The handset is centered around a 480 x 800 4.3-inch TFT LCD, with a Snapdragon QSD8650 1GHz processor under the hood (the CDMA version of the QSD8250 in the HD2 and Nexus One), and even a helpful 1GB of built-in memory and 512MB of RAM — hello app storage! Even the battery is bigger than the HD2, and the camera is an 8 megapixel monstrosity with flash, that’s capable of 720p video, and is augmented by a 1.3 megapixel front facing camera for good measure. The phone features HDMI out (though you’ll need an adapter for turning it into a TV-familiar HDMI plug), 802.11b/g WiFi, and an 8GB microSD card. There’s that still-rare Android 2.1 underneath an updated version of HTC’s Sense UI. But… despite all these wild features, what actually sets the EVO 4G apart is the fact that it’s Sprint’s first 4G phone. The handset runs a combo of EV-DO Rev. A and WiMAX, with calls still being made over CDMA and the EV-DO / WiMAX options for data.
UPDATE: I beat all the big tech blogs to the punch with this news 🙂 But there’s more detail about the phone coming out now, including the fact that Qik will be providing an app for two-way video chat. Also, Gizmodo has the press release and notes that 4G will cost an extra $10/month, and the tethering an extra $30/month. Ouch, but still yummy.
The battle lines are being drawn, with technology companies on the right side and the network/media companies on the wrong side. Luckily, the FCC commissioner looks ready to fight.
I admire the iPad. It’s a marvel of engineering and all things geek service. In fact, Netflix and Kindle are probably the killer apps for obvious reasons of color and viewing size. But technolust aside, it doesn’t replace any of the screens I use on a regular basis: my television, my phone, my PC, and my portable entertainment device(s). And at $500, for vastly reduced functionality relative to a comparably-priced netbook, it’s purely a status symbol and luxury item rather than a genuine productivity tool or primary entertainment device. (Plus, I hear the wi-fi doesn’t work so well…)
Steve Jobs’ ambitions aside, this is actually a great year for the Four Screens. Here’s my wish list of upgraded versions of each.
1. HDTV
Samsung 42inch 720p HDTV for under $600This year or early next we will upgrade to an HDTV, with DVR. The prices are fast approaching the $100/inch mark which means a 50″ plasma will cost the same as an iPad by the end of the year!
We already have our Netflix disc for Wii and a DVD player, the latter of which also supports some digital formats on USB. I’ll expand my video file format options with a Roku or popbox or equivalent at some point, too. Virtually all my video is now consumed on my TV, instead of my PC, and that will reach 100% soon. If I’m sitting on the couch, would I rather be watching the big screen or staring at an iPad? And which is better for family viewing?
2. Sprint Evo 4G Smartphone
The Sprint Evo 4GRight now I’m using an ancient flip phone on Sprint. My renewal discount is coming up this month, and I’d previously been torn as to whether to go Palm Pre, a Blackberry, or an Android phone. None of the options really excited me, until I recently heard about Sprint’s Evo 4G coming out this summer. It’s magnificent. We don’t have WiMax in Madison but it’s available in Chicago and Houston, where most of our family resides, so I expect to get some use out of it. But even on the 3G network, this thing is going to be amazing. And it’s Android, so no Apple heavy hand dictating what apps are allowed to run and which aren’t – I’ll be running Skype, Google Voice, and the ubiquitous social networking apps from day one.
3. Pine Trail / Ion 2 netbook
Asus 1201PN – Pine Trail + Ion 2 (Optimus)My primary PC at home is still my trusty Thinkpad T42, and I have a second homebuilt machine for the kids and my Warcraft addiction. But the PC I use when I’m out of the house is my stalwart little Asus EEE 901. It’s showing it’s age, though, and given that the latest batch of Atom 2 netbooks can actually play WoW, I’m definitely ready to upgrade. The Ion 2 chipset is essential, however, because it allows for switching between dedicated graphic or integrated graphics on the fly, preserving battery life without sacrificing performance. My only concern is that it might be hard to find one with an SSD – but that’s ok, I can always upgrade, as SSDs are also getting cheaper and cheaper with time. True, SSDs are lower capacity, but I’ve been doing just fine with an 8GB drive on my EEE. I’ll manage 🙂
Its clear why Apple didnt create a netbook – they dont want a low-margin product. The iPad is their attempt to displace the netbook market – Mossberg is buying it hook, line and sinker – but you just cant do things on an iPad that you can on a netbook, and never will. Including writing, coding, Skype, or video chat (at least until version 2, anyway).
4. Kindle 3
Amazon Kindle 2Technically the last category of screen, “portable entertainment”, is a multi-device option. We have an iPod Touch, an IPod nano, and a Nintendo DS Lite. All of these are primarily used by my kids, of course – I use the iPod Touch for Skype at work, and the Nano while working out on our home elliptical, but other than that I dont really do much media consumption. I expect that will change with my new smartphone, but I am also ready to go Kindle when Amazon makes it’s inevitable response to the iPad challenge. To be honest, I still would prefer a Kindle 2 to an iPad, because e-ink is frankly superior for reading under any lighting condition – especially outside. And at half the cost, it’s a no-brainer, despite being a niche device. But let’s see what goodies Amazon packs into the new version – touch screen? color e-ink? I’d pay up to $300 for it, which is still 60% cheaper. It’s worth noting that Amazon’s post-iPad strategy is still laden with profit opportunities, which benefit me as a consumer more than buying into iPad’s closed ecosystem.
