Samsung's First Tizen Smartphone Gets Leaked 153
SmartAboutThings writes "We are less than a month away from seeing the first ever Tizen smartphone from Samsung. The leaked image points toward a Feb. 24th launch date at MWC 2014 in Barcelona. The phone design is very similar to Galaxy phones, while the UI reminds us of Windows Phone 8. Samsung is also one of the world's top smartphone vendors, so it should have a decent chance at developing a mobile OS of its own, don't you think?"
Bada (Score:5, Informative)
Samsung already tried this with Bada ... and failed.
Now they are taking others on board to try to displace Google. Will it succeed? Don't think so.
Re:Bada (Score:5, Insightful)
Wasn't Bada only used in low-end devices? This one seems to be rather high-end.
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why make it look like wp8 then?
this test device is high end.. but the devices on the end of the plan are the lower end which are currently bada, bada doesn't allow them easy enough customization and features to go easily for the better-chips cheap phones that are on the way in 2-3 years.
*** now this could have been said about some other os's years ago too. exact same fucking plan. bada already replaced their internal fuckfest of several os's with just about the same justification. also it is their insurance
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Samsung Wave phones were pretty decent phones. No, not phablets with gazzilion of everything and the kitchen sink. Just a very good smartphone, with decent browser and some level customization.
On top of that, the whole premise "Samsung develops new mobile OS" is bogus. It might have been the case with Bada, but not the case with the Tizen [wikipedia.org]:
The Tizen Association formed to guide the industry role of Tizen, including requirements gathering, identifying and facilitating service models, and overall industry marketing and education.[4] Members of the Tizen Association represent every major sector of the mobility industry and every region of the world. Current members include operators, OEMs and computing leaders: Fujitsu, Huawei, Intel Corporation, KT, NEC CASIO Mobile Communications, NTT DOCOMO, Orange, Panasonic Mobile Communications, Samsung, SK Telecom, Sprint and Vodafone.
What's more, Tizen isn't particularly "new". Not only there are tried bits of LiMo and Bada inside, but there were already several releases for the "In-Vehicle-Infotainm
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Why the fuck are telecoms involved?
That just stinks. Just what we need, more telecom control over a smartphone OS.
Re:Bada (Score:4, Informative)
By whom do you think the telecom developers are employed?
Telecoms do lots of development and are involved in lots of connected things. There is no way around it.
Anyway, I'd rather first wait for the Tizen phones to arrive and then evaluate them. Considering the race to bottom Google has choosen as a path forward for Android, Tizen might get a fair chance in the market. That, of course, if the Tizen would be even comparable to Android.
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This is the difference between real capitalism, and American capitalism. In real capitalism, you naturally get a race to the bottom. In American capitalism, you get government protectionism to keep your antiquated, inflated business practices afloat while you strip people of every penny you can.
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(Posting AC because I'm at work and I don't log into websites from work not because I'm unwilling to put my name behind my post.)
That is simply one of the most moronic things I've read on Slashdot in quite some time.
Or, to put it in a car analogy so you understand why I think you're utterly daft, please ask yourself which auto manufacturers make the high end cars that don't care about competing on price and which manufacturers are primarily interested in being just a bit cheaper than their competitors.
To pu
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Only to a point.
A race to the bottom can hit a natural limit under which the only way to make it cheaper is to cut corners. See $500 laptops, cheap LCD monitors, etc, where the GPU is Intel, the screen 1366x768, etc. High res screens are available, but spendy ($300 on sale vs. $80 for 1920x1200 vs. 1080p screens, $500 laptops vs. $1000+ laptops, etc).
You see it on Android too - the flagship phones sell tons, but
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480x800 sounds more than enough for most phone functions. Probably a bit small for doing any web browsing, but in my experience people would rather browse the web on a larger screen anyway. It depends on what you want, but a lot of people would buy a cheap phone (gonna drop/break/lose it soon anyway) and a cheap tablet rather than just
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but spendy ($300 on sale vs. $800 for 1920x1200 vs. 1080p screens, $500 laptops vs. $1000+ laptops, etc).
