Gadget Wisdom - Mobile

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Recently, several members of the Wisdom family got themselves Android(TM) based phones. We all dived wholeheartedly into the application phone lifestyle. The term smartphone isn’t quite accurate, and the primary advantage of these types of phone are all the possibilities inherent in being able to run applications to do almost anything with them.

We’ve always been fans of the open platform.  For all the wonderful things iPhones can do, there is still a lot of things that are restricted by Apple‘s management policy. In some cases, the Android is perfectly capable of doing those things, but no one has yet written an app for that. But in that regard, the Android will be catching up as its popularity increases. Or so we hope.

But there are adoption problems. A recent survey indicated that 73% of Android users are male. However looking at the numbers, as is sometimes the case in technology, all numbers show a larger percentage of male users. The Blackberry, which has widespread adoption, is not listed. Verizon’s big Android push this year has put the technology, which was previously niche, into the mainstream. Every provider is increasing its Android phone offerings. We’ll be interested to see how the demographics evolve in a year.

Sometime in the near future Android will offer a Flash plugin. And while we find Flash is less than ideal as a platform, its everywhere online. This will spur more Android adoption in the future.

To that end, to celebrate our newfound enjoyment of the Android platform, we’ll be introducing some Android posts here on Gadget Wisdom. Look out for them.

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Amazon is cutting the price of its Kindle 2 to $259, the second drop in the last few months. It is also offering an ‘international’ Kindle for $279, with shipping to begin on October 19th. Books downloaded internationally will cost an extra $1.99. This does free up a gap in the service, namely overseas, and connects Amazon to AT&T over Sprint.

Amazon has said  that Kindle books now represent 48% of total book sales when both Kindle and paper versions are available, up from 35% in May and 13% in February, but no statistics have been revealed on how many units have been sold, but Kindle owners seem to buy a lot of books.

So, with the latest price drop, is it finally time to buy a Kindle? Maybe. But we’d prefer it to hit around $200 before it becomes too tempting to resist, especially with the bulk of new e-book readers coming and Google’s E-Book initiative.

Competition produces innovation. Amazon has said it would not mind selling Kindle books to people with other E-book readers, which would be a smart move for the company. But either way, in another few months, the price will likely be where we want it to be. What do you think?

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• International Kindle ships October 19 to over 100 countries for $279, ‘US’ edition falls to $259 (engadget.com)
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On Friday morning, we were sitting around with our Verizon phone and discovered a new Twitter app had appeared as available. Called Tweet-Tweet, it costs $1.49 a month or $3.99 for unlimited.

Get It Now/Media Center is Verizon Wireless‘ implementation of Qualcomm’s Brew technology, and the basis for applications on most of their phones. The program locks content rigidly and prevent unapproved data to be loaded onto the phone. This is to ensure the usage of their data plan, the ala carte version of costs $1.99/MB. Verizon is known for crippling features of its firmware, such as Bluetooth file transfer and unrestricted GPS access to ensure these services must use their applications.

We have a regular Verizon phone, but have considered upgrading to an organizer phone because portable data seems to be the way things are going. The problem is phones that are not phones. Phones are now cameras, music players, internet devices…everything in your hand. Having a Swiss Army Device is not always the answer. It can’t do everything well.

The most popular phone out there is the iPhone, which has mixed, even sometimes negative reviews as a phone. It is more a multimedia and networking device. Verizon doesn’t have an iPhone killer. Part of this is the Application problem. Verizon is too locked down, and its application store is limited.

The worst part is for the phones we use. You have to subscribe to an application? And pay data charges on top of that? For all we find Apple just as limiting as Verizon, they’ve approved thousands of apps you can download, and the creation process is extremely open. We don’t mind an approval process, but Verizon is shooting itself in the foot.There are rumors this may change, but innovation is slow.

Tweet-Tweet is useful for us. It is a simple, uncomplicated Twitter application that adds some functionality to our phone. We won’t be using it all the time, as the cost would be prohibitive without a data plan. But it allows us to check up on current status while away from our homebase. But it is not enough for everyone.

