Originally Posted by Jerome

Frankly, I wonder what the motives really are for most people. It seems that everyone has gone mental about reducing their phone bills. I see people with a very comfortable salary who will go out of their way, spend time and effort, risk losing their number and the capacity to phone for weeks, tie themselves to long (typically 2 years) unchangeable contracts for saving, maybe, 5 or 10 Euros a month. Sorry, but I don't get it.

It is a behaviour which defies logic. Besides, most people save pennies on their calls, but are fools for anything else. They spend 2-3€ per ringtone which they change every week while it is quite easy to use any free mp3 as ringtone. They fall for 2 years contracts because they want to buy the "latest" phone for free. They use premium sms at 2€ for 140 bytes. They send mms pictures when in vacation at 5€ the mms, etc...

I don't get it. I could, with a stretch of my imagination, understand why it is important, for many people, to be seen with the latest iPhone whatever the price is (for example). I don't get it when, at the same time, their motivation to have it jailbreaked is to use voip.

That, and fake Rolex or Vuitton bags, I don't get. Sorry.

Besides, telcos have an ace up their sleeve: they can always lower call rates to voip levels. I explained why this technically a better solution for them. I can also say that they can afford it: call charges make only a fraction of their business nowaday (less than half in Germany). Of course this may not be sufficient, since the customers are not rational in their choice and strongly believe that voip is "free" while cell rates are "expensive" whatever the price actually is.

Originally Posted by qole

Tell that to all the people that want OpenOffice or the Gimp on their tablet.

Originally Posted by Jaffa

If this results in app authors not using caching, or forgetting about an "offline" mode, they'll get a slap for reasons I outlined ages ago. Primarily:

1. Data is expensive, or has usage limits.
2. HSPA coverage is patchy at best.
3. Planes are offline zones.

Originally Posted by Jerome

I am trying to figure out how the future tablet will be, then to find in the products on offer (e.g. iPhone) or historical products (e.g. Zaurus) something as similar as possible, and then use what the market reaction is or was to this similar product to see what the future of that hypothetical tablet might be.


So what do we have?
We have the N810 that we all know.
We will have slightly more powerful hardware.
We will have an hsdpa modem in it. Apparently (you just said so), it will be data only.

What is closest to that? At present, I would say something like the eeepc. Runs Linux, is sold explicitly to browse the web, is sold by operators with a modem and a mobile contract. The eeepc is a fair bit bigger than the N810, but there are other, smaller micro-PCs in the pipeline. They are all the rage in Japan at present. A main advantage of the N810 over those machines is, of course, battery life.

There are also winCE machines more similar to the N810 specifications with a cell modem. They are almost exclusively sold in the Asian market.

The eeepc sells like hot cakes. The smaller machines not that well, due to a combination of high price and a keyboard which is perceived as too small.



As to "new desktop paradigms" go, the eeepc is in a better position. It does help in bringing Linux to the masses. Did we see "all sorts of unexpected third-party stuff happening" with it? Not for the moment.

This is what I fear for the N900 / maemo. Will it be able to create a vibrant software market? This is a recurring problem, it killed the Zaurus, plagues WinCE and Symbian, and has always be a problem for Linux. Linux compensates with a wealth of free software, of course, but is that sufficient? I'm not really sure.

The 770, N800 and N810 also did not manage to create a vibrant software market. Sure, one can port Linux desktop applications to maemo, but the reality is that it is lots of work to render them practical, and that not that many have been ported. I am still waiting for abiword to go out of alpha status. Would that change with an always on connection? I don't see how.

The iPhone is the only product which managed to create a software market (and fast on top of that). Of course, it helped that Apple had a distribution system in place. You should check the iTunes store to see what is available. Much would be worth copying / porting to the tablet. But who is going to do it when no money is to be gained? Free software has its limits.

As to "new desktop paradigms" go, the eeepc is in a better position. It does help in bringing Linux to the masses. Did we see "all sorts of unexpected third-party stuff happening" with it? Not for the moment.

Originally Posted by pycage

Two recommendations:
Wash your hands and get a good screen protector.

Finger usage also has the advantage that the stylus doesn't scratch the screen or screen protector. Who would want to scratch their €400,- device with a stylus? Finger prints can be wiped away (but aren't visible on good screen protectors anyway), but scratches cannot.

Originally Posted by brontide

HSPA may be viable in most of the world today, but what will it be tomorrow? It seriously looks like the USA may go LTE for it's convergence protocol as both Verizon and AT&T are looking for 4g protocols.

As long as the n9x0 is "not a phone" you will still need a shiny 3g+ device in one pocket anyways, you might as well tether. This will provide you with all the access you need and be future proofed ( especially if Nokia used it's weight on the N series phones to make tethering easier * hint hint * ).

Originally Posted by SD69

(Sane) people do not want a port of OpenOffice to a 5 inch screen. You start approaching the silliness of WinXP on UMPCs when you do that. They want the approximate functionality of OpenOffice on their tablet... A good tablet has a OS and UI well matched to the device, and good tablet app utilizes the tablet UI.