Price difference between shit on a stick 1366x768 panel, and a proper 1920x1200 (or even 2K) one is about $20-40. The only other thing you need to change in the whole laptop to swap screens is flex strip connecting lcd with mb because new screen needs two LVDS channels (or is eDP instead of lvds).
As you can see they dont make those shitty ~720p laptops because of component cost. They force this shit on us to artificially create "luxury" (read not totally shitty) market segment.
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Isn't a "race to the bottom" just a natural consequence of a competitive market working properly?
Not at all. Quite the opposite, actually. "Race to the bottom" happens in a product category where the buyer cannot easily determine which value is worth more. Let's say a $1,000 laptop and a $1,100 laptop that has a better battery, longer lasting keyboard and some other advantages that you only figure out after using it for two years. Since the customer can't see a difference, they buy then one for $1,000 even if they would prefer the $1,100 one if they had known the advantages.
So what happens? The comp
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I think the tech market is somewhat different to most markets in that a good product today is an obsolete product (still functional, but not desired) in a years time. This means that companies can easily get away with rubbish components as most tech is virtually disposable. In markets with longer product lifespans, it's easier for quality manufacturers to distinguish themselves and get a name for quality, but most people don't care if a laptop from 10 years a
No Way? (Score:2)
Telecoms do lots of development and are involved in lots of connected things. There is no way around it.
Apple disagrees with you.
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LOL. Apple has hired quite a lot of telecom developers back then. That's how first rumors about iPhone have started: journalists/etc seen the job openings at Apple.
Or you think developers of all kinds grow on trees?
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Do you think Telecom Developers are the same as Telecoms?
Idiot.
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Do you think Telecom Developers are the same as Telecoms?
Sorry, I forgot that in USA the companies are people too. Especially telecoms who just have life of their own, completely independent from the the people who actually work there.
Idiot.
Imbecile.
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I could have sworn Samsung only recently joined Tizen, so they weren't even part of the founders of Tizen.
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I haven't followed Tizen much previously. As far as I know, it picked up quite a lot from other previous Linux-based mobile OSs. Samsung AFAIK played big role in the push into mobile phones by bringing in the components from Bada (the interface for non-native, managed run-time) and also the Android compatibility layer. (Interesting bit: Nokia provided to Tizen the navigation app and maps.)
My interested in Tizen piqued only recently, when updates for Google Apps started removing functionality and crippling
Re:Bada (Score:4, Funny)
Will it succeed? Don't think so.
The guy writing the article is certain it'll fail. He keeps saying its like WP8.
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One of the benefits of Tizen is that it does run on both low end devices and high end ones, so they've got plenty of pots to dip their paws into. It's lower maintenance than Android, as there's much more standard upstream packages, less specific to the platform, and it's way-way-way more open than any other platform. (Though not quite as much as I would have liked.) Will it succeed? I'
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Now they are taking others on board to try to displace Google.
But why would they want to? It can't be for the cost..
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http://www.theguardian.com/info/2014/jan/27/1
But they pulled it, as apparently it's not the case any more. Things must have changed several times in the last few years, as I've heard of costs higher than 75c/unit historically.
Presumably they get all the money just from (advertisers who want) users using their services.
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Android has a Linux and Java foundation too...
I don't think so (Score:5, Insightful)
Being one of the top hardware vendors doesn't magically enable you to write good software.
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It doesn't rule it out either...
Re:I don't think so (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't rule it out either...
There's no general-case connection; but this is Samsung we are talking about here, so it's pretty safe to assume that anything they added will be about as classy as the bloatware on a Best Buy HP-Compaq at the bottom of the price range...
If we are lucky, the BSP side might not be a total failure; but Samsung makes a hell of a mess when they try app development, at least on their android devices.
