Niksko

> A bit sluggish

Talk about the understatement of the century. It’s slow as balls on my Galaxy Nexus. The update a little while ago helped, but it still often wont load.

*bru

Exactly! Emergent behaviour is what this is all about.

In response to the OP, this sort of connectivity hasn’t been available for years. In order for ‘the internet of things’ to take off you need the barrier to entry to be low both in terms of money and in terms of design chops. Having a module which is cheap and easy to integrate with existing technology makes it more likely that large companies will adopt this as part of their iterative minor upgrades to products. The alternative is having to start fresh because the module that enables wifi connectivity and processing is ginormous and requires a redesign of the product.

This has the same issues as the ‘soft sim’ proposal. You’d need to go to some sort of physical location to activate the phone. This only puts more power in the carrier’s hands.

I think the current state of hardware sim cards is optimal in that if you choose you can have complete and separate control over your device and your cellular plan. You can either handle them together (get a subsidised handset from the carrier), handle them separately (buy your own handset unlocked or unlock and existing handset from another carrier, and buy a sim-only cell plan) or handle them entirely yourself (don’t have a cell plan. Kind of a redundant option, but at least it’s there [and it’s here in order to be exhaustive]).

What display are you currently using?

I picked up a Dell Ultrasharp U2412M a few months ago and I couldn’t be happier. It’s sharp and bright, seems to have good color reproduction and has a nice design. I’m running it at 1920×1200 which is a nice step up from my previous 1600×1200 CRT that was starting to hurt my eyes from it’s blurriness.

Did you even read the post at all?

It doesn’t matter how high the pixel density is. That’s not how the eye works. The eye has greater difficulty in resolving objects that are further away. So ppi isn’t a measure that can be compared between devices which are meant to be used at different distances. On the other hand, pixels per degree is.

What display do you run that beast on?

This is an interesting idea, but in order for it to take off it needs to be in the bottles of milk that you buy, not in a jug that you pour your milk into after you’ve bought it.

I think an internet enabled fridge would be perfect for this. The fridge could send the messages to your phone, and the milk carton could somehow notify the fridge when it was almost empty. It wouldn’t necessarily need a battery, because it could be single use. It notifies you once when it’s getting low and that’s it. If you make the technology cheap enough then it could potentially be as ubiquitous as the barcode.

I see what you did there, and I like it very much.

NFC uses almost no power at all. This isn’t really a valid argument.

I think the next iPhone will have some form of mobile payment system via NFC, and this will start a trend that’s been looming for a while.

However, I’m hoping that Apple choose to partner with existing companies and technologies instead of using their own standard. Mastercard PayPass and VISA PayWave are becoming almost ubiquitous in stores. This is one of the strengths of Google Wallet.

My dream would be that Apple partner with Mastercard and Visa to support PayPass and PayWave in all countries, and this spurs Google to up their game and roll out Google Wallet to all countries and carriers.

When I install an app, I want one icon. No more, only less if there’s a very good reason.

There’s already a sharing button built into the camera UI that allows me to share to Facebook, and messaging isn’t that hard to find in the app.

Good work Facebook for listening to user demand.

Correction: Apple users are excited about updates.

I’d love to see this in Swiftkey too. Really great job.

You raise some good points, but some of them are simply excuses, or sidestep the issue I was addressing.

I agree that some devices are incapable of receiving updates. But these are the vast minority. They don’t explain why the uptake rate of ICS is so low.

As to your point about manufacturer and carrier greed, this only explains why older phones are not receiving updates. This doesn’t explain why it’s taking so long to roll out ICS to newer phones.

If we can get users to be interested and excited about updates, they will DEMAND faster updates from manufacturers. Those that don’t comply will lost market share as Joe Consumer (who now cares about updates) jumps ship and buys from a manufacturer who is known for timely updates.

I’d also argue, that the idea of getting an update to something better is universally seen to be beneficial. It doesn’t matter if you’re going to get extra functionality out of the update. If these people who are using their smartphones as dumbphones were completely uninterested in having the latest and greatest, then they would have simply bought a dumphone in the first place.

The idea of an update is universal. It is irrelevant of context or usage. It simply means ‘you are getting something better for free’. That’s a universally accepted good thing. We simply need to break consumers out of the cycle of small updates that add nothing and they will demand faster updates.

This is a fair point. If there were an edit button I would edit my original post, but sadly I have no way to do this.

But this is the argument that I’m making. I understand perfectly well that most people are happy with their custom skins and their old versions of Android. But the question is WHY? Never versions of Android are better in every single way. Why would you be happy with something if there was something better out there and it was easily available?

My hypothesis is that we’ve been consistently given slow, gradual, incremental updates that preserve look and feel, and as such we don’t WANT upgrades as a society. We’re happy with the status quo.

Something I didn’t mention in my original post was that upgrades and updates are also a pain in the ass for most users. They happen so often and are so minor that when you get an update on your desktop you tend to ignore it.

What it all amounts to is a fear of updates and upgrades, but there’s no reason for this. It’s just out of habit.

I feel that there is a middle ground between the current way and the Apple way. As has been pointed out many times, if you want access to the Play store you need to sign an agreement with Google. Google have much more leverage than they’re currently using.

But this is the whole point. If we as enthusiasts recognise that there is a good reason to upgrade, why shouldn’t general consumers? If everything was fine the way it was then updates wouldn’t exist.

We have to make consumers aware of updates and the reasons why they should want them.

I’d argue that this is exactly what I’m talking about. Consumer’s are scared of change, so manufacturers just make the new look like the old in order to not frighten them. But the consumer is losing out, since ICS is much more cohesive and well designed than GB. Skinning ICS to look like GB simply allows you to run newer apps and have less bugs and security holes. These are important, but you’re ignoring the large amount of usability upgrades that people seem to whine about.

Google and the manufacturers need to hurry up and expand their unlocked phone stores.

These are all deeply disturbing.