The (Apple) Empire Strikes Back...

Apple has had their developer conference, and has delivered what everyone was expecting (which was a fair bit), plus a bit more to compensate for the over-zealous early advertising.

And so, i hear you ask, (No, I'm not standing at your door, listening to you mutter to yourself because you think this particular ferret may have finally 'lost it'. I'm just guessing. Legal Note: You may not in fact actually ask this question at all. The Publisher waives all liability to any losses, physical or otherwise that may have occurred due to misinterpretation of the abovementioned statement.) (to continue from above) what happened?

In a few short words, quite a lot. Just not all of it would be particularly interesting to you. The biggest thing that everyone was looking for was the new June 26 iPhone 3GS. It is not quite an overhaul, but more an answer to what users have been demanding for ages. Things like:

• Autofocus camera
• At last, real photos, kind of. It's now also 3 megapixel
• Video Recording
• Also useful, and something my old Motorazr V6 has been doing for a long time...
• It's faster
• Useful. As always, there is no such thing as a too fast processor. And the iPhone's was getting pretty far from that imaginary boundary, if you get my drift
• It's battery lasts longer
• Not just useful, it's about bloody time. The battery wasn't pathetic, but as with everything else about the iPhone, it wasn't as good as some of it's competitors
• Voice Control
• Useful. Sort of. I've never run into a situation when i thought "I wish i had set up Voice Control". And i don't think i'm going to yet. Still, the voice control even extends into the iPod functions and everything. Cool.
• A Compass
• A Compass? You mean one of those spinny things. Yes, the iPhone has a compass, but it's not just about telling which way north is, (which you can do with any analog watch), but enabling far better Google Maps, and thanks to TomTom, turn-by-turn satnav. Yay!
• Lower prices
• Always good, especially when they cut old model prices too!

As always, there is still a considerable list of stuff that isn't there. Anything from user-replaceable batteries (when Hell freezes over) to USB Storage support is still missing. Oh well, it's still good.


Now to less important news, and because i'm lazy i'm going to let my good friends over at Crave do the work for this bit:

• MacBook range revamped
• iPhone 3.0 software
• OS X update
• Safari 4
• and some other useless stuff
• see here: http://tinyurl.com/Crave-WWDC

Anyway, that's it for my WWDC coverage, but have a look around Crave for more info (they are disturbingly interested in the WWDC coverage game)...

Portable World: Comms: The top-end phones battle it out

The iPhone is huge and i mean absolutely, disturbingly huge. And I don't mean physically. Almost everyone seems to have one, everyone else badly wants one, but i'm not one of them. Apple's OS is pretty good, but overly proprietary. The lack of certain functions irk me, and the Apple-only world the iPhone needs, is just a bit too restrictive. Call me non-conformist, but i'll go for the Android OS everytime.

But, for the time being, there are virtually no Android phones and not many more Android apps (even if some of them are soooooo cool) and so we look the other camp, the Windows Mobile Smartphones. There are plenty of good ones and CNET ran a small comparo a while ago, but it had some notable rivals missing. One of the MIA's was my personal favourite the HTC Touch HD.

Physically, their dimensions are all similar within about a half a centimetre, so not much to distinguish them there. Visually, they are similar, with screens of about 3.5" on a nice gloss black finish, with the odd hard button here and there.

The Touch HD's biggest feature and its namesake, is that screen. Just to set the benchmark, the iPhone has a 3.5" screen running 480x320 pixels. The HD uses a 3.8-inch screen with a whopping 800x480! This actually has a slightly different aspect ratio, the iPhone with a standard 1.5:1, the HD running a tall 1.666:1.

Now to cameras. The HD runs the proper 3G set-up: VGA cam on the front, 5-megapixel on the back. The iPhone? Just the one 2.0 megapixel jobbie.

The touch HD still runs WinMob 6.1, but with HTC's much acclaimed touchFLO system, which is (as i've said before) one of the best ones around, while the iPhone's is quite good, but not to my personal tastes.

Here are some of the more interesting tidbits. The iPhone gets the amazing Apps Store, but the Touch HD? Any app ever written for mobile Windows since the old CE days!

The Touch HD gets real bluetooth, not just basic connection management. The Touch HD has an external memory slot, removing the need for internal flash memory. It has WiFi, and 3.5G internet. It has a 3.5mm jack (about time) and normal USB connections. No proprietary crap here.

And here is one of the big killers for the iPhone. The HTC is sexy, no doubt about it, and anyone who knows their chips can see it's a very similar, if not better machine. But one of the Touch HD's best features. It's not an iPhone...

It doesn't come pre-packed with a superiority complex. People won't earmark you as a non-conformist, a conformist, a geek, an idiot or just about anything else they can think of every time you whip out your HD.

It's not trying to save the world from themselves, and I love it for that if nothing else.

And so i announce the Touch HD becomes recipient of a world first:

PS. It also has a proper virtual keyboard. Hurrah!

Hurrah! HTC second gen arrives

Yay!

HTC's much beloved Touch range of smartphones has been revitalised with the arrival of three new phones.

