pyroscott

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 26 January 2012 I saw somewhere that Microsoft paid $250 million to start this partnership. While WP sales seem to be climbing, I think Nokia would be smart to keep the prices low to gain a foothold in the market, even if it cuts into their profit margin. Microsoft may have to supplement the profits to help their OS catch on.

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 19 January 2012 The more I read about Windows Phone and Nokia, the more I think that their partnership will be very successful. I definitely agree, I think RIM is headed right out of the market. You barely hear anything about them anymore except to say that they are losing their market share on smartphones.

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 19 January 2012 Most of us know the story of Microsoft Windows vs. Apple Computers from their inception in the mid 70's until today. Microsoft decided the best way to success was licensing the software to other manufacturers but maintain control of the software code, where Apple decided to control both the hardware and the software for their computer operating system. Sound familiar? Microsoft found huge success with IBM and "IBM compatible" computers. Both Apple and Microsoft's operating systems provided a consumer friendly interface, the main difference was that Microsoft Windows was available on computers at all price points and varying levels of performance, where Apple offered quality, well-built machines at a premium price. No matter which you prefer, it's hard to ignore that Microsoft is perched atop a mountain of cash (Apple isn't in the poor house either though.) Microsoft has an uphill battle against Apple's market saturation, but with Nokia in their corner building the flagship phones and other manufacturers building varying price points. Maybe they will even throw in some gaming phones, phones geared towards business, advanced audio phones or whatever entices another part of the market. If the Windows Phone OS takes off, it could be thanks to their partnership with Nokia, and Nokia may soon be as synchronous with Windows OS as IBM was with Microsoft.

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 22 January 2012 With the removal of Carrier IQ and the manufacturers sending out some maintenance fixes with the updates, it might be that Moto is looking for people to test out that update. It would be cool for Photon owners if they get ICS though... and put pressure on the other manufacturers to roll out their own ICS updates.

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 16 January 2012 In its current state, WP would be targeted at potential iPhone buyers but without great hardware or an aggressive marketing campaign, I can't see WP taking much of a bite out of iPhone sales. As you said though, WP OS strikes fear in iOS carriers, especially when they have to sell millions of them in the next few years.

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 20 January 2012 It'll be like when I moved from a dial-up modem on archaic phone lines to a T1 line in my dorm room... I can't wait.

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 10 January 2012 I would personally be happy with speeds around 5-10 Mbps from mobile data today, but the future screens, processors, memory and apps will combine to make smarter, more versatile phones that are just going to get more and more data intensive. Maybe I am dating myself but I remember when the internet was predominately accessed by dial-up 56 kbps connections and was optimized for that connection, now you would tear your hair out waiting for your homepage to load at that speed. I also remember when sprint vision was text only and was just a small intranet (yes, I meant to say intranet) site set up by sprint and was still slow. It won't be long and we will outgrow the 20-30 Mbps (top speeds) that this "4G" offers and everyone will be pining for 5G because sprint's 4G is so overloaded and slow. If Sprint's EVDO rev A was performing at or near its capacity, we wouldn't all be screaming for 4G, I could certainly deal with 1.5 Mbps 3G on the phone with WiFi at home and work, but it is all a marketing scheme to add or keep customers with the "newest technology". If all the carriers were claiming "faster speeds on 'our' 3G network" nobody would care. But first 4G was the household term, then 4G LTE. All the customers line up for it and are fed a line of BS.

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 10 January 2012 Apparently, all these new wireless data networks that carriers are advertising as "4G" are really still only meeting the 3G standard. 4G is technically 100Mbps mobile access and 1Gbps stationary access max speeds, which LTE, WiMAX and HSPA+ can't produce in their current state. The speeds that these network technologies provide are way better than what we have come to accept as 3G, but not up to the standards set by the IMT. Once LTE advanced and WiMAX 2 are rolled out, they will be true 4G networks and blow the doors off LTE, WiMAX and HSPA+. Until then I will roll my eyes when these technologies are continually billed as 4G. P.S. I don't know if we will even see WiMAX 2 in the states as everyone is flocking to the LTE train (which is a GSM technology).

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 22 January 2012 LTE-Advanced will revolutionize the way we connect to the internet, but it will be quite a while until we see it on our handsets. LTE-Advanced will allow carriers to piece together all the different pieces of bandwidth into one big chunk, but handsets will need multiple LTE Radios and BIG batteries. as detailed in this article, we will need some much higher capacity batteries in our phones before we start thinking about LTE-Advanced, unless we want a couple hours of battery life...