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It doesn't rule it out either...
From my experience working with and for HW-centric companies, they all view SW as a zero-revenue expense. As such, they don't invest in the people, tools and processes that make for successful software products.
I'd tend to think being a top h/w vendor is actually a detriment to delivering good software.
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Seeing that the S4 uses double the storage of the base Android, yeah it does, since whatever they added does not double the value you get out of the phone, compared to base Android.
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hrm, I wonder...I have noticed on my travels the ubiquity of non-Google Android devices. I wonder if the value of *those* is doubled.
I am, of course, assuming you mean, by 'base Android', the one which is installed on Nexus devices - ie it doesn't have all the manufacturer-added software? If you instead consider 'base Android' to be what is available for free, then perhaps it does indeed add value since it is otherwise quite simple, constituting just a platform.
I think people in 'the west' seem to think And
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Being one of the top hardware vendors doesn't magically enable you to write good software.
It might make you code at producing gazillions of ROMs, or flash drives, or DVDs, containing the good software, because that's what hardware is about, but it doesn't make you good at writing good software.
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You need money, but money is not sufficient to get good programmers of the level they'd need to be able to compete with iOS and Android.
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true, the best programmers (like CEOs) work more for the joy of working. Those who only come because you throw bucketloads of cash at them tend to be interested in only 1 thing, and that ain't the work you need them doing.
Still, from another post: "Samsung uses EFL as UI framework and has in it's payroll Carsten Haitzler (Rasterman) and Cedric Bail, the main developers of Enlightenment".
Doesn't sound too bad now.
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That's not just the developers that are the problem. The overall environment need to be adapted for those developers to work: what are the processes, the managers, IT, environments, ... I have seen shop where corporate policy prevent a developer to be admin, install software and use another browser than IE7. Others where you have several months of lead time to setup a new database test server, where you cannot run a compiler locally, where only a manager can access the source control system. where bugs can
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Being one of the top hardware vendors doesn't magically enable you to write good software.
Actually being one of the top hardware vendors does magically enable you to write good software.
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Not at all. Hardware-centric people are known for writing very bad software.
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Typical reply: What's the most dangerous hazard in SW development? An electrical engineer who gained access to the compiler.
(Both somewhat true, although both with exceptions.)
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I'm all for a multiOS mobile culture today. I've owned phones with 4 distinctly different OSs on them and each has their pros and cons. I just don't feel that yet another player, even the size of Samsung, is going to make much headway in the current market. Though I will say Samsung is probably
but being Rasterman does! (Score:2)
but being Rasterman does!
we don't need another phone os. but if we can get one that runs as fast enlightenment it could be worth a try.
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Maybe it will be as successful as Rasterman's previous mobile OS project, OpenMoko.
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Hahaha, always a possibility. Though I had thought OpenMoko's lack of success wasn't about it being poorly written, and iirc, that's what you were questioning here.
To clarify, I think Tizen will have an uphill battle:
* Android has a massive head start, and is easy to pick up if you know some C.
* Macolytes generally won't consider anything other than "their precious".
but, if i had to pick a mobile os based on efficient use of hardware resources, Tizen would be worth a look just from its pedigree.
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https://www.tizen.org/irclogs/... [tizen.org]
He talks about how stagnant and copycat the Samsung development bureaucracy is and how it's practically impossible to make any real innovative moves in development.
Another major issue is that the Tizen SDK (despite all the "Linux Foundation" mantra) is proprietary and gives Samsung near comp
Competition is always good (Score:5, Interesting)
But in the end, competition is always good for consumers. Bring it on!!
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Does Tizen support Android apps in any manner? (i.e., in a manner like BlackBerry 10 supports Android apps).
If not, the software ecosystem is going to be very poor, and kill the device.
If it does, then third-party native software is probably never going to get written.
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But in the end, competition is always good for consumers.
