Samsung: Time For A Tablet Rethink

About a year ago Samsung looked like it was going to be a major player in the tablet market. The original Galaxy Tab had a small but committed market and was pumping in some reasonable sales figures.

Problem is that sometime in the last 12 months Samsung decided that the way forward was to flood the market with different tablet devices. The company went from having a strong line-up, with 10.1" and 7" versions of the Tab both outgunning the iPad and other Android tablets; to having too many different tablets all occupying different niches of the same market. Its a strategy that confuses potential buyers and has hurt sales. HTC has a similar problem in the phone market right now.

Samsung needs to get back to basics - two models at the small and large ends of the scale, consistent connections and accessories and a road map that doesn't obselete its own products within weeks of launch.

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iPad 3 Announcement March 7th

Apple has been inviting its favoured technorati to an event on March 7th where iPad 3 will arrive along with an updated Apple TV.

The big news on the iPad looks to be a newer higher resolution display, which is all well and good but for me doesn't address the shortcomings that make the iPad less than useful. Sure for the things that its good at: web browsing (minus Flash sites of course), email and some very nice creation apps its very good.

Doesn't stop some very serious niggles - unlike Google's tablets which happily run apps designed for phones, the iPad makes a real hash of running non-optimised apps - a clumsy solution which is only likely to get worse with the addition of a second iPad-only resolution...

I don't doubt that the new iPad will be joyously welcomed by the faithful. Me I look upon it as a missed opportunity and I don't see the new one fixing that...

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Shock! Horror! Boxers Fighting Each Other

It might just be me, but seriously do we need quite so many histrionics about a pair of boxers getting into a bit of a ruck?

I mean is there no real news to mawkishly drag out through 24 hour news channels?

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Is The Stylus Making A Comeback? Looks Like It...

The Samsung Galaxy Note has made something of an impact since its unveiling late last year. The 5.3" phone/tablet hybrid makes a virtue out of its stylus and its ability to take handwritten notes and annotate documents.

Despite being told for years that stylii are the devil's spawn and nobody could ever countenance using one ever again, it appears that people are suddenly realising that one of the key benefits of having a large touchscreen is its ability to mimic a piece of paper. Anyone who has previously used a Windows Mobile device with Evernote will have spent the last few years bemoaning the loss of that functionality.
 
In fact its very noticeable that the tech forums which were populated by WM and Palm users of yore, pre-dating the iPhone revolution, have seen massive take-up of the Galaxy Note by contributors.
 
Now the arrival of a 5" screen hybrid from LG promises to tip the genre into a mini-bandwagon. In the same way that the Note has moved on the game from HTC's Flyer, the first intrepetation of a touchscreen/sylus combo.

Which is excellent news, especially if you've ever tried to use a finger, hot-dog sausage or capacitive stylus to try and take notes on your finger friendly screen!

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The iPhone 4S Mess

It's hard to label a phone that's sold so well a dud, but my iPhone 4S has been so incredibly poor recently that I find it hard to call it anything else.

It's a shame because up until three weeks ago things had been going fine. Then one afternoon it decided to go into meltdown - literally. I felt a burning sensation on my leg and when I pulled the phone from my pocket it was red hot and impossible to hold. I powered it down completely and once it had cooled later that evening restarted it. All seemed fine. Then the battery discharged from full to empty over the course of six hours one night - causing me to miss an alarm.

Having been an iOS 5.01 hold out up until that point I was forced to comply and things have gone downhill steadily since. Battery life? Gone to pot. Network connectivity? Poor. Internet access? Completely goosed - the browser will refuse to load certain websites and tells me that there's no connectivity; the App Store is inaccessible and Spotify spends half it's time thinking its offline.

Apple: it just works? No it doesn't it's not even close. Fix the 4S now.

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2012 F1 Cars Are Super Ugly

I can't imagine anyone is going to be putting the current crop of F1 cars onto their walls as posters. The new stepped nose design (adopted by all but Mclaren) has to be the worst thing advance in F1 design since the turning vane/barge board.

Now I understand that fast is beautiful in the eyes of the designers, teams and drivers; but just how twisted have the regulations become when even painted Ferrari red the just look like Joe Bugner after another mauling?

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Android Fragmented? Not So Much

Fragmentation? Its a terrible problem on the Android platform - or at least so the naysayers would have you believe.

Localytics, though, has data which pretty much refutes this. In fact 96% of Android handsets are running Android 2.2 or 2.3 (Froyo and the updated Gingerbread) - with the majority on 2.3. Not the latest version I grant you, but given that Android 4.0 has only appeared on one handset so far - the wonderful Galaxy Nexus - that's hardly surprising.

Details here - including some information on screen size which suggests that bigger is exactly what customers want...

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The Verge Gives HD2 The Plaudits

The phone that transcends its roots, the HTC HD2 has been honoured by The Verge. Originally shipped with Windows Mobile 6.5 (the first Windows Mobile device with a capacitive screen) the HD2 has been given unofficial ROMs running the latest versions of Android and WP7.

As well as being versatile, the HD2 has set the design language for HTC since its release, in fact one of the likely reasons that HTC had such a poor end to 2011 was probably it's failure to move designs away from the basic HD2 template.

You can read the full article at
http://mobile.theverge.com/2012/2/7/2782733/status-symbols-htc-hd2

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What's Wrong With HTC Sense?

There are a lot of people complaining about HTC Sense - how it delays the launch of Android updates and assists in the fragmentation of Android.

What nonsense!
 
Sense does a fantastic job of giving HTC phones a consistent look and feel and a set of widgets that look like they were designed by the same team.

Those people who complain are probably the same ones who moan about Android phones having a less well interface the iOS or WP7.
 
Sense is a well designed and thought out UI which makes for a positive user experience and gives a consistent face to Android phones from HTC. The improvements in user experience over the life of the phone more than make up for any delays in delivering updates.

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Fabio Capello Takes The High Ground - English Press Fails To Notice

So the John Terry affair ends with England manager Fabio Capello tendering his resignation to the FA, who were glad to accept it.

The English press has painted this as a result of Capello's outburst on Italian TV at the weekend, where he criticised the FA's decision to strip Terry of the England captaincy. The barely hidden subtext is that the smarmy Italian has been booted out for his stance.

And of course the press's desire to have Harry Redknapp in the job can now be realised at least six months early.

Yet the case remains that Capello's point is valid - Terry has been convicted without trial - and Capello's backing of his captain speaks of loyalty beyond the undertanding of the tabloid trash - and, bizarrely, the BBC.

Were Terry to be found guilty do we think that Capello would have continued to back him? Based on his previous problems - adultery with a team-mate's ex - which lost him the captaincy, I'm guessing not...

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