The Glade 4.0

Announced today, with nothing that was very surprising:

• All aluminum/glass design
• $199/299/399 for 16/32/64GB
• 4", 1136 x 640px (326ppi) screen
• Same camera as 4/4S
• 1080p video capture w/ photo from video
• 720p front-facing cam
• "2x faster" processor than the 4S
• Unspecified GPU / RAM
• New proprietary "Lightning" transfer cable
• LTE connectivity

Incremental upgrades all around with the neat stuff being more part of iOS6 (panoramic pictures, new maps, new photo sharing, better app integration) than part of the phone. Kind of a yawn fest.

Pics

Disappointments include: no NFC, no wireless charging, no micro USB, new proprietary plug/docks/accessories to purchase

Panoramic pictures sounds like some kind of patent infringement to me. Did they license it from somebody?

*ducks*

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

More interestingly, they finally upgraded the Touch.

It's got the die-shrunk A5 processor, upgraded ram, and the 5 MP back camera that was on the 4S, with an LED Flash.

Also upgraded to an IPS screen with an oleophobic coating, got the size increase of the iPhone 5, and is now a retina display.

Since I don't use a smartphone, I'm very happy about the upgrade- especially the camera.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Does the antenna work this time?

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

They're gonna get sued over the LTE stuff methinks.

Otherwise, a good, solid Meh.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Why in the world would they get sued over LTE? That's like getting sued over having 3G.

Yeah, I want one, but it's definitely an incremental upgrade. It doesn't have the "wow" factor of, say, the 4's Retina display.

One of the fanboys at work sat there with a raging boner following it on mashable.

I laughed when he got stoked about Tom Tom as the Google map replacement.

He was furious he couldn't pre order NOW!

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I was surprised to find that the Nokia 920 has both a larger screen and higher pixel density. Apple's Retina display is no longer an impressive feature.

Why on earth did we need to change ports Again!

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

They said something about future features not being possible without higher bandwidth... Or something.

BS wireless sync/cloud is the future. Cords are for charging and interface with speaker. This is just to force people to buy new alarm clocks.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Physical interconnections aren't going away, no matter how much you guys want them to.

I don't know what the new features on the iPhone 5 are that require higher bandwidth, but the physical geometry of the electrical connection does have an impact on what frequencies will pass through. Current computing technology involves frequencies and networks sizes for which circuit theory doesn't hold, and designers are forced to use Maxwell's laws.

Bandwidth is simply a measure of what frequencies are used by the system. The more frequencies that are used, the faster the system is able to operate. So, if you want your system to run faster, eventually you have to utilize a wider frequency band. At some point, you exceed the physical capacity of your components and have to make new ones.

Amusingly enough, this could something for which a physical connection is absolutely required, because certain frequency ranges are reserved by the FCC. For example, if you want a 6Ghz bandwidth, you can't start at 1hz, because then you would overlap with the 2-6Ghz band that's reserved for communications satellites. Your option at that point is to move your frequency band further out the spectrum (which could cause other problems, because you'll be in the tens or possibly hundreds of Ghz, which plays hell on circuit elements), or use a physical connection.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

The majority of iOS docking devices are made by third parties; Apple doesn't have much to gain by changing the connector solely for peripherals. I'm sure there's an actual reason for it, but that reason isn't public yet and might not be very exciting.

^see above

Speaking of communications satellites, the sweet spot for satellite uplinks is the 2-6Ghz range I specified in the previous post. That's where all of your cellular phone calls happen, as well as all of your 3G internet usage. The Earth's atmosphere has its lowest impedance in that frequency range. There's a finite number of slots in that region because, for example, the human voice has a frequency range of somewhere around 20khz. A phone call has to be at least that wide in the frequency spectrum, which means nothing else can broadcast in those frequencies while you're making the call. For instance, out in San Diego, if your call is from 2.300000000 - 2.300020000 Ghz, nobody else can use that block until you hang up. Period.

(We have a few slick tricks to work around this, but there are still limits.)

This means there is necessarily a bandwidth limit for using any 3G application. We chop up a Ghz region and cram everyone's internet usage into it. This isn't just your carrier, either. All carriers are using that same 4Ghz band. You can think of it like the street you live on. Your house can only be so wide, because your neighbors own the land on either side of you.

If there's some application that's taking up 1Ghz worth of frequencies, it can't go much further than the room you're in. If you start at 1hz, you're **** up all radio communications around you. All radio stations, all television stations, all ham radio, everything is borked. You interfere with all of them. If we move you to start at 2Ghz, you're interfering with 25% of all satellite communications as far as your signal broadcasts. Not only do you screw up these different signals, but they're also jacking up whatever you're trying to do as well. If we move you out to 10Ghz, you're handheld device doesn't have the guts to make it out of Earth's atmosphere and hit a satellite, anyway. So you're limited to communicating with your home router.

The other thing is, if you're using a band that wide, it's consuming a lot of power. Battery technology sucks. So you probably need to be plugged in anyway for a steady supply of power.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

The stated reason Apple changed the form factor of the charging cord was to 'stimulate' the accessories market, which they do benefit from...

I don't understand why manufacturers haven't figured out how to utilize the micro USB that literally every other smartphone on the planet uses to create peripheries for them. I would love to have an audio dock I could drop my EVO into.

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http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57510 ... -iphone-5/

Personally, because I'm a rabid iHater, I hope they do.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Still not sure why they can't use micro USB like rational people. That's one of the only things I don't like about my SGN10.1. The proprietary connector.

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Holy shitsnacks!

The reason I saw stated was that they couldn't make it this thin without change - the connector was becoming a significant layout impediment.

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Holy shitsnacks!

**** WSJ. And their forced subscriptions.

Odd, I got the whole story w/o subscription. Huh.

http://www.sfgate.com/technology/busine ... 862545.php



Why would they make the adapter not support video or iPod out?

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Holy shitsnacks!

Because it's a phone, and not an iPod.

Many of you have lost sight of this, because your smartphones are billed as swiss army knives. You expect that they should do everything. That isn't how it works. If you want to cut a board, you use a saw. You don't use a hammer. Hammers are for pounding nails. Electronic devices are no different.

What do you do with a phone? You make phone calls, you check email, and you doodle around on the internet. Those are the main functions people are looking for in their phone.

If your phone is driving your home theater, you can't use it to make a phone call because that requires picking it up off the dock.

If your phone is driving your home theater, you could possibly check your email or doodle around in the internet, but you'd have to get up out of your chair and walk over to the entertainment center.

Removing the capability to output music to your stereo or video to your television is a viable design decision.

It does mean that the same adapter can not be used with an iPod, which is a negative. I don't know what benefits the new adapter offers, because I don't follow smartphones. I have an iPod and a tablet, so all I care about is a cheap phone I can use to call AAA if I break down on the highway.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

So to paraphrase... To force their customer base into buying new accessories...

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut