The Party Line — Phone Buzz of the Day
Here are some of today’s phone conversations I enjoyed reading or viewing on the web, along with some brief thoughts:
$30 gets you a Droid dock (Gearlog) — Earlier today, I showed Barb the video of Google’s new navigation. She was impressed — and she’s not easily impressed — but then we got to talking about the cost of the docks. I figured that either the car dock or the bedside dock would run at least $50 for either, but Verizon is making each a more palpable $30. That’s not half bad. If I were getting a Droid, I’d jump on both docks, but my money is safe for now. As I tweeted yesterday, I’m passing on the Droid: the lack of full multitouch and the flat keyboard has me waiting. Plus, I want to see some faster Snapdragon-powered devices. Hopefully, they have $30 docks too.
iTunes vs Palm Pre: round 3… or is it 4? (PreCentral) — I’ve lost count on the iTunes and Palm Pre thumb-wrestling match. But another iTunes update hit today and again it breaks the Palm Pre sync functionality. That’s OK with me. I moved four remastered Beatles albums to my Palm Pre without breaking a sweat or using someone else’s USB vendor ID this afternoon.
Time to turn back the clock on Windows Mobile (Smartphone Thoughts) — Almost as silly as the above item is the fact that Windows Mobile devices still need a patch for Daylight Savings Time. You’ll need a CAB file for your WinMo 5, 6, 6.1, or — wait for it — shiny new 6.5 device, else your phone might be off for a bit when the clocks change in your neck of the woods. Making matters even sillier — you have to uninstall the prior DST patch. Seriously? Aren’t these supposed to be “smart” phones? I don’t know of any feature phones that have jump through all of these hoops! ;)
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
WHERE’s the WinMo DST patch?
Hit up the Smartphone Thoughts link in the post and they’ll get you there.
I thought Android 2.0 supported multi-touch?
Support and enabled are two different things. ;) We could see the Droid gain multitouch in the future, but for now, it’s limited at best.
The heck with iTunes and the iPhone. Why bother with a proprietary, locked-down system when DRM free music is available from Amazon among others? For that matter, why bother with buying music when casual listening needs can be well-handled with Pandora?
If Apple is foolish enough to try to leverage iTunes to sell more iPods and iPhones they are making a mistake. Consumers are tired of getting bitten by non-open solutions to their electronics platforms. Google is proving that there is money to be made with an open environment. Apple and Microsoft will follow or die.
Precisely why I’ve bought all of two albums from iTunes ever. Once Amazon opened the MP3 store, I bought all of my digital music there, with the exception of one album from Wal-Mart’s online store. Amazon’s MP3 store is even integrated into DoubleTwist, which is what I’m using to sync music to my Palm Pre.
from WMExperts website:
“Anyhoo, your Windows phone should have automatically compensated for the evilness that is falling back an hour. (It can’t, however, compensate for whatever evilness you took part in last night for Halloween. You’re on your own there.) No muss, no fuss, no silly patches. For most of us.”