iPhone 5
 

Here is the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/external/read...ref=technology

The conclusion:
In summary, that's a very smart smartphone we've just described: one that knows who owns it, unlocking just for them, one that can listen and respond to your questions, that can provide factual answers or point you to a related mobile app, one where your music library (and maybe more) is stored online, one that includes NFC for mobile payments, and one that works on whatever carrier you choose. Frankly, that sounds downright magical.

Now, taking it apart.

Working on whatever carrier you choose... Most phones and smartphones do that, and Maemo devices are mostly unlocked. It was iPhone's unique restriction to work with only one carrier.

NFC for mobile payments. First, it's introduced by Google's Nexus, iPhone is playing catch-up. Second, I don't use even Bluetooth, NFC would be a superfluous battery hog. Third, I don't connect my mobile phone with my shopping in any way at all. Maybe, I'm out-of-date, but NFC would be a minus (weight, battery eater, security vulnerability, etc) for me, I suppose; at least, not a plus.

Your music library (and maybe more) is stored online. I don't like cloud, I avoid cloud, I struggle not to use cloud. N900 has large memory to store music and videos, and microSD clot, and it's definitely a plus for N900 and a minus for iTunes.

Can listen and respond to your questions, can provide factual answers or point you to a related mobile app. I'm testing similar functionality on N900 with voximp and pocketsphinx; I have terrible pronunciation, but I can already switch to Fennec or open a new tab with Google in Fennec window by simple command (command-line interface of Fennec has become better in recent nightly). It's not all that usable, it has a long way to go, but it's customisable and open-source (unlike knowledge base Wolfram Alpha, which is also used by Bing, by the way). And I don't need Wolfram to tell me that 2 and 2 is 4, or calculate an integral, or tell capital of a country. I already have a simple calculator; I may find/create a better one (with integration and differentiation); I have dictionary which includes many different facts about different countries/words/etc; and I can find an open-source way to add one year, one month and one day to a date, thank you.

Knows who owns it, unlocking just for them. Laugh. The software will either not recognise the owner due to other clothes/haircut, or recognise a stranger as the owner. If you know how the owner looks, you can impersonate him, or otherwise just use a brute force attack by taking on all possible appearances. The novel way of unlocking will just make the phone less predictable for the owner and more entertaining for somebody else who tries to unlock it. The security will be diminished: previously you needed to watch owner inputting his password, now you only need to look at the owner, and you will know everything you need to unlock the iPhone.

And face recognition exists for N900, too, I just haven't tried hard enough to make it work for me.

Overall, some consumers will be in awe when iPhone 5 comes out, but all these features have existed before, iPhone will just give some polish and lock-down. Even one or two years old N900 could do all of these functions, if there was a strong incentive for the developers.

Now, the vulnerabilities:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/a...onstrated/1210
http://blogs.mcafee.com/mcafee-labs/...urity-concerns

And I don't know enough about NFC payment to say whether it's difficult to deceive a vending machine by a specific low-level program on a Linux-like smart-phone, decoupling signals of payment (to vending machine) from signals of withdrawal of money (to credit card/whatever balance you use). Just, a man-in-the-middle attack. You say to vending machine that you are giving 2$, and you tell balance that you withdraw 1$. Vending machine will not be able to check it unless it knows where your balance comes from.

Re: iPhone 5
 

If true, I think it's great that Apple is being aggressive competing with these features, and I look forward to their implementation.

As an aside:
I think that decoupling the WAN radio is a VERY smart move, and one that NVidia's Tegra uses to great advantage (quicker time to market). It would be better still if it were modular like a SIM card. I wish more handset developers were pushing carrier independence with clever moves such as this.

Re: iPhone 5
 

Re: iPhone 5
 

Save your breath (and emotion turmoil)... this is just a speculation piece by NYTimes.

Go have fun attacking Apple when they've finally released anything official and make blatant claims. But be aware that if you demonize Apple and make stuffs up in your mind (read things that they did not explicitly claim), you may be as crazy as the Apple fanatics as well.

(ie: I don't think Apple has explicitly claimed that they've 'invented' anything that many people here claimed Apple has, like: multitouch, 3g video, etc.)

Re: iPhone 5
 

I agree... but there is something we can not reabte and it is processing power. N900 is single core A8 @1100 MAX (or something like that), and Iphone5 should have at least A9. Anyway, I hope SOMEBODY develops another OpenSource (at least very open source) phone at that time...

Re: iPhone 5
 

NFC for mobile payments,

WTF that stuff has been around in Nokia for years. I think that they had some testing in city of OULU years ago. Nokia has very strongly marketed that stuff for years :|

.edit
This source talks about year 2004
http://www.nearfield.org/2008/05/tho...c-developments

Re: iPhone 5
 

That underlines Nokia's fail even more?

At any rate, it should mean that Nokia has more (experience, tech, patents, digital assets, etc) under their belt and are poised to take advantage of this 'technology' if anyone else (ie: Apple) popularize it?

Re: iPhone 5
 

NFC requires a complete infrastructure to work in any meaningful way, not to mention all the legal implications. Japan is the only place on earth where this technology (and infrastructure) has been developed so that it actually can be used in a meaningful way. Japan is also one of the fastest growing markets for the iPhone, so NFC on the iPhone makes perfect sense in Japan.

Re: iPhone 5
 

Yeah, it needs support from:
- financial institutions
- approved by gov't as payment scheme (protected by law)
- accepted by the commercial entities (shops, etc)
- and most of all, accepted by the customers. they need to trust the thing and it has to be designed so it's easy (and beneficial) to be incorporated in to one's daily life.

you can't just spew out a new technology to the market, claim "first!", and expect a "win.".

Re: iPhone 5
 

I'm already saving my pennies for one!