Overall, the cost for all these goodies? HDTV: $500, Evo 4G phone: $200 (estimated, including 2 year contract renewal), netbook: $500, Kindle 3: $300. That’s a total of $1500 – if the iPad could replace all of this functionality on a single screen then I’d be interested in paying $1000 for it. But instead, the iPad is completely redundant with these screens and thus costs me an extra $500 on top of that. I’m looking forward to upgrading my toys this next year, and while no one is going to notice my geek chic in public, at least I wont be sacrificing any functionality or convenience.
Then again, what do I know? Maybe the iPad really is the Next Big Thing. “Instead of holding a MOUSE, you’re holding MAGIC.” who can argue with that? 😛
Check out this awesome crew poster for the upcoming STS-134 mission. First the Firefly theme song, now Star Trek imagery… I think as the Shuttle program closes down, the sentiment about human spaceflight is swelling, and what better way than science fiction to express it?
Apple’s announcement today of it’s new iPad tablet system (alas, not named Newton 2), running iPhone OS and featuring a 10″ multi-touch screen – doesn’t strike me as the Kindle killer that everyone is making it out to be. Yes, it will definitely be an ebook reader and will have licensing agreements with textbook publishers like McGraw-Hill and the behemoth book chain Barnes and Noble. But at a price probably around $1000, it will be four times as expensive as the Kindle, and despite the glorious full color multi-touch screen, will still not be as easy to read as elecctronic ink technology.
The price point matters – iPhone and iPod dominate their respective segments, but only because they provide tremendous functionality and design at the same price point as their competitors. Meanwhile, Mac computers remain relegated to niche market share, because they are such a poor value. The Mac OS operating system is innovative but for fundamental computing tasks – office work and online – most users are OS agnostic at best (Word is Word; Gmail is Gmail) and biased towards what they know (ie, Windows).
For the iPad to compete against Kindle – which has a huge marketshare lead and truly is to books what the iPod was to music, despite e-readers from Sony being around for years – it needs to compete on price and functionality. And there’s no way that the average person is going to be willing to read a 400-page book on an LCD screen.
I think Apple knows this, which is why it is courting the textbook market, the gaming market, and also putting iPhone OS on the device to keep it compatible with the universe of apps from the App Store. These add value to the device in the sense that they keep it a general-task device and not a single-purpose one. But in doing so they are competing against their own products – I bought an iPod Touch myself for less than $200 and I can run any app on it that the iPad will, and most are designed for a small screen so what’s the advantage of 10 inches? And why pay 4x the cost? Conversely why spend $1000 for a iSlate when you can drop a few hundred more and get a full-featured macbook? Or spend the same amount of money and buy a full-featured Windows laptop? Or spend half and get a netbook running Chrome OS, or a new Pine Trail netbook which can play real games like Warcraft?
Textbooks and other digital documents can certainly be made more innovative and hyperlinked and interactive on the iPad, but that media revolution will not be confined to Apple’s garden. And it’s a guarantee that Kindle v3.0 is going to incorporate color e-ink and a touch interface (though probably not multi-touch). Any new innovations in content delivery and integrating media and text will be just as exploitable by laptops and netbooks in particular.
And there are amazing new display technologies coming out – including color e-ink and hybrid CD screens, which will let other manufacturers build devices for ebook reading and media consumption at a fraction of the cost of what Apple can. I think that Apple has learned the wrong lesson from it’s success with iPod and iPhone and will end up doing everything poorly rather than a few things well.
UPDATE: Steve jobs dismisses netbooks, saying a netbook is “not better at anything! It’s just cheaper. But it’s not better at anything.” Shows how little he understands about netbooks. And he claims the iPad’s on-screen virtual keyboard is a “dream to type on” – yeah, right.
Good grief, Amazon just dropped the price of the Kindle 2.0 by another 40 bucks! New price: $259. And they are introducing a GSM-enabled version for only $20 more so you can download books worldwide, not just in the US. This is unbelievably aggressive, and probably partly motivated by Sony’s recent refresh of its own ebook line.
I still think that the Kindle DX is the one I want, though – the better PDF support is critical for me. But with the price drop on the mainstream Kindle, I am even less likely to buy a DX now; the price on the DX has to come down sooner or later. The only reason I need PDF support is because I will use the Kindle heavily for my academic journal reading; if not for that I’d probably have bought the Kindle the last time it dropped in price.. and be cursing about it now.
Of course, I’ve also been doing some actual reading of late, and am now a few hundred pages into Quicksilver. I can easily see how owning a Kindle would accelerate this habit. I am genuinely conflicted at night between WoW and these analog pursuits!
