And this is Touchscreen on both sides, written , and concerning Hardware
Comments
pscoop
sil
pscoop: yeah, I know. While I don't trust Google to always go open source with stuff, I do trust them to come through with the goods when they've promised they're going to. I'll be hugely disappointed if that doesn't happen.
On the simple front: I read books, read my email, browse the web, and listen to music on my phone in addition to making phone calls, and I don't want to give any of that up. If I got a simple phone then I'd have to get some other device to do it, and that'd mean carrying two devices, not to mention that the eternally shitty state of wifi in the UK means that the stuff requiring connectivity Just Won't Work.
Chris Lord
I own an LG Viewty, and while I wouldn't actively recommend it, it serves well for my needs. The general interface is a little slow, but once you get used to it, it's no worse than any other phone (bar the iPhone of course), and it has some great features...
The Picsel document viewer does a great job of rendering PDFs, the browser is very competent (no Safari, but it's better than most), the bluetooth audio is excellent (no perceivable quality loss with my car stereo) and the camera is top-notch too, for a phone. My priorities for a phone, after making calls (which I think just about every phone on the market does adequately, really), are texting,bluetooth audio and picture-taking. The Viewty does all three very well.
Added bonuses, it charges over USB, bluetooth range is excellent (better than my last two phones, a Samsung E900 and a Motorola V3i) and battery life is good too.
The best of a bad lot, imo...
mjjzf
I actually like this one. It's not pretty, but I played with it in a store, and it works pretty well.
sil
Chris: that's interesting. My experience of the Viewty was trying it out in the store, and I found the UI to be heartstoppingly confusing. This is not encouraging me to pick it up; I don't really want something that I have to learn, since it's provably possible to build a mobile phone UI that makes sense without having to look in the manual for everything. I can't fault the Viewty on features, certainly. I'm not crucially worried about a browser, since Opera Mini exists; certainly I would like a decent open source browser on the phone itself, but the only people doing that are Nokia.
mattj
I actually like having buttons on a device,yet everyone seems to want to get rid of them and put touchscreens in.
I like physical buttons, as I can find what to press when I can't see the device (Try skipping to the next track with a touch screen media player, without takiing it out of your pocket.) It also provides a feedback which feels natural, this is not there with touch.
They also don't attract fingerprints as much!
I have a samsung phone with touch buttons on that infuriate me, they are too small, and if you move your finger up the column of buttons, it rings the top person in my call log, although this is probably just a UI fuckup.
I am waiting to see what happens with android, and if there will actually be any phones worth buying available on a UK network. The openmoko phone is too expensive for me, and I doubt it would get picked up by a network, you will still have to buy the phone outright, and then hook it up on a contract, (although the iphone is similar in this regard)
mrben
See - what you want is a basic phone with bluetooth, and a Nokia N8x0 ;)
sil
mrben: thought about it :) I was perpetually annoyed by having to carry my Archos around with my phone as well when I had it, though, hence my One Device Only policy.
Anonymous Coward
HI GUYS
Lyle H
Sounds like a great idea to me! Let me know when you make it happen.
OK, so I am biased but while you might be able to get an Android phone by August it remains to be seen when be able to see the souce code. Currently Andriod is the most un-open open source project in existence. While the source for their kernel and other (L)GPL's tools they've used are available the source for the Android bit are as yet unreleased.
I know what you mean though - currently I think all phones are equally crap in different ways - even forgetting whether they are open or closed. Feature wise the iPhone is the best but then you pay a heavy premium for that (both in terms of money and lock-in). I'm tempted to go the other way and find the simplest phone that does calls and text messages well, and nothing else. Screw all the fancy features.