According to AppleInsider, Apple is preparing an “iPod Touch”-like PDA. I must say that this doesn’t make any business sense. There is no reason to create a “PDA” in this day and age. That market is dead. The market wants convergence instead, one device that does lots. Now, if by “PDA” they mean a larger iPod Touch with a bigger screen, I’d buy the argument. But just “PDA”…?

In the meantime, Apple doesn’t want us to “hack” their devices. Well then, they better release a fucking official SDK. Customers hack these devices because they want something more out of them, and Apple does not fulfill this customer need. So, what’s up with that Apple? Maybe Adam’s suggestion to boycott them is what some should do.

I am getting an unlocked iPhone for a review (although this means that I won’t be getting one next month, as it’s an expensive piece). I am not all too hot about it, as my main cell account has no unlimited data plan, which it would mean that I won’t be able to use the phone after the review is done because the iPhone keeps downloading stuff via GPRS on the background (I usually use a special SIM for my reviews that has a data plan). More over, I do expect Apple to find a way and lock these phones back eventually so it’s time will be limited. Cat and mouse.

According to this article, even if your iPhone is OFF, it will still connect and try to fetch email. First of all, the iPhone should not be doing this automatically when it’s realizing that it’s on roaming. Secondly, this is one of the two reasons why removable batteries are so important. The other reason is unwarranted surveillance.

“I haven’t been privy to the private conversations of Steve Jobs, but listening to his keynote the other day, it’s difficult not to pick up on at least some antipathy the man seems to hold towards the entire mobile phone industry”, writes Crunchgear.

Well, is it possible to actually like the cellphone industry? I think not, especially in the US. I hope that Apple introduces its own VoIP service (to be used with the iPod Touch and unlocked iPhones) after they get that 5% in the cellphone industry, and then the ONLY customization they should accept to do for the carriers is to leave on or remove that VoIP engine. For everything else, they should not be dictated by anyone what and how to do things. If the carriers don’t like it, let them not use Apple’s phones.

And so Palm canceled the Foleo. This was the right decision, because the Foleo was simply too big and had no phone functionality. The Foleo was in reality competing with full sized laptops, and it would lose on every count except the size/weight.

What people need is a Nokia N800-sized Foleo, with full smartphone and touchscreen functionality. Which is obviously what the Palm CEO is talking about when he mentioned the upcoming Foleo II. Still, the cancellation was a pretty big surprise, given the fact that the product was ready to hit the shelves.

Opera Mini continues to show its teeth compared to other mobile browsers. While it’s not a native solution and its server-side nature creates problems with Ajax, it still is the most downloaded J2ME application ever. New features on beta 2 include: landscape support, fullscreen support, SSL, smaller fonts and more. A good deal.

This is not surprising, neither “stealing”. I said it many times in this blog: the future is touchscreen, you like it or not. I went as far as predicting that Nokia’s S60 4.0 operating system will be touchscreen-based too. It seems that I was right.

“Apple Inc. is facing yet another class-action lawsuit over its iPhone, this time from a New York State resident who claims the company failed to adequately disclose to consumers that the handset is locked to AT&T’s network and that using the device internationally would result in substantial data roaming charges” writes AppleInsider.

I don’t think that Apple failed to adequately disclose to consumers that the handset is locked to AT&T’s network. You can’t even buy an iPhone without getting an AT&T contract, let alone that the relationship between the two companies was known from the beginning. This lawsuit does not hold ground in my opinion.

However, I hate locked phones as much as the next guy. I never buy or agree to review locked phones. I guess, that’s my own version of “software freedom”.

I also read recently that AT&T lawyers stopped the release of unlocked iPhones, which is sad. They should not have the right to do that. The DMCA was modified a few years back to allow these kinds of hacks, although of course nothing is black and white. Hopefully, the hacks would at least be released as software patches so users can decide themselves to unlock an iPhone or not. BusinessWeek wrote an article too.

I like Google’s perspective, if this rumor is true: open spectrum, open devices, open software.

I received the RAZR2 V8 today for a review. My first reaction: they placed an external second screen that’s QVGA (see: expensive) and they didn’t bother to include a card slot. That’s f*cked up. It is also running Linux. That is all.

Update: Oh boy, oh boy…

The external screen gives more information about the error: “Current storage device does not have enough memory to capture media“. Please note that there is 425 MBs freely available in the phone. That’s a buggy firmware version alright.

Update 2: A reboot fixed it…

Haha… So basically, Apple bent over to Cingular to not include support for native apps because –as it’s well known– carriers are afraid of native app stability but mostly security problems, and now they get their full blown security hole from the browser. I can only suggest two things to ATT for that (expected) overreaction over native apps: either remove the browser from the iPhone (*tsk*), or free the damn SDK and let users have native apps instead of useless web “apps”.