Actually, I don't think that's always true. The smartphone market is a good example for why. First, you end up with 1000 different Android phones (let's ignore iOS for the moment) that have tiny differences amongst themselves, leading to a choice paradox (you can't decide because there's so many options).
Second, because the market is so crowded with so many so similar products, it's hard for a vendor to really innovate. What we see is rapid evolution, but not innovation - everyone is moving forward at break
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Competition is good, but in markets like the US where the mobile space is functionally broken due to the business models of the carriers, you can't enjoy innovation.
Shockingly few, mostly those willing to crank out new handsets every 6 months (Samsung, HTC, et. al.) to comply with carrier demands or the single US example of Apple, who can build a single hardware platform and deliver one new handset to carriers per year.
The
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'The form factor, for example, has largely standardized on the iPhone +/- some deviation in size."
That's a bit disingenuous. You have almost every vendor offering tiny 3 inch smartphoned and their range goes all the way up to 5 inches, with 6inch "phablets" filling the gap to tablets.
I don't see any lack of design variety either. Rounded or square, Metal or plastic, thick or thin, and soon curved screens are all taking part. You also have some very risky type of gimmicks, like waterproof phones and a smart
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That's a bit disingenuous. You have almost every vendor offering tiny 3 inch smartphoned and their range goes all the way up to 5 inches, with 6inch "phablets" filling the gap to tablets.
You are talking about size. I was talking about form factor.
Oh wow, some have rounded edges! Sorry, you weren't around in the first mobile phone market, were you?
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Maybe you should elaborate your argument instead of being so pretentious.
The popular GSM phones of the late 90s were candybars with numeric keypads.
In case you didn't know, you can still buy these phones, ranging from the most basic to relatively sophisticated feature phones. They don't run Smartphone OSs which require large touchscreens.
Furthermore there have been recent attempts at selling smartphone flip phones and sliders which were popular in the 2000s. The reason you don't see more is because they don
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How is three different ways to give Samsung your money "competition"?
I love Samsung's smartphones, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
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...if they ditch Android, I'll ditch Samsung.
I bet they are shaking in their boots
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Well, for me seeing an operational open-source OS on a phone would indeed *trigger* my first buying of a Samsung phone.
I own an Openmoko, have carefully reviewed the Jolla phone recently (alas: not operational, IMHO) and believe Samsung indeed is capable to succeed here.
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Re:I love Samsung's smartphones, but... (Score:5, Informative)
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Android locks me with Google. It baffles me there are people *here on /.* that can't see it. /. is evolving, but not to the better...
Seriously -to me this is a sign
Re:I love Samsung's smartphones, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Just some weeks ago I was ready to pay a premium to get a Jolla phone (with Sailfish); I went up to registering into Sailfish newsgroups etc.
Honestly, and it's sad to say: the OS looks cool but there are just no applications at all. Not even a decent email, not even an ad-filter.
I sincerely hope Jolla succeeds, but I cannot invest now hoping next year the phone will work.
In contrast the enormous size of Samsung (an issue of its own) may at least bring a machine that works upon switchon...
But I'll definitely
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C'mon Samsung (Score:1)
Is that same Samsung which:
- Doesnt upgrade Android for their previous (not old) hardware?
- Provide tablets with just one USB output? And not standard?
- Supports only proprietary additional hardware?
No thanks!! They can keep up with their braindead appleish hardware
Im moving to standard chinese hardware all the time
I hope the day i could upgrade my tablet as the same way i do upgrade my PC
Until there, there's little value added at all
At the time the first chinese hardware manufactures releases their first
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
False Windows 8 comparison (Score:2)
Just because it has widgets arranged on the screen, does not make it a Metro UI. I could do that with an android phone.
markets (Score:4, Informative)
Samsung is also one of the world's top smartphone vendors, so it should have a decent chance at developing a mobile OS of its own, don't you think?
No. These are two different markets and being a good hardware vendor doesn't mean you're a good OS developer. It worked for Apple, because they are neither - they are a design-focussed company.