Skype, long lagging in its Linux support, after nearly two years of nothing, released version 2.1 in Beta, bringing with it a multitude of new offerings. It shows that Skype is renewing its commitment to cross-platform support.

One of the most important and significant fixes is Pulseaudio support. Most distributions of Linux now use Pulseaudio, so having Skype not cause a conniption when it is use is a major improvement. Improvements in audio and video handling also improve the overall experience.

The reason it took so long was a complete rewrite of some sections of the code, and likely the lower priority placed on Linux support, which got renewed interest now that so many embedded devices and netbooks had been running it. They are working on providing a native 64-bit version, but they currently have a helper application to set up the 32-bit libraries on a 64-bit system so it will work.

They say there is more to come soon. We’ll be testing this new version soon.

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Asus, the creator of the EeePC, which launched the netbook craze, wants to break into the E-Book market with a product that could be at least $100 less expensive than current offerings. A proposed model would have two screens, more closely resembling a regular book, as well as many more features than the current offerings, including Skype and such.

This isn’t really outside of the realm of possibility. Take the EeePC versus the proposed Eee-book a step further. Picture a device the size of the original netbook at 7 inches, or even the 10 inch size, turn it on its side, replace the keyboard with a second screen, add in an orientation sensor, a few buttons, possibly a touchscreen, and the ability to plug in a USB keyboard, and it would become a small system that could double as a nettop device. Give it a Linux-based OS, with SD expansion, and 3G or Wi-FI options, and it can do anything.

Technology continues to advance. We’ll see what happens.

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For the record, we’ve never tried slotMusic. But the idea Sandisk tried to push was the selling of microSD cards preloaded with music. These cards, aside from being preloaded, had nothing special about them. The idea of purchasing quick-load music in a pinch at retail outlets had potential. Of course, it would be better if that could be customized at a kiosk, rather than sold in bundle packaging.

Engadget is a bit unfair to claim that the adding of a microSDHC in the new Sansa Clip+ is merely an attempt to get rid of old inventory. We love the original Clip(pictured right). The size is small…small enough we’ve had trouble finding it. It plays OGG, FLAC, etc. Which allows us a better range of playback options. And it is great for quick on the go music enjoyment.

The addition of an expansion slot makes it even more useful. Aside from that, it incorporates a few stylistic changes. A square instead of round control pad, etc.

The Clip, + or not, is superior to the iPod shuffle in every way. It offers a good screen, configurable options, a built-in radio, etc. The one complaint some people have is the 15 hour battery life. But it is rechargeable, and how long do you need or expect for a player this size?

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In a recent blog post, Michael Dehaan, a software developer comments on his experience with the Ubuntu Netbook Remix versus Fedora 10. Dehaan points out that Fedora could learn a lot from it.

We can’t disagree. Openness and sharing is what Linux is all about. Fedora doesn’t have a spin for netbooks. There is a Special Interest Group for “Fedora Mini”, which was originally intended for netbooks, but has the expanded focus of other devices.

A lot of the work in a mini distribution is reducing dependencies. While hard drive space makes extra program installation not as much of a problem, current trends toward speed, efficiency, and bandwidth limiting suggest that we should be looking at this. For example, Fedora installs Bluetooth services on a system regardless of whether or not there is a bluetooth adapter installed. It installs smart card authentication on everything. And the default option during an installation is to configure software packages after installation, not before.

Michael seemed to have a lot of trouble with Fedora on Netbooks. We did not with our little MSI Wind. Initially, there were no drivers for the wireless card, but we were able to compile them. Then, because we don’t like unstable drivers, even if they did work, we swapped the stock card for an Intel one with great Linux support.

We’ve tried Ubuntu Netbook Remix, and it does offer a lightweight environment and a good launcher. But there are good launchers available of similar design available for Fedora. The lightweight LXDE environment is available through Fedora, as is XFCE, which in its latest version has a more traditional GUI design than its predecessors.

