Comments on: Nexus One : The Google Phone is here. Should we care?

By: Mihai

Mihai — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 14:41:50 +0000

Well, I still believe it’s open for discussions and for most people it’s useful. Proof of this is that last year the smartphone industry was among the fastest growing industries, and all this in a period of economic turmoil. Leaving the economic factors aside, GPS on Android for example has even a free application in the likes of Google turn by turn navigation application, but also big players such as Navigon or Wayfinder or even Tomtom have intentions of providing GPS navigation applications and these cost just about a normal GPS does. Also I don’t think there is a quality issue for GPS device vs the gps phone such as in the camera. GPS is GPS, it just needs to pinpoint your location with enough accuracy. Also it can be used for other location based services and I don’t only refer here to turn by turn navigation, but other apps that may use your location for various other useful things such as showing you the closest restaurant or hotel and I’m sure there are lots of things that can be done on a location enabled phone that has a pretty accessible SDK than on a GPS device with no access to it’s API’s.
So, for me phone GPS is good enough, I don’t see any reason to buy a device for for that just to have something more to carry around and misplace :). Besides, regarding changing the phone every 2 years in order to change the os, in Android’s case that is not the issue. There are currently enough devices that support all versions of the system and you can easily flash them with whatever version of the os you want – even with modded ones.

By: lacisoft

lacisoft — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 16:15:18 +0000

You have some points there but those things are useful only for some people. For example i never make shopping lists. Reading on a phone … only when i travel and i’m bored by the landscape. Games maybe.
Also if i need a GPS i will buy a GPS because its cheaper, i don’t have to change it every two years and has much better GPS capabilities then a phone. That is valid for a camera too. I have a 5 megapixel camera right now in my phone and it still makes worse pictures then my 5 years old 4 megapixel regular camera.
A phone must do two things: to make a call from A to B and to be a modem.
Putting all that stuff into a phone (GPS, Camera and so on) its just plain useless if i have to change it every two-three years because a new OS version is out for my phone and it won’t run on my old phone. I have to throw out a camera, a gps and what not, every two years? A camera and a GPS i was charged for as a plus for the phone.
I’ve already seen this movie with PC’s.

By: Mihai

Mihai — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:47:22 +0000

I agree with you that for the moment smart phones are not the “web phones” in the sense you described – namely to be used for browsing instead of computers. It is somewhat the same opinion that I have of netbooks – usable only for internet access and not for other stuff that power users might need their computer for.
However I find smart phones pretty handy for other stuff, such as the plethora of applications that they can provide, for example you cannot go shopping with a laptop and have your shopping list on it, also the location based services and applications can come real handy – for instance you can store the location where you left your car in a parking lot and when you return you will be guided to it, or you can use it for a nice trip journal. Even augmented reality is a hot topic nowadays, with browsers like Lyar you are able to get on display info about places, buildings or whatever you are looking at.
There are also the games and the document readers that you may use for killing time playing your favorite game or reading your favorite comic book, so browsing the web on the smartphone isn’t everything in my opinion.
Btw, regarding voice commands, the new 2.1 version of Android supports text to speech via a button from the virtual keyboard, which means that you can enter text vocally almost everywhere you would enter it by keyboard. From the demos I’ve seen so far, it works pretty well for English, and with little editing you can type SMS messages or emails – a thing I simply dread on a phone :).