The Smidgen

For anyone who somewhat actively follows the mobile phone world (especially of the smart phone variety) it should come as no surprise that Microsoft has finally officially announced and revealed it’s new smart phone OS, Windows Phone 7 Series, at the MWC (Mobile World Conference) in Barcelona today.  There are hundreds, if not thousands of different portals on the interwebs where you can read the details of what 7 Series has to offer, read the liveblog of Microsoft’s announcement at MWC or check out a 22 minute long demonstration of the new OS, so I’m just going to summarize here and give you what you really want, my take.

The Quick (Details and such)

So what’s new, short and sweet?  I know it sounds trite but seriously, what isn’t new?  Hell even the OS’s name has changed from Windows Mobile to Windows Phone 7 Series (not exactly roll-off-the-tongue good but, hey).  Now if you take a quick look you’ll see that it looks nothing like WinMo 6.5.3 or any other previous MS Mobile OS, however, you will think right away (if you’re me or an equally techie webnerd) that it does look strikingly similar to the Zune HD.  Coincidence?  Not even remotely.  The interface theme is called Metro and it actually started with the refresh to Windows Media Player a while back, moved on to the Zune and has now found a new home in the 7 Series.  Large, bold text and lacking the ‘chrome’ or flashy graphics from other systems.  Simple, clean, wholly un-MS like from the start … except now it’s part of one of their main OSes, which is some sort of paradox I don’t want to think about right now.  If you stop to think about it (and you are actually interested in that sort of thing), it’s pretty impressive that MS, as big and unwieldy as it seems, was able to shed the WinMo skin so completely, though of course they desperately needed to. continue reading…

The world of the mobile smart phone operating systems is about to get even more crowded as Intel has announced that Moblin v2.1 will support phones using their Atom processor.

Multiple applications running at the same time and the ability to flip through them was displayed on a MID, nothing really ground breaking there.  Intel’s new offering will be one more Linux based OS for smart phones with the only interesting fact about it (so far) being that it’s designed for the Atom.  This is the important part for Intel which seeks to compete more heavily against ARM in the MID and now in the phone sectors.

Expect this to pick up some steam as Intel will be throwing a lot of it’s bags of money toward dominating yet another chip market.

See ... it's green!

Sprint and Samsung are going green in a bigger way now with the newly announced “Reclaim”, available August 16th.  Although environmentally friendly, the phone is no slouch either featuring a full QWERTY slide out keyboard, web browser, 2.0 Megapixel camera with 3x digital zoom, stereo Bluetooth 2.0 and expandable memory up to 32GB.

So what about the greenliness of it all?  Here’s some stats:

• 40% of the outer casing made from bio-plastic material which is made from corn
• Free of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and phthalates and nearly free of brominated flame retardants (BFR).
• Packaging made from 70% recycled material
• Images printed using soy-based ink
• No paper manual, only “virtual”, saving on paper material
• Charger is energy star approved to meet the highest standards and uses 12 times less power than other energy star chargers in standby power consumption

Not into green?  No worries, you can get the “Ocean Blue” variant.  The phone will be available for less than $50 (with contract of course) and $2 of that will go toward The Nature Conservancy’s Adopt an Acre program.  Want a bunch more info?  Read it over on Businesswire.

Oh this is just good.  Apple has now censored the English dictionary.  The new app “Ninjawords” has finally been released to the app store after a three month waiting and updating period because it contains words that are in every single other dictionary out there.

Apple censored an English dictionary.

A dictionary. A reference book. For words contained in all reasonable dictionaries. For words contained in dictionaries that are used every day in elementary school libraries and classrooms.

Even Walmart, notorious for its censorship of “objectionable” music and movies, neither restricts nor places warning labels on dictionaries. Apple’s App Store review team makes Walmart seem liberal by comparison.

Ooo ... Shiny

It’s just so pretty.  The up-and-coming Palm Pre, the first phone from Palm to feature their new webOS operating system, has become the object of my obsession.

It’s more than just the looks, however, this new phone has a lot going for it.  With a big, multi-touch screen, a full web browser with page zooming, accelerometers for spacial awareness, and a slide out full qwerty keyboard the Pre is a serious contender to take on the iPhone.  The best thing of all, for me at least, is that it’s not an iPhone.  I give credit where credit is due and there is no arguing that the iPhone is amazing and has really stimulated the smart phone market, the Pre being a prime example, I just can’t bring my self to give Apple money.

But enough of all of that, lets get into some details here.

Feature Summary

I’ve already given a sample of what the Pre has to offer but in addition to that Palm has included a proximity sensor and ambient light detector to round out the spacial awareness set.  Though possibly not available at launch, Adobe has announced that Flash will appear on the webOS platform and it’s developers are working closely with Palm to deliver the best experience possible.  Other features include GPS, WiFi (using 802.11g), stereo Bluetooth, a 3.0 megapixel camera with LED flash and a host of standard phone options. continue reading…