The fact is that we must agree and disagree. What Fedora lacks is a good lightweight spin. Which is a shame. Fedora has all the tools to be lightweight with personal tweaking.

There are things in the works though. The Fedora LXDE spin is set to be offered as part of Fedora 12, and an XFCE spin which has been offered for several iterations of Fedora.

What we would like to see, and perhaps we should suggest it, is increasing the number of default setup profiles in the default DVD installation, or allowing a custom profile to be loaded in. Currently, the Kickstart process, which is designed mostly to automate administrator installations for multiple systems, allows for this, but we’d like to see a Fedora supported initiative in this direction. A minimalist server profile, a minimalist desktop profile, etc.

Ubuntu offers a Desktop and a Server LiveCD as its primary installation media. We like the fact Fedora offers both this and a DVD where the most popular softwares can be installed on multiple systems without repeated downloads. We just think that the default installation needs to be streamlined, or offer the options to be streamlined without having to hack together a customer version of Fedora or download multiple different LiveCDs. We, as we said, could do this using Kickstart, but we’d like it if Fedora took the lead on it as well.

That said, the full version of Fedora 11 works wonderfully on our netbook, and while we’ve tried Ubuntu Netbook Remix on an Eee…we’ll stick with what we are familiar with.

Last week, Amazon lowered the price of the Kindle to $299, a reduction of $60. We want a Kindle, but we don’t want to want a Kindle. It is still a bit pricey for its limitations.

What does that mean? Well, the Kindle is the greatest e-book reader out there…not because of its hardware, but because of the sheer amount of titles Amazon offers and the ease of getting them through the Kindle. The smartest thing Amazon could do is license the Kindle source to anyone, and we still await that.

Reports indicate that Amazon is exploring ad-supported Kindle books for additional revenue. Publishers are afraid Amazon will force them to lower their profit margins on e-books. Publishers hope new players like PlasticLogic, FirstPaper, ScrollMotion, and Google‘s e-publishing service could help turn the tables in their favor. But so far, Amazon has an early lead.

We are hoping competition does come along. Google plans to sell readers online access to digital versions of various books, and the books would be cached in their browser when offline. This seems like an improved system. A simple browser plugin could handle this. They appear, for their early copyright-free public domain books, to be working with the ePub format, which is an official open standard.

Our fondest dream is to use the Kindle to free up space. We have so many shelves of books. Some of them could be digitized. We’ve done this when we rid ourselves of most of our VHS cassettes and started to replace audio cassettes with CDs.

We’ve maintained, and continue to maintain the Kindle is not yet at the price point where the upfront cost is offset enough by the benefits. Endgadget, however, reports that Amazon has dropped indications it sees the Kindle readers and Kindle books as two separate businesses.

This is actually good for us…the people who want e-books to become more ubiquitous. We don’t want the paper book to go away though. We believe there is a place for it in this world. Our concern is that the lowering of the hardware will produce an increase in the price of the book itself. Currently, a Kindle book can average $9.99, more or less. A hardcover book could be over double that. On a $9.95 book, an analysis suggests Amazon only makes 61 cents.

In the fight of Kindle vs. Netbook, we opted for netbook, because it is a multifunciton device, compared to the Kindle, which is good for one thing only. But imagine if the Kindle reader became a software program available for all operating systems? What if Amazon licensed the reader software to other companies to allow the books to be read on many systems? What could that mean for the future?

The latest confusion over the Kindle is its DRM policy. Apparently, there is a limit to how many times you can download the book, even though you have bought it, and it varies from publisher to publisher…even better, no one at Amazon seems to know how to find out what the number is. The limit may actually be on the number of devices you can have the book on simultaneously, but as of now, it is still unclear. Ultimately, we remain curious what limits are put on the free distribution of content you bought amongst your own devices. Since your ownership of the book now depends on a third-party…namely Amazon, supporting your device, how does this effect your life?

So, what are the alternatives? We’ll be looking into them a bit more, as we want to take advantage of them.

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