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Pandora Released for BlackBerries
Acer's First Smartphone Has Awkward Style, Solid Potential
Compulab Exeda: A Stocky Phone Stuffed Full of Features and OSs
AT&T Wants All Its Smartphones Running the Same OS, Eventually
Mobile Browser Battlemodo: Which Phones Deliver The Real Web
VMware Pushing Virtual Machines for Smartphones, Will Support Parallel OSes
CNN Fortune: Blackberry Storm as Low as $99 on Verizon?
Smartphone Is a Dumb Word: We Need a New Name

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freelunch
03/18/09

In reply to Pandora Released for BlackBerries
can someone provide the download link? I can seem to get it to send
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Geisrud
03/18/09

@freelunch: [www.pandora.com]
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Geisrud
03/18/09

In reply to Pandora Released for BlackBerries
Hmm, Pandora doesn't seem to like my AT&T 8820.
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Kaiser-Machead
02/04/09

In reply to Acer's First Smartphone Has Awkward Style, Solid Potential
The assembly had better be damn robust, because that's just asking for a rickety piece of hardware.
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Voyou_Charmant
02/04/09

In reply to Acer's First Smartphone Has Awkward Style, Solid Potential
I can't figure out what is going on there.

Is it a keyboard that is snapping onto the bottom of the handset or does it somehow flip around like that? Why wouldn't a simply slideout keyboard be enough?

Also, why do companies keep wasting the face/potential touchscreen room with wheels and buttons and other garbage that just isn't really important when you take into account the touchscreen and slide out keyboard?

How hard is it to simply take the design of an iphone (you could dump the home button to free up even more space), and then slap a slideout qwerty keyboard on the bottom?
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Lite: hates Illinois Nazis
01/14/09

In reply to Compulab Exeda: A Stocky Phone Stuffed Full of Features and OSs
Does this thing hold breath mints?
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not_a_virus.exe.vbs
01/14/09

In reply to Compulab Exeda: A Stocky Phone Stuffed Full of Features and OSs
Can anyone make an Android phone that actually looks good? Seriously?
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Lite: hates Illinois Nazis
01/14/09

@Dr.of Teledildonics: Only once we've figured out how to replicate Data.
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Jrsy Devil's Advocate®
01/14/09

@Lite bids farewell to KHAN!!!!!!!: Ah, dammit. First the original Number 6 and now Khaaaaaaannnnn!!!. What a miserable day this turned out to be..

Oh yeah and speaking of the Star Trek reference this phone kind of resembles the data PADs they carried around on TNG, DS9 and Voyager.
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lpranal
12/05/08

In reply to AT&T Wants All Its Smartphones Running the Same OS, Eventually
Not to sound like the fanboy ass that i'll be written off as anyway, but almost all of my "support nightmare" here at work is windows mobile. people with blackberries have a learning curve, but they generally manage fine by themselves, mostly the same for iPhonies such as myself.
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OMG! Ponies!
12/05/08

@lpranal: RIM is a "set-it-and-forget-it" set-up. Type in the server info and you're ready to go.

It's not that my iPhone doesn't have that ease-of-use capability; I suspect that my company is running some older version of Exchange that the iPhone doesn't play well with. It's not an issue with RIM, though.
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sebas0069
12/05/08

In reply to AT&T Wants All Its Smartphones Running the Same OS, Eventually
I beleive ATT is asking for all smartphone to be like Apple's iPhone. Take care of your shit! I'll sell it for you but you fix your problems. I think it's a good strategy. Basically, all Smartphone will be third-party soon! I think it's a win win for Apple and ATT. Apple is already set up, so I expect more convert from other smartphone. And for the ones that won't convert, more bandwith left supported smartphones.
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Kaiser-Machead
12/05/08

@sebas0069: To hell with Apple. They make a dandy phone, but what say does a telco have in the kind of OS hardware vendors use? Shouldn't the decision be up to them?
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frigg
12/05/08

@Kaiser-Machead: Yeah, and the next thing you know, everyone gets visual voicemail. Is that the world you want to live in?!
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Kaiser-Machead
12/05/08

@frigg: He's a witch!
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Kaiser-Machead
12/05/08

