Posts filed under smartphones

Time, at last, for an HTC Hero Review round-up. After working feverishly on the new look MobileMentalism for what seems like the past 100 years (still not finished – give me time, people, it’ll be worth the wait ;), I remembered that I said I’d do a review of HTC’s brand new Android phone, the Hero. So here it is!

For those who don’t know, the Hero is the latest Android phone from HTC, who’ve so far not only taken the lead, but seemingly cornered the market in Android phones. The Hero has been long awaited by tech lovers as its the first Android phone with a heavily-customized user interface and might, just might, actually beat the iPhone in terms of overall user interface.

So the question is: does it? Read on to find out!

2008 has been the year of the smartphone, but we ain’t seen nothing yet! With Android, the iPhone, Symbian, Windows Mobile, and yet more smaller players all fighting amongst each other to be crowned king of the smartphone, we consumers are about to be swamped by a torrent of new devices fighting for our hard earned pennies.

While that sounds good at first glance, dig a bit deeper and you’ll see a problem emerge – four competing and completely non-interoperable operating systems equals four key platforms for software developers to choose from when building their apps.

Unless the developers have large teams and large pockets, they’re going to be forced to choose one or two platforms at most, meaning if you choose a platform that becomes unpopular (Windows Mobile ), then you”ll be out of luck when it comes to buying the fancy app you saw on your friend’s iPhone.

Or worse, you might move from an iPhone to an Android phone, only to find that you have to purchase all the apps you bought for your iPhone all over again, as they won’t work on Android. The nightmare of the fragmented platform looms large, just as it has done for years in the PC market and console market.

What can be done, and who can solve this conundrum? Well, Ericsson, apparently!