iankeiththomas

I have to admit, the idea that the market “demands” larger screens and devices, which is something you only hear on tech blogs, always makes me laugh. Did the iPhone suddenly become not the most successful smartphone by an enormous margin? Did I miss where Apple’s fortunes changed so that it is no longer a monstrously successful tech company?

The next iPhone probably will have a bigger screen, but let’s not kid around here – the next iPhone could be nothing but an iPhone 4s in different colors and its sales would still be gargantuan.

Ye gods. Lenovo seriously changed the ThinkPad keyboard? How sad. That keyboard was one of the most distinctive features among laptops, period, especially when practically everyone is scrambling to produce their most faithful MBP knockoff. It was also the absolute best portable keyboard around, and the perfect encapsulation of of the Thinkpad’s focus on function over form.

I can’t believe they’re not at least offering the classic keyboard as an option.

Maybe Palm.

Definitely not Nokia. Even years after the iPhone made it abundantly clear that Symbian was an inescapable horror when it came to user interface, the current version of Symbian isn’t as pleasant to use as the first version of iOS. Nokia just wouldn’t have done a big reimagining of what a cell phone could be; they were basically just tacking stuff onto their feature phones.

RIM is kind of like Nokia. Even now, BB7 isn’t as sophisticated as iOS has been for a while, so I don’t even want to think of what it’d be like without Apple’s influence.

My guess is that in a world without an iPhone, Google would still have produced Android, but without the iPhone to guide it, Android would have stayed in the realm of a Blackberry-type OS.

I’ll also note that dismissing the first iPhone as “a feature phone with a touchscreen” is incredibly silly.

What provider do you use? If it’s GSM-based, just get a cheap dumbphone as a “going out” device and put your SIM card into that when you go out. Then if you lose it, you just have to get a new SIM card. Obnoxious, but inexpensive.

Alternately, buy an ultra-cheap unlocked Nokia off Amazon, get a T-Mobile prepaid SIM, give the new number to your friends, and you have a specialized going out phone that you don’t have to worry about losing.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t really need most of the features of my smartphone when I go out. I just call and text.

I remember playing this in the movie theater arcade when I was a kid. I hated Dragon’s Lair-type games, though, and only ever played for short periods while waiting for the Mortal Kombat machine to open up.

I think this is dead on. People rightly note that phones with hardware keyboards are a niche, but that could be RIM’s niche. RIM simply cannot compete in the touchscreen slab arena unless they come up with a feature that would entice someone to buy a BB10 device over an iPhone. So far, RIM hasn’t shown that.

So far, absolutely nothing about BB10 suggests that RIM has come up with anything that can’t be done on an iPhone or Android device. That’s the problem here; RIM can’t just churn out “An iPhone but worse.” It needs to do something that its competitors don’t, because consumers already have tons of choice when it comes to touchscreen slabs. Even security isn’t a given, considering that RIM is using a new OS and advances are being made with iOS and Android security features.

What’s more, things like the camera are the exact type of thing that RIM shouldn’t be focusing on. People don’t buy a Blackberry for its camera, and RIM will never in a million years best Apple, Samsung, HTC, or Nokia in that area.

I don’t really know how RIM can fight a war on two fronts like that. It would basically turn them into the new old Nokia, and we know how that worked out. I think the focus on enterprise is really RIM’s only way out. No matter what the company does in terms of low-cost handsets for emerging markets, Samsung will be able to make clone devices at a fraction of the cost. RIM just can’t compete there.

More than anything, I think RIM just needs to figure out why consumers – ANY consumer – should buy a Blackberry. What do they offer that Apple and Samsung don’t? What can they offer? I seriously think that just one good device that offered a genuinely compelling reason for choosing it over an iPhone would put RIM back in the game. That’s simple, but it’s a tall order, especially since RIM will be competing against the iOS and Android ecosystems.

Android is fragmented, but in all honesty, I don’t think it makes that much of a difference. To date, I’ve owned a G1, an EVO Shift, and a Droid 4, and I can’t really think of a time when some issue with an app was really that noticeable, let alone problematic. The worst and most frequent problem I encounter is some apps not automatically switching to landscape orientation when I pop open the keyboard, and that problem is hardly life-threatening.

Regarding performance, my EVO Shift ran basically without a hiccup. That said, I wouldn’t gamble with low-end hardware if you can avoid it, because one of Android’s faults is that it’s a huge resource and battery hog. The various skins aren’t to everyone’s liking, but Android is nothing if not extremely customizable.

Right. The look of the device isn’t what I’m talking about. It’s the specifications of the hardware, and particularly its total similarity to the iPhone and a bevy of Android phones, that’s the problem. The final consumer device will no doubt be quite sleek, but it’ll likely still be a touchscreen slab.

My concern about RIM releasing a device like this can be summed up as: why should anyone buy this? If RIM stuck with the classic Blackberry portrait keyboard look, or even a slider like the Torch, I can see RIM carving a niche for itself among a certain type of user who likes that setup.

But if RIM just releases a buttonless black slab, why will anyone buy one of these things when the iPhone and scads of Android devices will offer superior functionality (and it will be superior; there’s no way that BB10 1.0 will be as sophisticated or stable as iOS or Android 4.0) along with an infinitely superior ecosystem? My question is simple: what features can RIM offer that will entice a customer to pass up excellent devices running established operating systems like the iPhone, the One X, and the Galaxy S III?