In reply to AT&T Wants All Its Smartphones Running the Same OS, Eventually
Roughly translated:

We at AT&T harbor a strong and unmoving hatred for all who aren't part of our family. As one of the majority holders of the intertubes, we can now openly express our hatred for all of mankind, with confidence that you complacent, vapid cretins will continue to use our services, and stuff our gluttonous craws with your sucker money. Thank you.
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frigg
12/05/08

In reply to AT&T Wants All Its Smartphones Running the Same OS, Eventually
AT&T: "We will support 1 OS and 1 OS only. The only exceptions will be the iPhone, goes without saying, RIM, naturally, Google, of course, Nokia, can't say No to Nokia, Microsoft cause you don't want to get them angry, and maybe one or two others. But aside from those, it's 1 OS ONLY!!!"
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OMG! Ponies!
12/05/08

In reply to AT&T Wants All Its Smartphones Running the Same OS, Eventually
Sorry about the double but, the more I think of it, the more I suspect that RIM would get an exemption - or at least become the standard OS.

RIM makes BlackBerries and BlackBerries make the business world go 'round. Screw with the way a BlackBerry works and you'll spook the business customers. In a down economy where companies are making cutbacks, no company is going to want to have to increase its IT departmental spending because its phone provider has decided to change the way the company's equipment works.

Either RIM gets special treatment or T-Mobile and Verizon eat AT&T's lunch.
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OMG! Ponies!
12/05/08

In reply to AT&T Wants All Its Smartphones Running the Same OS, Eventually
I think if you look in the skies above Redmond, Mountain View, and Irving, you'll see a whole lot of lead balloons.
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sumocat
12/05/08

In reply to AT&T Wants All Its Smartphones Running the Same OS, Eventually
Sounds to me like they just threw down the gauntlet. Whoever wants to provide AT&T with their one official OS better step up the awesomeness.

As far as what defines a "third-party" device, since the concern is tech support, I assume that covers any device for which AT&T does not offer tech support. That includes the iPhone and (I believe) BlackBerries. If a device gets its firmware updates through AT&T, it's an AT&T device.
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IN THE FACE!
12/05/08

@sumocat: AT&T is just lazy, that's all this tells me...

Because, tech-support is one of their "Top" priorities.

lawl
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weatherman
12/05/08

In reply to AT&T Wants All Its Smartphones Running the Same OS, Eventually
This is the opposite of what Verizon is doing with their open access initiative. And it's a stupid move; bad for consumers and bad for business. It's an attempt by AT$T to pretend that wireless service isn't just a commodity, and try to retain their hegemony. Of course it will fail, the only question is how much money will AT$T lose before it realizes that.
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Anonymoose
12/05/08

In reply to AT&T Wants All Its Smartphones Running the Same OS, Eventually
support nightmare? there are only four OSes to learn. how hard is that? if need be, create teams specialized for each one. are people that inept that they can't learn how to troubleshoot for more than just one OS? i mean, this is their job. i have used multiple OSes and know my way around them enough to handle most problems and i havent received any training. this is ludicrous.
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cac67
12/05/08

@Anonymoose: Think how awesomely good you would be if you received a 2 hour training class but never got to actually see those operating systems in action. That's what att's training is like, all power points and screen shots. Occasionally they'll do a class with 1 phone to be passed around, but I've been there 5 years and have had that kind of training class on 4 phones. This is what att reps are using to support the various handsets. And the worst part is, we get a lot of calls from people who never spent a single solitary second trying to figure out how to operate their phone from the available resources before calling to find out how to turn their ringer up.
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Geisrud
12/05/08

@cac67: I went to the link you provided and found the page is down for maintenance. Something terribly ironic about that, no?
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something_unique_and_descriptive
12/05/08

@Anonymoose: You've never worked in a call center have you?

What you're talking about might be true for tier three, maybe even a competent tier two, but tier one, the numbskulls that you get first, are, on average, the stereotypical McDonald's employee... Minimum wage, Minimum intelligence. Sure there are always a few who actually know what they're doing, and some of them actually even give a damn about their job... those are typically the new guys who either have that desire to help snuffed out (by countless idiots who can't figure out that the phone needs to be charged) or they leave disillusioned with the whole technical support industry.
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