Tech Mania: The phone Linus Torvalds likes – Nexus one plus 1 more articles

The phone Linus Torvalds likes – Nexus one

Posted: 09 Feb 2010 02:20 PM PST

Linus Torvalds, who needs no introduction, has a long history of hating his phones. According to his blog writings, he has owned several Linux based phones so far, and according to him none of them impressed him much.In Torvalds’ words, the phones are,

irritating and disturb you as you work or read or whatever – and a cellphone to me is just an opportunity to be irritated wherever you are. Which is not a good thing.

Anyway the intention of this news story, is to let you know that someone actually has found a phone which is not like the others (well you already know it, but now it’s coming from a Guru). Here’s what Linus has to say,

I love the concept of having a phone that runs Linux, and I’ve had a number of them over the years (in addition to the G1, I had one of the early China-only Motorola Linux phones) etc. But my hatred of phones ends up resulting in me not really ever using them. The G1, for example, ended up being mostly used for playing Galaga and Solitaire on long flights, since I had almost no reason to carry it with me except when traveling.

But I have to admit, the Nexus One is a winner. I wasn’t enthusiastic about buying a phone on the internet sight unseen, but the day it was reported that it finally had the pinch-to-zoom thing enabled, I decided to take the plunge. I’ve wanted to have a GPS unit for my car anyway, and I thought that google navigation might finally make a phone useful.

Linus Torvalds is one tough guy to get praised from, and the Nexus One has successfully impressed him. But if you look at the sales from the 1st week to 1st month there has not much sales on the Nexus part.In the first week Nexus made 20,000 sales and in the total sales for the 1st month was at 80,000.As compared to first month sales of the iPhone(about 600,000) and the Droid (about 525,000), sales of the Nexus One do appear to be moving along rather slowly.

A lot of factors probably contribute to the relatively low numbers, key among them the lack of traditional marketing expenditure (as compared to, say, the $100 million ad campaign for the Droid) and Google's direct-to-consumer sales approach, which, although innovative, is simply not something the typical mobile consumer is used to.To add to that its support for 3G only stuck with T-Mobile, reports of problems and 3G issues – although the latter has reportedly been addressed in the software update for multi touch.Lets see how much it comes up when phone reaches broader markets like India and offers more applications to the end users.

The phone Linus Torvalds likes Nexus one

Windows Phone rumors – No flash and multitasking

Posted: 09 Feb 2010 05:34 AM PST

Rumors have been set up regarding the Windows Phone.PPC geeks received this set from their source:

At the Mobile World Congress event on February 15th, 2010, Windows Phone 7 will be unveilved, although at this time plans are only to unveil the user interface of the new platform . Specific indepth functionality of the device will most likely not be shown.
The User Interface is based upon codename "METRO". It will be very similar to the Zune HD User Interface with a complete revamp of the "Start" screen. The UI is "Very Clean", "Soulful" and "Alive".
Unfortunately there will be no Flash support at the get go as there was not enough time to implement these features.
Windows Phone 7 will only support application installation through service based delivery. (i.e Marketplace). Application installation via storage card will not be possible.
No Multi-Task support. Applications will "Pause" when in the background, however will support notifications via push notifications.
Marketplace will now support "try before you buy" as well as an API.
No NETCF backwards compatibility. This means the original rumor of no backward compatibility for applications holds to be true. That being said, there are high hopes of porting the NetCF to the newer platform easily.
Microsoft is confident that devices will be ready by September 2010 and also Full Zune Integration.
Windows Mobile Device Center will no longer be used. Zune software to take over syncing via PC.
OEM Interfaces will not be allowed to run on the device. Say goodbye to Sense UI / SPB Mobile Shell / Point UI / Infinity, etc, etc
Full XBOX Gaming Integration (Gamer tag, achievements, friends, avatars, merchandising, etc)
Full support for social networking
Silverlight support instead of flash.So Microsoft is pushing Silverlight, Google and Apple is pushing HTML5 and Adobe has flash, another fight coming up.What’ say ?