In case you haven’t been paying attention to the mountains of coverage, Google has announced the “real” GooglePhone, the NexusOne. A Snapdragon sporting, AMOLED adorned, Android 2.1 touched smartphone, the NexusOne is taking the tech sites by storm. Several people have asked me my thoughts on the new phone, and I decided to put them here.
Read an absolutely fascinating article on Betanews today. No, not one of the thousand of articles about the rumored iSlate or the possible game-changing NexusOne (show of hands if you saw Verizon coming! We sure didn’t).
No, instead it’s about how AT&T wants to gt the government to force us all to transition to wireless-based telephony. Their argument is that it costs too much to roll out new systems and maintain old ones.
Forget a cell by a big name, that would be a real “gamechanger’.
I may have a new favorite toy. Miccus has this interesting line of products they call “BluBridge”. The arguable centerpiece of the line is the BluBridge Mobile Speaker. While not exactly pocketable (well, maybe with cargo pants), it lets you pair any A2DP device with it for some stereo audio fun. Sure, it also has a USB and 3.5 line-in, but why bother? This is made for on-the-go sound.
I’m hardly a huge audiophile, and as such my Pre’s sound never bothered me. I’d taken to carrying it from room to room as I worked, with Pandora on, playing whatever popped up. However, the difference between just my Pre and my Pre with the BluBridge is like night and day. There’s the occasional “pop” when nothing is playing, but music streams easily and smoothly, with no stuttering. I was able to walk up the steps and almost made it to the far end of my (albeit small) house before the connection was lost. I was also able to fire up my video player and stream the audio to the BluBridge. Another plus is that it has a separate amp/volume control instead of just boosting the volume on the sending device, like some headsets do. It makes for a nice, clear, loud, portable, stereo alternative.
You know what else is neat? The BluBridge is a speaker phone. So if someone calls in the middle of your music, you can have a nice conversation without taking the phone out of your pocket. It’s an elegant solution that I don’t believe many devices in this class feature.
Like I said, I’m not an audiophile, so I got a second set of ears. My test case was rather impressed- to the point that he wanted to know where to buy one. You’re not going to use it for a dance party any time soon, but if you want to have something in the kitchen or a conference call in your house or just a quick stereo speaker, the BluBridge is a solid choice.
But wait, you ask? What it your audio device doesn’t *have* Bluetooth? Not a problem. Miccus makes a bunch of BluBridge adapters. There’s the almost-expected iPod adapter one, and it’s great. It didn’t work with my 5.5 gen iPod Video but it worked fine with a new model Nano. It also worked great with an iPod Touch. Sure, the Touch/iPhone have their own Bluetooth option, but they’re heavy on the battery. We felt that using the BluBridge instead of the internal Bluetooth option gave us slightly better battery life. Still, this is more for the Nano and the like.
More impressive is the mini-jack, a rechargeable device that hooks to any 3.5 device. That’s right, I said any. Once you plug the BlueBridge in and pair your older device to your speaker of choice… boom, you have Bluetooth. This means your aging laptop just got with the program. This is a great product and might even eclipse the BluBridge speaker in some ways. Why? Because it works with *any* Bluetooth speakers (that accept the passcodes 0000 and 1234). I used it with my aforementioned 5.5 Gen iPod Video, coupled with one of Miccus’ ChargeBlocks.
At just $99 the BluBridge, $59 for the MiniJack or iPodBridge, these are really great stocking stuffers. They’re even better when you check out Buy.com and see that they’re all on sale.
When you visit Buy.com you’ll notice that there’s an additional member of the Miccus family, the auto-talk. I’m still testing this device out and there will be a full review soon. However, you may want to take advantage of Buy’s 50% off price and get this. Main reason? Solar-powered hand-free Bluetooth speakerphone for your car.
IDC, a Market Research firm, has issued their regular report on the top selling smartphones. The period in question is the 3rd Quarter of 2009 and no-one should be surprised to hear that the iPhone is on it twice. There’s one Android phone on it, the MyTouch3G, but that debuted in the 3rd quarter, as I recall, so not such a shock. The Hero, Moment, Driod etc are all 4th quarter devices, so we’ll have to wait and see.
