Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov

A couple of weeks ago my beloved Sony Ericsson P910 died.  It got dropped one too many times.  A rather large semi-lequid patch appeared in its left bottom corner and touch screen stopped working.  Since the keyboard died a long time ago, I was left with no way to input or navigate the phone.  Being an exceptionally smart individual I decided that a reboot might cure this, and, obviously, that left me at the “Enter your PIN” prompt with no hope what so ever.

Next morning I rushed to the mobile shop.  The first two on my way were closed, since that was too early in the morning, but gladly I remembered that there is a Germanos branch in Debenhams, which opens pretty early.  Like 8 or 9 o’clock in the morning.  And indeed it was open.

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Celine Roque of Web Worker Daily makes yet another observation that makes one nod his head in agreement:

There’s a slight irony about being a web worker and staying in your home office most of the time.

The post goes on to suggest a few ways to spice up your life, in case you are a web worker…

Today is the last day of The Mobile World Congress which takes place in Barcelona.  Makers of everything mobile (as in phones, not as in real estates opposite) are showing off their stuff at this event.  Also, there are many announcements, news, and releases tied to the dates of the congress.

It seems like a good time to revisit the Android story.  Is it moving it all?  What’s happening there?  Will we see any of it any time soon?

It appears that the Android is moving along as planned.  There were a few pre-production prototypes at The Mobile World Congress, and people were pretty much impressed with them.

The biggest surprise of the demos was how well Android runs on slow devices.

In other news, Google released a new version of Android SDK.  This new version brought a few major changes and improvements, fixed many things that developers complained about.

The upgrade also takes to heart developer complaints about the software and includes several major but less visible upgrades: in addition to easier development of layouts, any app can now translate addresses to map coordinates and back. Audio formats such as MIDI and OGG are now also built-in, according to Google.

The same source suggests that we will indeed see some phones in the second half of 2008, as it was planned and announced last year.

Android’s upgrade brings the Linux-based platform much closer to production quality for its expected release, which should start with handsets in the second half of the year from companies such as HTC, Motorola, LG, and Samsung. Most of these devices are understood to focus heavily on Internet access and are expected to include some models with GPS and touchscreens.

I was reading this post about Mobile World Congress over at Web Worker Daily.  This paragraph got me thinking:

At January’s Macworld show, Apple CEO Steve Jobs cited data from NPD showing that the iPhone already has 20 percent of the smartphone market after one year, and that Apple is selling 20,000 iPhones per day.

How often do you change your mobile?  And how often do you change your mobile phone vendor?  Are you a fan of one particular brand or do you like trying each and every one of them?

Mobile market is measured in billions of users.  And these users can be pretty dynamic about their devices and the choice of vendors.  Mobile phone is something very easily replaceable.  It’s not like a house, or a car, or even a laptop computer. The thought of how dynamic the market is boggles the mind.  One day you the king of the mountain, and the a couple of months later they don’t know your name. But then again you can get it back before the end of the year…

Here is a funny quote from the comment on predictive text (think: T9) in the discussion about Android and mobile devices on Slashdot:

Predictive text helps a bit but sometimes it gets things so ducking wrong that I am sure the people who program it are a deliberately unhelpful bunch of ducking aunts.

Maybe I should adopt some sort of predictive text plugin for WordPress for those times when I feel like swearing…