This Week's Smartphone News

Ok here is what happened this week:

ATT buying T-Mobile - in one of the wackiest strategies - ATT makes an attempt to enlarge their spectrum to afford them the ability to develop a stronger LTE product and bolster network availability for 3G. The AWS spectrum which T-Mobile has is valuable space which ATT does not have have currently. In getting this frequency spectrum, AT&T can deliver a national 4G band which will not contend with existing traffic on their existing UMTS Bands 850 and 1900 Mhz. Currently 3G is shooting out over the 1900 I believe so that there is a penetration problem right now with buildings for the high speed data. Verizon is using 700 Mhz which it has clear use of and lower frequency often allows better building penetration to allow use of the 4G indoors with more success.

ATT - release of LG Thrill: this is ATT's holy grail device with dual core TI Omap 1 Ghz with dual channel dual memory and 3d. This phone may have a high density display since prelim specs show an 800 x 480 QVGA resolution. It will have the potential for HDMI 1080p video out with 2d and likely 720 p for 3d output. Of interest is that this ATT handset has the ability to hit the AWS 3g band which should offer exceptional 3G speeds which are not currently available for most ATT users in US (thanks to T-Mobile's network).

Verizon - sitting pretty with the Thunderbolt now released and we are now waiting for VZW's dual core android - the Droid Bionic. Slated for April 21st release, this motorola branded set will have an nVidia Tegra 2 processor with 1 Ghz Clock. It also has a 1980 mAh battery so it would seem that the manufacturer knows it is going to be a power hungry device. Sadly there is a likely bottleneck in the design as there is not a dual channel memory scheme so the dual core procs may not yield full potential. The qHD display is a plus (960 x 540) as is the HDMI 1080p output.

T-Mobile - not daunted by the potential acquisition - as a matter of fact, if the deal does not go through, ATT still pays US T-Mobile $3billion so what the hell... T-Mobile will build out a new HSPA+ network with potential speeds in the 21 Mbs download range. Remember they have that AWS spectrum to push their 4G to the masses. No phone release news at this point but likely soon. T-Mobile announced the new LG T-Mobile G2x which appears to be similar to the AT&T Thrill minus the 3d.

Sprint - well after yesterday's CTIA announcement the tech community is busy writing about the EVO 3d. This devices sports the Qualcomm snapdragon dual core clocked at 1.2 Ghz with the ability to separately clock the cores which is hoped to conserve battery life. This is not as sexy as the dual channel memory architecture of the OMAP processor which is in the LG Optimus 3d (ATT Thrill) but may yield more usability with its 1750 mAh battery. This device also has the ability to to display 3d without glasses like the LG Optimus and HTC has done a great job with the desktop app which allows scrolling through the apps on a carousel in 3d. Of course 3d camera for video and still and HDMI out 2d at 1080p and 3d at 720p. The display is also the next gen qHD (960 x 540) so both of these out gun the Droid Bionic. Finally sprint has partnered with Google in allowing the use of a ported number for Google Voice - what will the world come to next right?

On the tethering front, the news that ATT has sent notification to users regarding wireless hotspot fees has popped up. That means jailbreaking your iphone alone will not prevent you from having to pay for your tethering. ATT messaged users who were using their iphones for tethering without an appropriate tethering plan (about $20/mo with limitations). As far as we know, the other three carriers with android phones have not notified users that they will be billed after the feature is unlocked upon rooting. Will this be coming soon as well?

Oh and the iphone 5? Pushed to Q3 now is the word, possibly to distance the Verizon iphone event...what will it contain? Don't know yet, what do you think?

Cellular Phone Safety

Look at the sweet Fender version of the T mobile My Touch..


I think the fact that the scientists/new age hackers have beaten the GSM voice and now the data encryption is a parallel with how people choose Macs over PC's.

The groundwork: Israeli researchers report that the technology which encrypts the GSM (the cellular technology which is used globally and by AT&T and T Mobile in the US) has been hacked and it is theoretically possible for eavesdropping on Cell voice calls on GSM networks to be perpetrated. Well this is not good I guess, I know that apart from when I order my Pizza on the phone, I don't have any secure conversations which would warrant concern. But this is a big deal as hackers look for new ways to entertain themselves.

Just today, I see that now GSM 3G data is now at peril because the "geniuses at Israel's Weizmann Inst of Science" have broken the 128 bit algorithm which secures 3G connections in two hours time.