I really hope that RIM has an answer to that question; otherwise, this really is just RIM’s Pre 3. I think RIM makes fantastic hardware, so I want to see them succeed, but if all they have to offer is “It’s kind of like an iPhone but way worse,” I’m not optimistic.

I will never (again) buy a smartphone that doesn’t include a hardware keyboard of some sort. Typing messages of various types is 90% of what I use my smartphone for, and I simply do not do anywhere near as well with a soft keyboard. I like the tactile feel of buttons, and the keyboard on my Droid 4 is the best I’ve ever used.

That said, the one keyboard-less phone I ever owned was an iPhone 4, and it was very good for a software keyboard. Not good enough for me to switch, but very good. In addition, when I first used an iPhone in 2007, I was blown away that Apple got a software keyboard to work that well. It was really incredible at the time, and when my G1 was updated to include a software keyboard at all, it was vastly, vastly inferior to the iPhone’s. So, tons of kudos to Apple for figuring out the software keyboard.

It’s definitely the case that Verge staff write reviews geared toward the tech-savvy. That’s fine, but there is generally one point in each smartphone review that I sort of roll my eyes at some criticism that seems to me like something only the hardest of the hardcore smartphone nerds would ever even notice, let alone care about.

But that’s fine; there are tons of other sites that do smartphone reviews for the average consumer. I know that when I’m in the market for a new phone, I try to look at a number of sources. It’s invariably the case that the techy sites will point out important features that a more consumer-oriented site might miss, while at the same time glossing over fundamental features of a device in favor of the minutia. As an example, I find that tech sites give extremely little information regarding the battery life of a phone. Especially when I still read Engadget, it would be remarkable if they devoted more than an “it might last a day,” aside. At the same time, the reviewer would pore over every little detail of whatever processor was in the phone, which is information I could not possibly value less.

But I appreciate the type of review that the Verge does, and above all I appreciate the fact that its reviewers can actually write. I have given up on a number of tech sites in the past because their contributors can barely string two sentences together.

Android is obviously fragmented, but it doesn’t really matter. The vast majority of Android customers don’t know the first thing about OS versions, don’t care, and won’t do anything with their phones that will cause them to run into OS trouble anyway. I’m not even convinced that most Android phone owners even have a real idea of what “Android” is to begin with.

The consumers who actually care about the fragmentation are presumably tech savvy enough to research their phone purchase ahead of time.

Assuming that Sony could have pulled this off, it would have been a good way to deal with the problem that faces a game-centric smartphone. The fact is, any decent game controls are going to add bulk to a device, and it’s going to be hard to convince buyers to carry that around all the time. The problem is compounded by the fact that there is probably a big overlap between gamers hardcore enough to want a Playstation phone and tech enthusiasts, who are going to gravitate toward the bleeding-edge smartphone tech.

But a keyboard at least provides some functionality that can be used more often than a gamepad.

Yeah, I honestly think the focus on thinness in smartphones is bizarre. I use a Droid 4 in a relatively bulky case, and it feels great when I’m using the keyboard. When it comes to something I have to handle a lot, something substantial feels a lot better than something slight. It is somewhat clunkier to carry around, I guess, but the very thin smartphones almost all trade depth for a larger surface area anyway, and I don’t find the bulk any more awkward than the pancake-like Galaxy Nexus.

It’s a personal preference, obviously, but the point is that thickness in a mobile device is far from a deal-breaker for a lot of people.

At this point, I wish Nintendo would adopt an official company motto of “Doomed since 1996” or something. The best part about it all is that even when a Nintendo project turns out to be a completely unqualified success (like the Wii), Nintendo is still apparently one console away from utter ruin. The Wii was a huge success, and the DS was a colossal success. Nintendo doesn’t have to crawl “back” on top of anything; Nintendo is there.

It’s true that Nintendo is facing challenges from Apple, and that the Wii faced certain software challenges (although these are highly exaggerated by the so-called “hardcore” gamers), but Nintendo is in a good position to deal with these issues. The current success of the 3DS demonstrates that there is still a market for that type of device, and the home console market is under less of a threat from new technologies than the mobile market.

My favorite was the Wii being on the “bridge of death.” Is it trying to cross the chasm of death?

Uh, who are these console makers who don’t make controllers out of plastic?

AmeenA is right. Nintendo makes a lot of money from its hardware; it’s not like Microsoft or Sony, who sell their hardware at a loss. The Wii and DS made Nintendo a ton of money. It may be the case in the next few years that things change, but so far there is zero reason for Nintendo to get out of the hardware game, and a ton of incentive to stay in it. There is a ton of value in Nintendo being the only source of hardware to play Mario, Zelda, and Pokemon.

Motorola said that they’re looking to release fewer devices this year, so it isn’t that surprising that we haven’t heard about anything since the RAZR Maxx. Really, that’s a good thing; Motorola’s whole problem was releasing a bunch of incredibly similar devices in close succession, with the latest device always making the one before it completely pointless. The height of this would be the Droid X2 on 5/19/11, the Bionic on 9/8/11, the RAZR on 11/11/11, and the RAZR Maxx on 1/26/12. That’s basically a slightly tweaked version of the same hardware every two months, and it’s not even counting stuff like the Droid 4. Motorola sitting out the spring is a good thing.

I honestly didn’t notice any of the problems that the update purports to correct, but I will say that I installed the update yesterday, and I did notice a marked improvement in battery life today. And I didn’t have any battery life complaints to begin with, so this is a nice surprise. Still love the phone.