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Motorola Takes Us a Step Closer to Personal Computing Nirvana–and it’s Not Even a Computer

Posted on January 8, 2011 ·

Motorola Atrix 4GIt took five years, but the personal computing nirvana vision I first heard from Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu is becoming reality. The concept that I discussed in The Cell-Phone Aware PC May Be a PC-less PC, and other posts is simple.  Instead of a plethora of situational devices with redundant computing capacity, carry around just one powerful mobile device, which:

  • brings connectivity, the browser and personalization, with
  • data and apps in the cloud, while
  • the actual devices we interact with are inexpensive displays and keyboards (and other peripherals) that come in various shapes and sizes, truly focusing on usability, ergonomics and convenience.

The first product that gets quite close to the vision is the Motorola Atrix 4G…

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve » Zoli Erdos)

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On Those Android Superphones Again

Posted on May 21, 2010 ·

vic gundotra Wow, for not being a gadget-blog, we’re spending quite a bit of attention on Smartphones @ CloudAve. Are we turning into gadget-freaks? 🙂

Like Ben, I’ve also received an Android-powered Sprint HTC EVO at the Google I/O Conference, and unlike him, I will be able to use it on Sprint, if I so chose.  As a New Zealander, Ben is out of luck – the Sprint CDMA phone does not work there, so I understand his rant, but let’s make it clear: Google did not ignore international attendees.  All paid participants (we we, bloggers, were not)  had received a phone weeks prior to the conference: US attendees a Motorola Droid, International ones an unlocked Nexus One.

Which is why I was shocked to hear Vic Gundotra’s announcement on the second day that all attendees would receive the next HTC wonderphone (hey, was that Vic’s Steve Jobs-like “One More Thing” moment?).   Since this somewhat invalidates the previous phone giveaway, I can’t help but think that it was a last-minute addition to Google’s original game plan – and that leaves me wondering about the reasons.

I can only speculate, but perhaps Google and Sprint wanted to have a few thousand “testers” for the phone before it’s official launch on June 4th?  In fact not just any users, but developers – but that would make even more sense if they had early access to Froyo (Android 2.2) which is announced, but not yet available.  Both new HTC phones – Incredible on Verizon and EVO on Sprint  came with the HTC Sense flavor of Android, but the EVO will allow turning this off, switching back to vanilla Android.  I will turn it off today and keep an eye for a magic OTA upgrade to Froyo:-)

(Again, this is pure speculation, I have no official or leaked info on the matter whatsoever)

Now, a bit of follow-up on my previous rant regarding coverage.  Phone companies must have decided I live in a corner of the world  – home to PeopleSoft, Commerce One,  Oracle, Workday, Safeway, Kaiser Permanente – that does not deserve good coverage (OK, the surrounding mountains may have to do with that, too) . Getting sick of reading all the coverage map and the surrounding spin, I actually fell victim to the most dishonest map from the carrier with the best coverage, Verizon.  Unlike the others, they don’t indicate signal quality at all.   So now I am the proud (?) owner of both the HTC Incredible (purchased myself) and the HTC EVO (Google gift) and get to compare Sprint vs Verizon in my area – one weaker than the other:-(

And with all that said, my favorite phone is one I can not get my hands on: the Samsung Galaxy S. No writeup or video can do it justice.  You have to hold it in your hands.  I did.  It was hard to let go.

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve)

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Time for Device Independent Data Plans

Posted on January 27, 2010 ·

The Apple iPad event is still on, and the Internet is crumbling… Twitter barely crawls, CoveritLive isn’t exactly live, the major sites providing blog coverage are barely accessible… this is iKill – the day Apple Killed The Net. 🙁

But I want to talk about something more important:

iPad data plan

It’s a screenshot from Engadget’s coverage.  Yes, reasonable data plan prices. Except… how many of them do you need?  An iPhone data plan, too?   A data plan for your USB stick for the times you do need a “regular” notebook to work on?

Remember this?

rotaryphone

Yes, phones looked like that.  And there was a time when phone companies (Ma Bell) charged extra when you had more then one outlet in your home….

Remember the early days of cable TV?   You had to ( well, were supposed to) pay extra for each additional cable outlet.

How about the early days of the Internet, before wireless became pervasive?  Yes, ISPs expected us to pay extra for each outlet.

These anachronistic charges are all gone – we pay for the service, no matter what device we use to access it.

So why would wireless access be any different?  We will soon have an increasing number of devices, but the underlying service is the same.  In fact chances are when I use my iPad (which I don’t have), I will not be using my Netbook / Notebook, or browse the Net on iPhone, Google Nexus One … as a consumer I may own a variety of devices, but chances are I will only use them one at a time.

It’s time wireless providers wake up to the 21st century and charge for consumption on a per account (person) basis, not per device.

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve )

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