That’s insane logic. Nobody’s going to hold a gun to your head and make you get a 4G contract.
But given how easy and cheap it is to include an aerial, not including the ability to handle 4G would be a design fail of epic proportion, just like not including wireless or a headphone socket.
Sapphire is not a good idea. It is more scratch resistant than Gorilla Glass, but it is much more brittle. Shattered screens are a bigger problem than scratched screens. So if you want scratch resistance use a screen protector. But that won’t save you from shattering screens.
This is a pretty sweet idea; its time has come,
It almost redefines ‘personal computer’.
[quote=“noahdjango, post:8, topic:4833”]the thing I’m amazed about is amorphous metal. Knowing “amorphous” means “formless,” i was pretty confused.
Ti40Cu36Pd14Zr10 is believed to be noncarcinogenic, is about three times stronger than titanium, and its elastic modulus nearly matches bones. It has a high wear resistance and does not produce abrasion powder. The alloy does not undergo shrinkage on solidification. A surface structure can be generated that is biologically attachable by surface modification using laser pulses, allowing better joining with bone.
dude, holy crap. i never even heard of this. i don’t get how “3x stronger than titanium” works if the molecules don’t have a crystaline structure, but it is, apparently.
[/quote]
Amorphous or vitreous metal is the shiz, yo. IIRC it’s usually an insulator too. ‘Does not produce abrasion powder’ blows me away though… how’s that possible?
Anyway, concerning its strength and molecular structure, consider the fact that glass formed in a vacuum is stronger than steel until air molecules start hitting it and creating microscopic stress risers.
But hey, you think glassy metals are cool, how about metallic glass? This stuff is brilliant:
The addition of the palladium provides our amorphous material with an
unusual capacity for extensive plastic shielding ahead of an opening
crack. This promotes a fracture toughness comparable to those of the
toughest materials known. The rare combination of toughness and
strength, or damage tolerance, extends beyond the benchmark ranges
established by the toughest and strongest materials known.
So you want to carry an external phone to enable your smartphone to connect to a cell tower? Why, when the smartphone has a cell radio built-in? That’s why it’s… a smart phone. puzzled look
I really love this idea, the specs are spectacular the openness admirable.
However, version 1 products are notoriously problematic, I would really love a second revision of this but it is being touted as a once off.
True. I don’t see how they’re trying tou out-iPhone the iPhone… The iPhone is so successful because it’s an Apple product. The whole point of having a phone natively run on Ubuntu makes it kind of the opposite. It’s trying to be the iPhone just as much as any other smartphone, really… (Except it would run Ubuntu and Android, which makes it far, far more interesting in my own opinion)
And I don’t know that the iPhone can be hooked to a screen and used as a laptop? As far as I’m concerned that’s what makes it especially shiny. Granted I don’t know much about Apple (never fancied their stuff much myself), but I don’t think that’s actually possible with an iPhone.
(And as far as wifi is concerned - every single smartphone ever has wifi capabilities… I’d expect this one would, too, at that kind of price range.)
For all those who think I’m insane: Maybe I am. TECHNICALLY, there’s nothing wrong with the beast.
But they’re positioning this as a phone that is also a computer – a hyper-smartphone. That generally implies a certain marketing direction, including pricing higher than market would normally bear so telecoms can use “discounting” it with purchase of a data plan as a selling point.
I also disagree that “the iPhone is so successful because it’s an Apple product.” Yeah, there’s cult-of-Mac effect involved in its original launch success, but the main reason the iPhone has maintained its market position was that it was the first really cleanly designed smartphone and had first-mover advantage as such. (The iPhone isn’t running Mac OS, after all, and the typical customer doesn’t care what it’s running since they’re not interacting with it at that level.) My read on this announcement that initially – again, because they’re billing it as phone-contains-computer, they’re aiming it at the technical fringe and trying to take the iPhone’s “technobling” slot.
I think they may be missing a bet by not trying to more explicitly declare themselves a new class of product. They’re setting themselves up to be undercut by Apple simply adding external-display capability, a wireless keyboard, and some alternative UIs. The result would probably be inferior to a system designed for dual mode from the ground up, but there are a number of ways in which the iPhone/iPad environment is inferior and many customers tolerate those limitations. (The difficulty of moving/sharing data between apps, for example, and the gatekeeper limiting software availability.)
Basically, I think they’ve priced themselves high enough to scare off many folks who might be seduced by a better smartphone, and not done enough to market themselves attractive to people who really want pocket computing. (They haven’t told us what the UI looks like with an external screen, for example – standard Ubuntu, or would it suffer from Win8’s “aren’t you going to spend most of your time on the touchscreen?” initial assumptions?)
I’m not surprised that I’m not their target market (on paper I should be, but I don’t tend to be a first adopter unless I need something it introduces). I’m just trying to figure out what their target market is – first adopter isn’t enough to sustain a product.
I’d love to be wrong. I wish them luck.
I guess my reaction can be summed up as: The problem with multitools is that while they pack a lot of function into something you can easily carry around, many of them are mediocre at most of those functions and if you have a choice you’ll reach for the dedicated tool instead. There are a few which get the integration right for a subset of their functions, and/or have a “killer app” which makes up for the weak points of the others. The Ubuntu phone hasn’t yet shown us either that it can get enough of the functions right, or that it has the killer app.
Being a relatively open platform may mean it’s more likely to evolve into a nice balance. Maybe. They haven’t actually promised us that it will be any more open than Android, have they?
Hold on, does Ubuntu for Android actually run on anything?
Yep, in Alpha. Supposedly due to arrive by the end of 2013 (ie before the 2014 release of this ubuntu phone).
The idea is that it will run a full Ubuntu desktop. Apple will never make their iOS devices compete with their OSX devices because their business model is designed to encourage you to buy both.
I have drooled about the prospect of phone as PC for ages. My HTC One is spec’d about the same as my laptop (which is MORE than enough to run Ubuntu) so I don’t see there being much of a problem with this.
with my 486 DX100 and 8MB of RAM, I can just about run DOOM II Full Screen without the health bar if I use a boot disk. PWNZ
You shouldn’t have any problems running Doom II on a 486DX4 100Mhz with 8MB of RAM. It only required a 386DX 33Mhz with 4MB (Though you’d probably want at least a 486DX2 66Mhz). And how else but full screen would you run it?
You could hit the - key and shrink the size of the action “window” above the HUD to increase performance. But yeah, my DX2-66 handled it easily back in the day.
Man! I have the case off and it’s right next to an open window and I still can’t go full screen!
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