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 25 January 2012 They should mount the portable cell sites on motorcycles and call them hell on wheels

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 23 January 2012 With the LTE outages Verizon has experienced the past year, it makes you wonder how the 85,000 people attending the Superbowl in Indy will impact their LTE network. Verizon may have had that in mind when they decided to spend $69 million upgrading their LTE network in Indianapolis. According to the article "How Verizon Prepares for the First 4G LTE Super Bowl in Indianapolis" Verizon claims that attendees of the Superbowl will be able to watch the game on their mobile devices. That is an aggressive promise, but how many people will actually watch it on their phone? To assist with the added network load, they have deployed the following: 9 Antennas that are part of a Distributed Antenna System (DAS) outside the stadium to handle increased downtown traffic. 400 Antenna Internal DAS to handle 3G and 4G LTE voice and data inside the stadium. 600 Antenna WiFi system capable of handling 28,000 simultaneous connected users. Free for Super Bowl 46. 3 Cell on Wheels (COWs). Stand alone generator powered cell towers to handle the extremely high demand areas. The atricle finishes by saying the only equipment that they will not be leaving in place is the 3 cell on wheels that will be on hand. The Verizon customers in the city of Indianapolis will certainly be benefiting from the Superbowl.

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 24 January 2012 Hopefully if Lightsquared doesn't end up building out their network and calls it quits, Clearwire will see the opportunity to scoop up all those customers and build their network faster, but they will probably need to raise more capital to speed up their build out.

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 26 January 2012 I was seeing drastically improved 3G speeds in St. Cloud MN, but then it went back to as slow as it ever was. I don't know what it was all about.

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 30 January 2012 Looks like posturing by ATT. They are trying to make Dish want to sell them the spectrum. "We suspect that [AT&T's] interest in seeing the FCC impose LightSquared-like buildout requirements on Dish has little to do with the public interest, and much more to do with [AT&T's] interest increasing its negotiating leverage, when it comes to a potential transaction negotiation with Dish," Credit Suisse analyst Jonathan Chaplin wrote in a research note. "Why? Because onerous buildout requirements could increase Dish's interest in selling/dealing its spectrum." Looks like ATT are trying to get the FCC to put requirements on building out the network at a minimum pace, which would give Dish additional incentive to sell the spectrum to ATT. I hope Dish tells ATT to pound sand for trying to push them into a sale.

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 1 February 2012 I doubt this thing gets figured out in that 6 week timeframe. Good thing Sprint isn't betting the farm on it. They were smart to put their eggs in many baskets. It would be nice to see a nationwide LTE provider, raise a little competition and make it good for the consumers.

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 30 January 2012 I tried the loudtalks walkie talkie from the market. It is a bit slow, and it seems like if you leave the program running in the background, it uses battery and slows the system. If they could tweak it some so it can "sleep" when not in use, and allow for faster transfer when you are on 4G or WiFi, it could be useful. It even lets you map a PTT button, I used the volume down button. Overall, it is pretty decent, but doesn't give the same performance that a dedicated PTT gives.

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 29 January 2012 It would be a nuke for Sprint, but would the handset makers go for adding a Byron to Sprint models and using a different chip set?

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 29 January 2012 Currently the phone offered with Sprint direct connect have the capabilities baked right into the chip. This allows better performance and reliability I'm sure. There are several walkie talkie apps in the market that offer cross platform and cross carrier connectivity but they can't offer the response of the SDC phones. It would certainly make SDC more popular and help it catch on if you could add it to any Android or iPhone, but would it degrade the quality and drive people away from SDC altogether? I would like the feature, but I can't see myself buying anything like the current SDC phones sprint offers.

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 1 February 2012 Hopefully this means that they are still working diligently on a blazing fast quad core chip to put in this beast.

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 24 January 2012 Eldar Murtazin, the Russian tech blogger claims that the Samsung Galaxy SIII will be announced at the MWC in Barcelona in February and hit shelves by April. I'm sure this is the European release and the US will see the device at a later date, but this is some of the more credible rumors that have come out about the device. According to phonearena.com article "Samsung Galaxy S III rumored to go on sale in April: HD screen, quad-core processor, 12-megapixel camera, running ICS" Murtazin tweeted “HD resolution, 12 mpx camera, sw tweaks, android 4 - i like my new phone. Eager to see official announcement in Barcelona.” He didn't come out and say anything specific about the processor, but hinted at a quad core in the 1.5-1.6 GHz range. Let's hope Samsung pairs this performance with a RAZR MAXX sized battery.

