qft. everybody copied webos multitasking... bb, wp, ios,and matias duarte brought it to android. however, no one has brought it to the forefront of their ui as webos did.
With the release of the HTC One I learned something today. We are hitting a plateau in terms of smartphone technology. The only two companies who can up the level of innovation significantly are Apple and Google. Samsung, LG, HTC etc seem to be content with minor spec upgrades and refinement of gimmicky software crap such as blinkfeed.
Just found out yesterday my job will give me a Galaxy Note 3. Should have it by the end of the week! Yesss!!!
In terms of hardware, no doubt. Perhaps there will be a huge breakthrough in battery technology in a few years. That's one of the biggest nuts left to crack for phones.
Nothing. That's my point. I chose those two companies because they are the ones that control the two major mobile operating systems. The last major innovation came from Google with Google now.
Agree 100%. And to think Android and iOS are going on 8 years old now. WindowsPhone 8 while technically newer still has not taken any significant hold. I suppose the next big achievement will be desktop parity which at the rate things are going could be in as little as 2 years.
People don't want innovation, if they did they would go to Windows Phone/Nokia. People want the same old same old stuff time and time again. Heck, even the minor spec upgrades people get from here to there isn't a big feature either, they just want the same crap in a newer shinier larger/smaller box. It's sad, but that's the market.
Why is it sad? It's a phone. Most people use the phone to call people, text, surf the web, and take pictures. Everything else is secondary and/or targets a niche audience, and there's only so much improvement that can be done to those 4 things. It's no different than TVs or computers or whatever else. At some point, it does basically everything you want/need. There's nothing wrong with that.
It's sad because that's how technology progresses. TVs and PCs do improve from generation to generation. Think about it, now your TV essentially has a little computer running in it, able to run Netflix, Hulu and a whole host of other apps. Your TV can connect to the internet to deliver you content in ways your cable provider cannot. Plus, the quality of your image has improved, plus, now with a lot of TVs you can now stream videos/images/music to your TV from phone or tablet. You can control some TVs via tablet too! Heck, some TVs can be run by voice command! That's innovation. That's taking an idea and saying let's improve how you do these basic tasks making them more efficient. It's saying let's do more than just an incremental improvement, let's try and improve the experience for the user and change the way they [insert electronic here].
It starts with the glance screen. Before you even pick up the phone it beckons to be used. It delivers all the pertinent information you need/want in an easy yet stylish way. Then you unlock it. The live tile experience is unmatched. Without even launching an app you can see social media updates, ESPN scores, messages, email or whatever. It delivers a direct means to the information you need without having you go from app to app. Then let's say you wanna take a picture or a video, instantly with Lenses you can connect it into the app you want it to without having to go through a packed homescreen. Just tap your camera button then launch the lens you need from the camera app. Do you want to make a 3D panoramic image? Launch photosynth. Want to do a motion overlay? Launch the Nokia tools. It's all there in one easy location. It's fast and efficient. The over sized text and the simple but elegant color scheme (later taken by iOS 7) makes emails and texts easy and beautiful to look at. At the end of the day, Windows Phone puts the user first in terms of content delivery. Its the smart phone deconvoluted. It's different. From generation to generation MS adds content, it was one of the first phones to offer voice to text. Then we got variable sized live tiles, now with Cortana and contextual analysis its more than just a simple voice client like Siri, and it has more personality than Google Now. The phone is constantly innovating, making it easier and easier to do the things we do daily. Hey maybe you don't like it, but you gotta respect the fact that MS wants to put out something unlike the generic android/iOS experience you get.
You sound like a Microsoft PR executive. Anyone could just as easily PR spin Google now just as you did with cortana. What do you mean by personality and why does Google now need it? Come back to me when Cortana can scan my emails and have a neat way to display a boarding pass that I can just swipe up from any point in the os and have access to it.http://www.popsci.com/bown/2012/product/google-now
I'm not a fan of Google scanning my emails. I'm leaving IAH at 1:05am and Google had my flight status in the Now cards.
