an Android announcement from one of the-five-big-ones-that’s-not-from-Finland. Meanwhile, rumours mixed with official announcements are coming from Asus, Dell and portable media player company Archos to name just a few.

Going from one device to many, from different companies, on different hardware, will be a huge challenge for the untested OS. We’ll see if the mighty Android is up to the task.

Popularity: 27% [?]

The HTC G1 is a pretty good device, showing lots of potential in the Android OS. As I wrote in my 2009 predictions I believe this year will be the year of Android, with devices coming from all major device manufacturers that’s not from Finland.

But, one phone does not make a platform.

Well, in some cases it does, but it’s not the idea behind the Android OS.

The big question is how Android and the Open Handset Alliance will prevent the same fragmentation problems that plagues the Java ME-world as it appears on more devices.

Mobile Stance has a longer post on the subject, even suggesting that Google would benefit from fragmenting the OS as it would move application developers to web based solutions.

Going to be a very interesting year and I really look forward to the next batch of Android devices. Let’s hope they can hold it all together.

Popularity: 21% [?]

$399 for the G1 is a good price but I hesitated to order it when I saw the shipping cost to Sweden: $214!

Anyway, now it’s ordered. Let’s hope it’s here before christmas.

Updated: …and now I have it! It was delivered yesterday but I wasn’t around to pick it up.

This will be an Android, Android christmas… great!

Popularity: 14% [?]

Motorola seems to be betting on Android:

“The most significant of these may come from Motorola. One of the original partners in the Open Handset Alliance behind the open-source mobile OS, Motorola already has 50 people on its Android team and is growing that to 350, according to an Android developer approached by a headhunter to join the team. That is a huge commitment that shows how big a bet Motorola is making on Android.”

Motorola has not been committed to one OS or the other before, maybe this is a shift in their strategy.

The move towards open platforms is about nothing else than cutting the cost and speed of innovation. No manufacturer can afford not to go open.

This is a huge change compared to just a few years ago, when open source was a forbidden word. The big question now of course is what OS will prevail and become the Windows of the mobile world. The fact that there is no clear contender should tell us that this war will last for quite a while.

Then again, things move so swiftly that in one or two years time the playing field can be completely changed. Regardless of the underlying platform, one thing is certain: the web will be the true winner.

Popularity: 13% [?]