So Samsung or not makes no difference. Let's see what the product is like.
Tizen uses EFL (Score:3, Informative)
Perhaps they can pull this off... (Score:4, Insightful)
My experience with Samsung, (my first 3 android phones were Samsung), is that they tend to ship and forget. They showed no loyalty to me and so I never developed any loyalty to them. I think they got where they are by market saturation rather than any real, inherent superiority of their products.
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Wife and I are shopping for a new carrier and new phones. I'm getting another iPhone. I've had one since the 3G and like other Apple products I own, it stays out of my way and lets me get work done.
But she has Samsung devices, Tablet & Phone, but every time we went in to ask questions there was someone in front of us returning a Samsung S4. Well we noticed something. We've gone to 6 different stores and every time we waited the person in front of us was returning a Samsung device, less than 30 days
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I'm not holding my breath for this! (Score:4, Interesting)
I had a Samsung Stratosphere. It ran like shit!!!!
Then I got an SIII. It worked for about a week.
Now I have a Motorola phone. Ah.... Much better!
If Samsung can't even make Android, which someone else has already done most of the coding for run well how are they going to make their own OS?!?!
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Well, that's a great load of anecdotal shit. I have had an S3 since it came out in Canada in 2012, and it is still working fine (I've moved on to the Nexus 5, but my wife uses the S3 to this day). It has had no problems, and a few months ago I moved it to Cyanogenmod without issue.
The hardware is fine, and it's never had an issue. So while I'm sure this new OS will probably suck, let's try to figure out why it'll suck for actual reasons, rather than the Galaxy line which is actually pretty good. Credit wher
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Not entirely anecdotal. When my S3 died it simply turned off and never turned back on. When I searched Google I found lots of other people had the same problem with the S3. Not necessarily everybody... plenty of people love their S3s and have no problem but this particular failure mode happens to the S3 far more than is usual for other models.
Since we are talking about Samsung developing software I must say I don't know if the problem with the S3 is hardware or software related. It sure seems like a har
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I had a Samsung Galaxy S1. No actually I still have it, and it still works.
My girlfriend had an S2, no actually that one still works too.
Both of us have S3s though she had the LTE version.
I now have an S4.
Not a single failure and we didn't coddle these phones even in the slightest, the S1 even has a broken screen. Yeah I tried a Motorola phone and I'm very glad I went Samsung. Dare I say I'm a fan?
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Up through the S3 my wife had the same phones that I did. She loves her Strat and her S3.
My Strat was great for about 2 days then it sucked. It seemed like I couldn't install much of anything on it or it would slow down to a crawl. I wasn't installing anything sketchy either, almost no games (I think I did have angry birds). Some health related stuff that my wife had too (hers worked well) and some ham radio apps. There was nothing that was likely to be infected plus on my previous phone (a Motorola Droid
It's doomed, because Japanese software sucks (Score:2)
It's a weird phenomenon, but it seems that the Japanese don't "get" system software/operating systems AT ALL.
It almost seems to be a cultural thing. They like baroque/quirky interfaces and systems. For video games, that is often a good thing; it makes the game interesting. For applications, it sucks.
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It's a weird phenomenon, but it seems that the Japanese don't "get" system software/operating systems AT ALL.
It almost seems to be a cultural thing. They like baroque/quirky interfaces and systems. For video games, that is often a good thing; it makes the game interesting. For applications, it sucks.
You hit nail on the head. For more reference just read about Nintendo Wii/WiiU. They delivered TEN (10) years old development environment for the Wii (straight from GCN days). It only got worse for WiiU.
http://www.eurogamer.net/artic... [eurogamer.net]
It ALREADY looks better than WP (Score:2)
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FTFA:
Unfortunately, we might not see the phone at MWC 2014, as our source indicates that the launch has been pushed further to accommodate other launches (psst⦠Galaxy S5).
