Ode to a heroic new mobile phone
I finally gave in to the 21th century a few weeks ago and bought a smart phone. A very smart phone. It goes by the grandiose name of HTC Hero, although T-Mobile somewhat confusingly sells it under the G2 Touch moniker, which is not to be confused with the T-Mobile myTouch 3G (originally HTC Magic), or the HTC Touch.
Confused yet? Me too.
The HTC Hero runs Android, the (mostly open source) operating system developed by Google, although the Hero actually uses the HTC Sense interface, which is significantly slicker and better than the native Android one. In particular, multi-touch zoom, a better onscreen keyboard, better widgets, more home screens and native integration of Facebook & Twitter.
I’m not going to write an in-depth review of the device, though, because there are plenty on the web already, and I’m not going to play the compare and contrast game with the iPhone, because it’s puerile and off the point. All I’ll say is that while the iPhone is still more fluid and polished, it’s lagging behind now (no homescreen, no multitask, no background apps, no Ogg Vorbis or Flac playback, etc). Anyway, I don’t want an iPhone because I don’t want to/cannot depend on iTunes, and the elegant but totalitarian Apple kingdom. If anything, I’d rather have a look at a Palm Pre: more open, HTML5 technologies, audacious gesture interface, physical keyboard.
Back to the HTC Hero.
I’m happy to say it replaced three devices, while still being smaller in volume than any of them: my crappy Nokia 6100, my Nokia N810 internet tablet and my iAudio X5 music player.
Of course, the physical keyboard and larger screen of the N810 made for a better desktop-like experience, but its Maemo system was precisely too desktop oriented and slow and cumbersome. I fear the same shortcomings will apply to the upcoming Nokia N900, by the way.
And of course, my iAudio X5 had 60GB, which already wasn’t enough, and the Hero only has 2GB by default (can be upgraded to 32GB which I probably will soon). Definitely a downgrade, but sadly inevitable.
All things considered, it’s still much more comfortable to carry a single device, especially one with good phone and wifi connectivity, a pretty UI and a boatload of applications to install for free.
By synchronizing with the technogeek crowd (which would have been referred to as “cyberpunk” only 20 years ago), I feel like I’ve joined the new phase of humanity, a phase of ubiquitous connectivity, of ambient information, an organic mesh of individuality waiting to be harvested. There is no point dismissing it, just like there was no point dismissing mobile phones, phones, radios, electricity or written words. We can only accept it, embrace it, and look forward to the horrors and wonders it is going to bring us.
Cheers ^^ I also finally took a decision for my own phone, and still chose the one i was telling you about, the sony ericsson G900. After hunting through the jungle-markets of Mongkok, the tech and young area of HK, i finally got it for 200CHF.
By the way, when i first connected it to my laptop, it was refered to as “smart phone”, although it doesnt have the large-screen style of the other “real” smart phones and still less functions…
It still has/supports WiFi, google maps, touch screen, and through my recent little crack, youtube and my beloved .flv Karaoke collection ^^ I just bought a 8Go M2 card (mini-SD-like) for 40CHF which gives it a decent capacity for a little music and videos.
Who of your favourite authors do you think will have had the most accurate vision of our soon-coming present? ;)
by Laurent | September 1st, 2009 at 10:30
Hopefully Charles Stross:
“Along the way, his glasses bring him up to date on the news. Europe has achieved peaceful political union for the first time ever: They’re using this unprecedented state of affairs to harmonize the curvature of bananas. The Middle East is, well, it’s just as bad as ever, but the war on fundamentalism doesn’t hold much interest for Manfred. In San Diego, researchers are uploading lobsters into cyberspace, starting with the stomatogastric ganglion, one neuron at a time. They’re burning GM cocoa in Belize and books in Georgia. NASA still can’t put a man on the moon. Russia has re–elected the communist government with an increased majority in the Duma; meanwhile, in China, fevered rumors circulate about an imminent rehabilitation, the second coming of Mao, who will save them from the consequences of the Three Gorges disaster. In business news, the US Justice Department is – ironically – outraged at the Baby Bills. The divested Microsoft divisions have automated their legal processes and are spawning subsidiaries, IPOing them, and exchanging title in a bizarre parody of bacterial plasmid exchange, so fast that, by the time the windfall tax demands are served, the targets don’t exist anymore, even though the same staff are working on the same software in the same Mumbai cubicle farms.
Welcome to the twenty-first century.”
– Accelerando / Charles Stross
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/accelerando/accelerando.html
by theefer | September 1st, 2009 at 12:36