The Pre made a surprising showing, moving from 8th most popular in Q2 to 6th in Q3. A good sign, but as noted, a lot of new phones came out in Q4, so don’t be surprised to see it get knocked off the list entirely.
A bigger surprise is number five, the Blackberry Storm. That’s right, no II. It’s interesting that with all the vitrol heaped on this device online, it still outsold the Pre, MyTouch, and came up right behind the iPhone3G.
Not surprising is the lack of WindowsMobile devices, as all the new stuff came out in Q4. The rest of the list is utterly dominated by Blackberries, both old and new.
We’ll be keeping an eye out for that 4th Quarter report to see if the Driod really was a gamechanger….
It’s interesting how married to Operating Systems people can become. My first computer was an Apple IIGS, but then we swiftly moved to Windows. I used to join in deriding Macs, then I got one. Mac OS, especially 10 and up, became my OS of choice. However, I still used Windows (and occasionally Linux) on a daily basis. I’m basically platform agnostic. A platform is a tool, and the one that works best for you is the best… for you. There is no perfect platform for everyone, for computer or phone.
I mention this because of discussions I’ve been having with some fellow techies. This week I finally broke down and bought a Pre. The reactions from my iPhone, WindowsMobile and Blackberry using friends (Sort of sad, but I don’t personally know a single Android user – no I’ve never met Justin) were almost comical in their predictability. I even got complaints about the Pre from a fellow Pre owner… because he’s really a Blackberry user. I’m not saying they’re wrong – I’m just saying the Pre is closer to my “ideal” phone than most of those other options (In fact, I recalled a doodle I drew ten years ago and it resembles the Pre to the point of scariness).
Every phone does its job in one way or another and every phone does it for someone. The cell market is really big enough for everyone. So how about we all just calm down and let people find the right solution?
So, why is the Pre my “perfect phone” (so far, anyway?)? Click the read link and find out.
[Warning – this thing is a fricking essay. I clearly have no life.] (more…)
Let’s just get this out of the way – Bluetooth headsets generally look kind of silly. The bigger, older models with their tacky blinking lights remind some of The Borg (personally, they make me think the Cybermen have infiltrated Torchwood One). They also don’t always have the best sound, can be uncomfortable, and give people momentary pause as to our sanity (“Is that guy on a Bluetooth or is he just nuts?”). While we can’t recommend anything to alleviate the latter, we can happily say there are more and more Bluetooth headsets out these days that don’t look silly, and people seem to finally be paying attention to comfort. Case in point: Sound ID. Founded by an actual Ear Doctor and focusing on how the ear works, Sound ID’s products are meant to be “all day wear”, with clear sound and noise reduction. (more…)
News this morning that the Palm Pre can be had for a mere $99 has made this blogger wonder again – what kind of pricing will we be seeing for the Pixi?
While a $99 price-point for the Pixi seems obvious, with the Pre already down to that price at one of the largest retailers out there, you have to wonder if the Pre may be (at least through some outlets) the first sub-99 smartphone (first that I can recall, anyway, and isn’t that what matters?).
Yet at the same time, pricing for the Samsung HD was announced this week at a staggering $250. That’s a heck of a lot of gre for a psuedo-smartphone of dubious heritage (to be kind). Plus, the HDMI port on it certainly earns it a “Solution in Need of a Problem” award.
So will the Prixi make headlines by breaking a price barrier? Will they make bloglines by being more expensivethan “big brother” Pre? Will I finally break down and give up my SERO for a WebOS device?
Holy cow, what a week. Every time Mordy or I sat down to write a post, something else happened. I’m going to try to condense it all into one week, going by topic. Bear with me: (more…)
Here are some interesting things from DigitalLook, but not exactly interesting enough to be their own article (no offense to the vendors, who were all awesome)
Note that I do have photos, but I seems to be mangling the photo functions of the blog, so I will be holding off on adding them. (more…)