I say that this harkens to the situation which Apple has leveraged, that the hackers will go for the giant not the flea, thus PC's receive more hackery attention than MAC OS. Well I am hoping that these unlocking of GSM will not lead to the unlocking of CDMA for the same reason. The majority of the cell phone carriers globally use GSM vs. CDMA. That plus I use CDMA.

look here: http://tinyurl.com/yapvf7t

new phone HTC Hero - CDMA version

well it was time to try out Android. The Pre was a good tool for the past 6 months and it was highly usable. My customizations included installing homebrew (rooting) and adding a couple of the free apps.

As for the Hero - I love the larger screen. The battery is larger, than the Pre so it lives longer between charges. I recently disconnected from my exchange server account and it would appear that this alone has improved battery life greatly.

The sense UI makes this OS work well. The flip clock on the home screen is a welcome addition, nothing clearer than this. Having 5 home screens to position shortcuts and widgets is a nice touch.

The visual voice mail feature is nice as well. Makes one of the most archaic parts of cell phone use disappear. Just go into voice mail and all the voice mails appear on screen with the caller identified so you can listen to the voice mails in any order you want. Not a surprise for iPhone users but a nice addition compared to the other phones without this feature.

On a disappointing note, the capacitive screen does not have multitouch features natively enabled. This is rectified in websurfing by using Dolphin browser instead of the android browser. Just like the Motorola Droid and the HTC Nexus One - no multitouch. The Dolphin browser solution in addition to adding multitouch pinch to zoom adds tabbed browsing which is very handy.

The touchscreen keyboard is predictable. It took a bit for me to get used to typing without the buttons but the haptic feedback helps a bit. The word completion is pretty good, and helps on probably 80%+ of the time when typos are made. This is much better than other word completion systems I have used.

As for the applications management, coming from the Pre it is a weird thing to not be able to easily close apps. With the "card" interface of webOS on the Pre, it is very clear what you have running and closing applications is very easy to understand. Just swipe the card of the app that is up and the application is closed. No need for a task manager. With Android though, there is not an equivalent indication of the apps that are running.

Trust linux....well the advice from others who are Linux gurus is that it is not necessary to use a task manager, just close the apps you do not need, leaving the OS to manage RAM and keep the device running well. So far, I have not felt that it is that critical to manage the tasks as I have not had any lockup although there have been moments of slowness when I keep the NFL app up while the AFC playoff game is on right now. Closing the NFL app brings all the speed back.

Quality of the Radio - The voice quality of the Hero on calls is great. No problems there. While using an Aliph Jawbone bluetooth headset, no problems or lag on calls or hang up. While using a Jabra 700 bluetooth speakerphone, great audio with again no lag so that bluetooth stack seems very good.

Compared to the Pre, I would say voice calls are better with the Hero. Now, on to the data service. For some reason, the Pre just does not seem to run at full speed on the 3g service with sprint. With the speed test on both the Pre and the Hero here is what I observed:

Pre 1 Mb download: 307Kbps
Hero 1 Mb download: 1,162 Kbps

Some of this may be due to the PRL file for both - the Android PRL is apparently 60658 whereas the Pre's webOS PRL is currently at 60657. This should not cause such such a difference so it is likely that the radio in the HTC Hero is better.

Finally, the entire idea of using Gmail and the google apps is fantastic with both of these devices. With Google calendar, and contacts, the data set is not fully downloaded into the phone so that reliability of this data is high since this data is stored in the cloud. There is a slight advantage to webOS right now because the Synergy feature which ties the access of contacts into one interface is really a marvel. The simplification which this offers makes using a smartphone easy for everyone.

The Android implementation of contacts and the methods of connection are not horrible but not as seamless as it is with webOS. Likely there will be improvements to Android to enhance this simplicity.

I did a previous evaluation of these two phones and felt that the Pre was better back in October when the Hero first was released. Now after using the Hero for a week, I would say that both have advantages, but I am more impressed with the developments which are occurring with Android and the likelyhood that it will continue to improve with the amount of different devices from various manufacturers. This should in time create a large environment of devices deployed which will offer software developers a bigger target to sell into than the webOS base of customers.

This may change when the Pre and Pixi are released on Verizon and AT&T this year but the momentum of the Hero worldwide (was more in demand globally than the iphone) as well as the success of the Motorola Droid define a large amount of phones in use. Additional devices from Samsung, LG, Dell and others shows more potential growth.