The Glade 4.0

Heh ... "dumbed down smart phones suck" but what about "dumbed down OSes"? You know, operating systems that lack support for non-proprietary file systems? Or, you know operating systems that are more than a decade behind on full screen compositing and 2d render acceleration and unchained process trees and re-starting driver tables and IRQ tables and ...

I'm not a smart phone user, but there's a whole lot of smack being talked about the things other people use for no reason other than the person talking doesn't use them in this thread.

By the by, someone who thinks DroidOS is horrible sure spent a lot of damn time making their Win Phone 6.53 look like one ..

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I don't think the droid OS looks horrible at all, I like it, I simply want to be able to change some OS elements to look how I want them color wise, though honestly aside from HTC sense i'd rather a bare andriod install over the custom ones like motoblur and touchwiz, but sadly you can't just turn off the custom skins on android, they are part of the OS so the only way to go back to the bare andriod OS is to root and flash the rom.

And HTC's interface has looked like that for quite some time, the rom I have simple has an app that tweaks it to make the clock smaller and make the quicklinks smaller so it's 4 wide and 2 tall (well 4 tall when I flick up) because on a 4.3" screen there was no need for everything to be so big, I could fit two finger tips on one quicklink button.

Back on topic...



Motorola has clarified what the efuse chip does.

If an unauthorized recovery rom is detected, the device will not boot. It can be recovered by re-installing the original (authorized) rom.

It's not damaging the phone permanently. It's just preventing the user from installing and booting from 3rd party roms.

I personally have great disdain for this type of thing. It's my hardware, I should be able to run whatever I want on it.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/16/moto ... ays-efuse/



Gee thanks Motorola!

That's back on page 1, Midgen :p

I'd really like to see the end of handset manufacturers and cellular carriers joined at the hip.

Then carriers would have to actually focus on network quality, and handset people would have to make affordable devices.

Then you could actually own you handset instead of just renting to own it after two years.

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

This is actually one reason why I gave Apple the boot. Sure, I could jailbreak it, but I still couldn't port many of its most useful features to other carriers (visual voicemail, anyone?) without network support for them. In addition, this is the prime reason I won't even consider Verizon or Sprint until they get off CDMA; I have zero interest in letting them hold my phone for ransom to keep my business. With a GSM, I can fire my carrier without having to add a new phone to my cancellation fee as cost hurdles to do so.

As for the rent to own bit, T-Mobile, I found, offers separate plans based on whether or not you want them to subsidize your initial phone cost. If you let them subsidize you, you get like $200 off the initial sticker shock, but pay $20 a month more for your two-year contract (I might be getting the numbers wrong). Whereas if you can front the cost for the phone outright, you can buy a plan that's significantly cheaper (the subsidized plan is already very competitive, price-wise, with the other national carriers) and have no long-term contract commitment. I seriously appreciated that they were willing to offer me options like that, and it was a significant contributor to my decision to give them my business.

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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

Or, maybe I just like having Flash 10.1 on my Droid, and will probably go back to a stock OS once it's finally officially released on the Droid.

Strangely enough this was one of the benefits that came about in the 70's ? with the break up of ma bell. you used have to use only their specified phones, you paid a monthly fee for it, but it was still their phone. after the breakup phone choices became much more abundant and colorful.
I have no problem with cell phones being tied to technology in use (cdma, gsm) but not to specific carriers. Several sub carriers are making a killing in allowing other vendors phones to be used on their network often times you have to do the work to port over yourself, but once done they'll accept the phone. Cricket seems to be the biggest leader in this area, many of their stores offer the services to flash phones, considering crickets services coverage at fixed rates is very close to version they are making huge gains in the market.

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History of the Condom
In 1272, the Muslim Arabs invented the condom, using a goat's lower intestine.
In 1873, the British somewhat refined the idea, by taking the intestine out of the goat first.

It's unfortunate that the Google Nexus One (and the business model it intended) wasn't successful.

If that model had caught on, and the carriers embraced it, it might have taken the industry in a new direction.

T-Mobile having non-subsidized plans as an option is a good start in the direction of giving customers more flexibility.