So I guess whomever wrote the summary didn't read all the way to the bottom of the 2nd link.
No, just that when I submitted it, we didn't have that information at our disposal
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The phone design is very similar to Galaxy phones, while the UI reminds us of Windows Phone 8.
Apple will undoubtedly claim to have invented some obscure detail, and insist that the product be banned here in the States. Unless, of course, it's a flop... Apple doesn't design flops.
You are really grasping at straws if you want to start an Apple hate frenzy over this. According to TFA summary it would appear that it's more likely Microsoft's turn to sue Samsung's ass off over copycatting the Windows 8 UI (and that's assuming that Microsoft will even bother).
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They'd probably sue them just to give them some credibility ;-)
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Who buys a smartphone to type a sizable amount of text?
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Re:Am I doing it wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)
Typing on a touch screen SUCKS, why do people buy these things?
Space constraints. With a touchscreen, your typing sucks; but you recover all the keyboard space for viewing whenever you aren't typing. If you want a hard keyboard, you either chop the bottom third of the screen, or add nontrivial thickness and mechanical complexity for a folding or sliding keyboard.
Damned if I can understand the freak kids who seem to enjoy typing with their thumbs on a featureless pane of glass; but it isn't really hard to see why screens larger than the classic blackberry layout allowed have taken over, given that using tiny screens is also pretty miserable.
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First, it requires constant focused attention because there is no tactile feedback.
Second, I type too often in various languages (spoken or technical) and have to disable all help and autocorrection, not because they're bad at English, but because they're wasting my time correcting stuff that they can't understand.
Therefore, I will keep using a slide-out keyboard for as long as they are available, because for all-important-me it's massively more efficient.
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Because it's hard to connect the bluetooth keyboard to a coffee mug.
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Re:Am I doing it wrong? (Score:2)
I have owned several phones with swype (including current one).
I've also owned and had gread use out of a Zaurus CL3100.
Swype is far better than an onscreen keyboard. I actually forked out for swype since my new phone didn't come with it. Swype is a pile of crap to a proper miniture keyboard. Swype makes replying to emails bearable.
You can actually do serious work on a proper mini keyboard.
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"No true Scotsman?"
My first smartphone was the OG Droid, largely because it came with a physical keyboard.
I hated it. When the Swype beta came along I pretty much stopped using the physical keyboard, and never got another phone with a hardware keyboard. I haven't missed them.
You might tell me, well, that wasn't a very good physical keyboard, and maybe you're right. So what would make a "proper" mini keyboard?
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You might tell me, well, that wasn't a very good physical keyboard, and maybe you're right. So what would make a "proper" mini keyboard?
Good question, I don't know exactly. It's something of a "I know it when I see it". If you dig back through old reviews, the Zaurus keyboard gets excellent ratings and generally comes up as the second best mini keyboard ever made. Apparently the first is the Psion 5. I've never used one though.
I don't think it's a no true scotsman kind of deal, since there are measurable di
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Well, that Zaurus keyboard does look a lot more usable than my OG Droid was, but it also looks quite a bit bigger. Not hard to do -- my current phone might be a size match for the Zaurus.
And yes, I can't imagine using Swype to do any kind of markup. It would always end up trying to "fix" your spelling.
Re:Samsung and Google (Score:5, Funny)
Didn't they just sign some agreement a few days ago? And now Samsung is gonna stab Google in the back. Grab your popcorn and place your bets!
They're keeping patent law alive. Not content with being sued by Apple, they will now be sued by microsoft - presumably as their 'tiles' are 'too square'.
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They're keeping patent law alive. Not content with being sued by Apple, they will now be sued by microsoft - presumably as their 'tiles' are 'too square'.
Samsung has done plenty of suing themselves - not with much success. The worst failure of course in the EU, where Samsung has been threatened with a fine up to 13 billion dollars if they continue to try using Samsung patents in an anti-competitive way.
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