HTC Touch HD
Hailed as the next messiah when it was announced, it took forever to get here, but still looks pretty good. HD screen on a smartphone, of course it makes sense.

HTC Touch Pro2
HTC's business smartphone has been re-released and against my gut feelings, has in fact become more business-oriented. Now with god-knows-how-many productivity tools and a neat keyboard, it is an attractive proposition indeed for any savvy business person.

HTC Touch Diamond2

Now getting into the business end of said HTC Range, the much-loved Touch Diamond has also been refreshed with a new face, new design and new gizzards. And it's gotten bigger (probably not a bad thing)

Interestingly, however, it was released with an old OS. Yes, the HTC range is still running Windows Mobile 6.1. Maybe they were too late to the market to get WinMob 6.5, but my bet is on the other explanation: HTC's version of 6.1 (with TouchFlo, and other mods) was better than 6.5 anyway! I have always thought that HTC made such an awesome version of 6.1 that even Windows would struggle to improve on. I have always thought that HTC's WinMob was better than Symbian, better than, say, Samsung's negligible improvements and, my god, for someone who grew up with a Windows CE PDA (got the Jornada 450!), it's better than any previous iteration of Windows Mobile. Not that that's real difficult...

First Aussie Android Phone Rejected

The Agora, amde by no-name company Kogan, will be the first Android phone to hit Aussie shores, but the Big Four telecoms are rejecting it pretty much out of hand.

Optus says it will probably work, but its not an Optus handset, so they won't even test it or look into it any further.

Telstra is running a similar line saying it should work, but it hasn't been "optimised" for their network, so there is no guarantee on quality of service...

3 say it might happen, saying Android is "an excellent platform", and saying they might launch an Android phone in the future, but they only say that the Agora should "in principle" work fine.

Vodafone, however, look like being the sole carrier for the Agora. From ZDNET:"Vodafone Australia continues to evaluate the Kogan Agora and will make further information available at a later date," a spokesperson said.

That's more positive but still no guarantees...

Android is definitely looking to rival WinMobile and Apple's proprietary systems with phones popping up everywhere: The HTC Dream, The T-Mobile G1 (with rumours of a G2 in the pipeline), the Agora, plus the Lenovo-badged oPhone, and a Samsung-built, Google-badged phone all in the works...

Android picking up speed, and various other phone news

Google's own phone OS, called Android (?) is now picking up speed, with another Android phone released recently (built by a no-name Taiwanese company) to arrive in Australia soon. Remember this is just weeks after its release, and there are already HTC phones to add to the other two Android handsets, and the new Lenovo-badged OPhone up against the mammoth Windows Mobile OS. Yeah okay, this isn't Google's first time taking large bites out of Microsoft, but it's like opening up the Twenty-Sixth Front...

Also making noises in the phone area is Palm (yes, remember them) who are set to unveil their new 'Nova' OS on January 8. Unfortunately, we won't see customer products until mid-2009

And now Garmin has jumped on the Smartphone bandwagon. Yes, it's a satnav maker, building phones. Their nuvifone is still coming, but has just passed FCC testing, so it's getting closer, (and we're all holding our breath, yawn!).

And to add to this huge pile of phone news, the rumours about the iPhone nano have resurfaced with possible case sizes surfacing on Crave showing a smaller iPhone in basic dimensions., which is to be expected, and apparently accessory brand XSKN has already produced a silicon style case for a shorter thicker iPhone. One month until MacWorld. Hmmmm...

And if you thought of the one country that would embrace phones and technology into every part of their life, it probably wouldn't be Estonia would it? They have decided to allow citizens to vote in their 2011 parliamentary elections on their cell phones! They buy a special chip for their phones that verifies their identity, then once installed, Estonians can use their phones to vote, without going to a ballot. Genius! From Estonia!??

Smartphones Nirvana

To continue on my theme of commercial overkill, i've decided to have a rant on the subject of phones. The burgeoning new segment of smartphones such as the iPhone, the htc, and some of the new Samsungs have taken off and climbed to saturation point.

Trawling through the web, you can see almost million of choices on phones such as these. Think about it, the iPhone is today's techno hero, but the other manufacturers aren't far behind.
Fringe brand 'HTC' have already worked from the original entry-level Touch model to the touch Pro, to the Touch Diamond, and now the Touch HD (being hailed as one of the greatest phones around).
Then LG has released about 4 new phones (at least one of which looks uncannily like the bastard lovechild of the LG Shine and the Apple iPhone)
Then Samsung has begun giving teasers about their new range of good phones.

If you ask me for my (semi-) professional opinion, i tend to lean toward the HTC models. They look attractive, they've got decent stats in performance, and the interface is surprisingly weildy.

One of the things that will really change people's minds when they go to spend their hard-earned will be the interface...
the HTC TouchFLO interface is my personal favourite, Samsung's also seem pretty intuitive, but I found the LG system to be the phone equivalent of IE4 -- Slow, Clunky, Ugly and outdated.

This may all seem pretty confusing and worrying but don't be fooled. This is great news for buyers. All the while there is plenty of choice, there is also plenty of devlopment and plenty of competition which all adds up to... Smartphone Nirvana