I’ve swooned over the Kindle before, but still haven’t found myself willing to take the plunge. Sony has been going after Amazon’s Kindle with sexy new versions of its own e-book reader, but the main problem with the ebook market in general is that the readers are still just too expensive, not to mention stuck in a technology slow-lane with black and white text, no color support, and the non-intuitive physical form factor of a single slab.
Enter ASUS with the first real innovation we have seen in this market – a dual-pane reader with color screens, genuine computing/web surfing abilities, and most importantly a low price:
ASUS eeebookThe world of ebooks is about to start a new chapter with the arrival of the cheapest digital reader on the market. Asus, one of the world’s biggest consumer electronics businesses, confirmed last week that it is planning to shake up the market in the same way it did when it launched the first netbook — the low-cost alternative to the laptop.
(…) Unlike current ebook readers, which take the form of a single flat screen, the Asus device has a hinged spine, like a printed book. This, in theory, enables its owner to read an ebook much like a normal book, using the touchscreen to “turn†the pages from one screen to the next. It also gives the user the option of seeing the text on one screen while browsing a web page on the other. One of the screens could also act as a virtual keypad for the device to be used like a laptop. Whereas current ebook readers have monochrome screens, the Asus would be full colour. The maker says it may also feature “speakers, a webcam and a mic for Skypeâ€, allowing cheap phone calls over the internet.
The ability to read on one page and surf on the other is a big deal – imagine having Wikipedia, Google and Evernote handy while reading a book! You could really enhance your comprehension and note-taking that way, all on the same self-contained device. The key to success here is the connectivity, with both WiFi and 3G essential. ASUS is poised to transform the ebook reader market the same way they did the notebook market with the introduction of the EEE PC. It’s about time.
My friend Zack recently obtained the Kindle 2 and wrote up his initial impressions. Something I hadn’t considered was that the audio-book feature, where it will read the text aloud, is really useful for kids – his daughter loved it and I can see how my 2yr old would, too. Zack also found the bookmarks feature to be invaluable, though he hadn’t played with the annotations capability yet. The latter is really what interests me, because it’s really hard to review or discuss a book afterwards wthout notes taken during the reading process rather than after the fact.
It’s worth noting that Amazon just dropped the price on the Kindle 2 by $60, from $359 to the magic $299 price point. This puts it right in line with the iPod Touch or other high-end music/video players. I don’t have an iPod either so for me the choice would boil down to either music and video on the go, or books. Frankly, the idea of video to go isn’t all that appealing to me, since video is even more attention-monopolizing than reading. Since the Kindle supports MP3 audio, I’m more tempted by the Kindle than I am by the iPod, though it’s safe to assume that most people buying a Kindle already have an iPod and.or an iPhone as well. I personally prefer to minimize my technological footprint, though. The Kindle really is an ideal device in that regard, and with most bestsellers selling for $10, would make reading convenient and affordable. I drop that much every week on Starbucks alone!
I’m actually more interested in the Kindle DX because it has better PDF support, meaning I could use it to read research articles for my work. That would be pretty handy and almost justifies my buying one, but I just can’t rationalize it right now. I will probably wait until the end of the year, and maybe the DX will come down in price by then too. However if not for that, I’d have already picked up a Kindle at the reduced price. It’s just too tempting to ignore.
my 30-day introductory membership to WoW expired today, but I haven’t yet renewed. I am resolving to finish my PC upgrade first. Unfortunately I neglected to order some thermal paste… so should I just build the PC anyway or do I delay it (and WoW, accordingly) to obtain some? I’ll have to order it from Newegg or something, which will take a week. I suppose I could use that week to do other stuff, like blog or watch anime or whatnot. Heh.
In other news, my (human warrior) main is up to level 15. In one session I decided to basically grab as many flight points as I could, so starting from Westfall I 1. flew to Stormwind and 2. ran to Lakeshire, then 3. hearthed back to Westfall, 4. flew to Stormwind again, 5. took the tram to Ironforge, 6. ran to Loch Modon, 7. flew to Lakeshire and 8. ran to Darkshire. Actually I may have mixed the order of operations up a bit in there, it was kind of a blur. At any rate I basically have all the FPs for the Alliance in the southern Eastern continent. I’m mostly done with the pre-Deadmines quests in Westfall, but now I plan to polish off quests in Lakeshire and Loch Modan first. I’ll also pick up whatever easy quests there are in Dun Morogh too for leveling.
Of course, this is all on hold until I upgrade the box…
of the Kindle 2.0 by another 40 bucks! New price: 
. And they are introducing a 
for only $20 more so you can download books worldwide, not just in the US. This is unbelievably aggressive, and probably partly motivated by Sony’s recent 
is the one I want, though – the better PDF support is critical for me. But with the price drop on the mainstream Kindle, I am even less likely to buy a DX now; the price on the DX has to come down sooner or later. The only reason I need PDF support is because I will use the Kindle heavily for my academic journal reading; if not for that I’d probably have bought the Kindle the 