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 30 January 2012 That would be sweet. I know I was a bit surprised that the google nexus had a 5 MP camera. When I was buying my E4GT, I asked the sales associate at Best Buy if he knew why the GN had a 5 MP camera and he argued with me that it had to be higher. When I pointed it out on the shelf, he went online to verify that Best Buy's own tag was correct. I thought it was pretty funny, but the stats were definitely underwhelming for a $300 flagship device, even if it is a Nexus

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 23 January 2012 S4GRU readers are the first to feast their eyes on the new Samsung Galaxy Journal to be released to Sprint customers later this year. I'm sure many of you are anxiously awaiting this device and its sweet looks. it makes me wonder why they changed the design so drastically from the AT&T version and how exactly one would put a case on it. I apologize for my poor photo editing skills.

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 28 January 2012 Well the ironic thing is that itunes was developed and marketed as the best way for artists to offer their music and actually get paid. My cousin is in Quietdrive and said that they make a lot more from itunes sales of songs than they do from the CD sales. So Apple has in essence, improved things drastically for artists to get paid for their work, but they certainly haven't improved anything for the workers making the components of their hardware. They keep demanding faster, cheaper, more advanced components, indirectly forcing their suppliers to cut costs wherever available which apparently is employee safety and care. Then they finish their recipe by jacking up the price, sticking it to the wireless carriers and the people that buy their products. Then they laugh all the way to their offshore account with their billions of dollars. People need to wake up. It's almost like when I started noticing how beautiful and expensive the national bank I used to bank with had their offices. I thought, "where does this money come from?" I promptly moved my banking needs to a credit union with nice offices but no marble floors, teak desks and toilet paper made of money.

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 28 January 2012 Apple is really starting to take a beating publicly regarding the conditions to which the workers at apple manufacturing plants are subjected. I received an e-mail this morning from change.org which has started a petition to tell Apple to improve the conditions of the workers. I'm not sure I completely buy into all the claims that this e-mail makes, but if it is true, this is appalling and something definitely needs to be done to improve these conditions. Nobody deserves to be permanently maimed for corporate greed and the claim that some people are committing suicide in response to the conditions, if true, is incredible. Let's hope these claims are not true, and true or not, I hope Apple makes huge efforts to improve the conditions for the workers. Complete e-mail text follows: According to the New York Times, workers at a factory in Shenzhen, China, owned by Foxconn (a company that manufactures iPhones, iPads and other devices for Apple) regularly work sixteen-hour, seven-day work weeks. hey stand until their legs swell and they can’t walk, and they perform repetitive motions on the production line for so long that some permanently lose the use of their hands. To cut costs, managers make workers use cheap chemicals that cause neurological damage. There has been a rash of suicides at the Foxconn plant, and 300 workers recently threatened to jump off the roof over a safety and pay dispute. In short, as one former Apple executive told the New York Times, "Most people would be really disturbed if they saw where their iPhone comes from." Mark Shields, a self-described member of the "cult of Mac," started a petition on Change.org demanding Apple exert its influence on its suppliers to improve working conditions for the factory workers that make iPhones, iPads and other Apple products. Click here to sign Mark’s petition right now. Apple knows it can play an important role in ensuring safe and fair working conditions for the workers at its suppliers, like Foxconn. In 2005, the company released a supplier code of conduct, and it performs hundreds of audits each year in China and around the world to confirm its suppliers are meeting the code’s expectations. But that’s where Apple’s commitment falters: the number of supplier violations has held steady year to year and Apple hasn’t consistently publicly stated which suppliers have problems or dropped offending suppliers. The bottom line, Apple executives admit, is that they’re not being forced to change. One current executive told the New York Times that there’s a trade-off: "You can either manufacture in comfortable, worker-friendly factories," he said, or you can "make it better and faster and cheaper, which requires factories that seem harsh by American standards. And right now, customers care more about a new iPhone than working conditions in China." That means public pressure is the only thing that can force Apple to ensure its suppliers treat workers humanely. If enough people sign Mark’s petition -- and tell Apple they care more about human beings than they do about how fast the company can produce the next generation iPhone -- the company could be convinced to make real change for the workers at Foxconn and other factories. Click here to sign Mark’s petition demanding Apple change the way it does business.

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 1 February 2012 I like the design and specs they have listed, but I may like them a lot less when the next round of Android/Apple/Windows phones are released and lap RIM. The disign on this bad boy might just get them added to the Apple design copyright suit...LOL