Archive for June, 2009
The present meets the past….
0I like my retro things and so was drawn to article on the BBC News website, “Giving up my iPod for a Walkman“.
The article is about a 13-year-old boy named Scott Campbell who is asked to swap his iPod for an original 30-year-old Walkman.
The quote from the article that sums it up best is
It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape
Now some of us might laugh at that but think about it, how was he suppose to know the tape could be turned over? CDs put a stop to the whole A side B side, which actually takes away from the music singles but that’s another discussion.
What I thought was strange about the artilce was how slow Scott was to figure out the Walkman. If he had been given a new mobile phone, MP3 player or computer he’d have most of the functions worked out within a half hour but give him something out of the ordinary and unfamiliar and he’s lost.
Simply an Unreal Shot
0This is the best video I’ve seen for awhile on the net. All I can say is enjoy
iPhone 3Gs… Where it should have started??
0To start with I’m not what’s being called a Mac “Fanboy”. Any device I’ve decided to purchase, the decision has been based on the actual device and not on who manufactures it or the hype surrounding it and that’s why I’ve avoided the previous 2 iPhones. The new iPhone 3Gs sees some improvements to the hardware to bring it in to line withother popular smart phones on the market but combining it with the new iPhone OS 3.0 upgrade puts it right up there as one of the better phones on the market and now deserves my attention.
The 3Gs was announced by Philip Schiller during the keynote address at this year’s Apple WWDC on June 8th. It becomes available in the US, UK and 6 other countries on Friday June 19th and in Ireland plus 5 more countries a week later on Friday June 26th.
The big things in the hardware end are an increase in speed (that’s what the S stands for) and the addition of a better camera which is now 3mp and is capable of video capture. The 3.0 software upgrade adds things like copy and paste, SMS forwarding and MMS all things that any basic smart phone can do already.
With the changes made, it brings me to my point, the 3Gs is really the first proper iPhone. It’s the one that should have been launched 2 years ago and there’s no reason it couldn’t have been as there’s nothing added to it now that wasn’t available then. I do think this iPhone will be the one to bring in customers (including me) that were not sure before. I’ll be watching the launch in the US and UK on Friday very closely to see how things go before I make my final decision whether or not to get one next week but currently I think I’m going to be making the change.
For more information on the iPhone 3Gs see here and for information and pricing on it’s launch with o2 in Ireland see here.
HTC Touch Pro 2
0This is the HTC Touch Pro 2
This has come up in previous posts and I feel it’s a good indication what’s to come from HTC. It is now their flagship business device and looks to be pretty damn good. If you remember there were leaked photos from HTC earlier this year, one of those photos was the Rhodium.
Although people are saying that the Touch Pro 2 is the Rhodium I think now that the leaked photo was just a general prototype that will be used for other models later in the year. As I said when the photos were leaked, we should be expecting a Touch HD Pro later in the year, which will hopefully be a full featured media device based on the same Rhodium design.
HTC have announced that they are holding an event in London next week, 24th June. This event is suppose to see the launch of the Hero, HTC’s new Google Android based phone, but will also (hopefully) see the announcement of what’s to come later in the year.
Here are a few videos of the Touch Pro 2 put together by Brandon Miniman from PocketNow.com
Palm releases the Pre to the world
0OK so the Pre finally became available in the US on the 6th June and certainly the majority of things said about it are good. Although it has been highly praised I’m afraid it lost me during the first few days after release. If people are actually following this they’ll know that the Pre came to my attention back in January when I started looking about getting a new phone. Since then the Pre was looking good but just a few things have put me off it now and I have to go on what I’ve heard and read on the web as my demo model must have got lost in the post *cough*.
The build quality isn’t what I’d expect from what is suppose to be a high end phone. There seems to be a very plastic look and feel about it and really wouldn’t stand out against and iPhone or one of the new HTC phones. Also the edges of the slide out keyboard are sharp which doesn’t give a nice feeling in your hand.
The keyboard was the main reason I was attracted to the Pre to start with but even that seems to have flaws. The keys are awkward and your thumb bumps against the top half of the phone when trying to use the top row of keys.
The last thing is the applications or rather the lack of. These days it’s the applications that sell devices which Apple have proved very well and currently there are no applications that would make me consider getting the Pre.
Saying all that from what I can gather the Pre will not appear in Ireland until later in the year sometime between September and October depending on what reports you read, so this does give them time to sort out some of the issues and even fill out the app catalog. Telefonica have signed up as one of the operators in Europe so that means the Pre will be available on O2 in Ireland and the UK, who knows I might get my hands on one then to see what it’s really like.
I’ve put together a playlist of videos from PhoneDog.com showing what the Pre is like and what it can do
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