@BlissfulNight

It seems there is a demo version...I don't know what the limitations are. I'm going to test it out on my iPhone 2G tomorrow.

@the mighty mouse

I don't think it would be as durable as an iPhone. The larger LCD, without glass, easilly breaks if you bang it on a ...say... door-frame.

Besides, when I get a new lap-top (and I don't particularly want one because I always break them), I will want one that is powerful. No point in carrying a weak netbook around, with my phone, just to surf the web and do word processing.

I have been waiting for this for so long! I really am sort of tired of my iPhone anyway and thinking of going over to android...and one reason was lack of BT keyboard.

For all you who say "what's the point", you don't understand the usage model. I don't want another big, breakable devise like a laptop so that I may write a journal at a coffee shop or on the train in the morning (I take high-speed train that has airplane-seats with fold-down table). I don't want to worry about banging my back into a wall or setting it down too hard when I sit down. I want to break out the keyboard (which weighs very little) when I need it, and use my phone as a phone when I'm not typing. A foldable BT keyboard can just about fit in a "man-purse".

THIS IS GREAT NEWS!

Hi,
I was wondering if you could comment on two things:
1. The display quality in direct sunlight
2. Music quality, with earphones, as compared to, say the iPhone or the Nokia 5800

Does this phone have 3.5mm audio jack? If it does, and priced right, I'm buying.

Is the i7500 supposed to come out this month? Cause that's what this chart suggests.

It seems to me that there is a subtle Ferenge in this movie. However, my understanding was that first contact between the Ferenge and the Federation did 2364...many years after the events depicted in this movie.

What about the price of the N97 and the Sammy?

Happy Hanukkah!

I disagree with both your comment and the gist of this letter (although I fully support the tone and “feeling” behind both).

Saying the Motorola missed the boat on generation-based usage demographic change is basically saying that Motorola failed to do good marketing strategy, or failed to listen to the marketing strategists. It’s a management and culture problem at Motorola. Their design mistakes seem to have come as a result of these management and culture problems.

The author noted “I've always considered it Motorola's dirty little secret that the strategy for their entire profit machine was run by the company's CMO -- not the rest of the company's executives, who are as inept now as they have ever been.”. That’s as it should be actually…the man who knows what the market wants should be in charge. Ideally though, that man would get a lot of back-up and cooperation from the other executives.

I’m not convinced that Motorola selling its phone division is a bad thing…maybe it can do better as part of another company (I bet it will be a Chinese company that ends up buying it BTW). I strongly disagree with the authors assertions that outsourcing software development was wrong. Rather, it seems the Motorola didn’t do enough software development at all…even outsourced software efforts would have been better than what they got. And the authors suggestions as to what direction product development should go in seems way too simplistic. Same goes for those calling for Moto to make “the next iPhone”. Moto competes in international markets, with very different market structures, barriers to entry, different power levels of channel partners (ie. the Telecoms), etc. They needed to match the competition in camera quality and did not. They need a music-phone offering in different styles and form-factors. The authors assertion to focus just on this high-end market is just wrong.

I will say this though… Motorola seems to lack the courage that other companies have. Yes, Nokia has not embraced the US Telecoms like others have. Yet Nokia produces very innovative products which sell world-wide. Samsung – a company which does not have particularly great marketing – has managed to position itself as a upper end 1st tier company world-wide by focusing on build quality, good industrial design, while matching the feature-sets of Nokia and SE. (and Samsung focuses on non-US markets more than US market, where it leads!) Meanwhile, Motorola has several great models on the market which use embedded Linux, but they failed to support it sufficiently because they didn’t want to upset the US Telecoms. They didn’t even bother to pursue EASY wins, like writing a Linux BT Keyboard driver for the Ming/A1000/Z6/E6 phones, or, for that matter, a word document reader/editor (which mid-range Samsung non-smartphones have). They needlessly left out most Java certificates on their phones compared to Nokia phones. They have failed to consistently adopt Symbian. Heck, if they leased S60 from Nokia and put it on a Razar like phone, they would have more success than with their current Smart-phone line-up. They are very late in putting high-end features in phones (is there any autofocus Moto on the market yet? This is becoming a standard mid-range feature soon). I’m not saying Motorola needs to follow or master one OS plateform…with outsourcing and good resource management, they could have released Symbian and WM plateform smartphones while slowly building support around its own “open” format. But to do so means that they have to move with confidence. And somehow confidence is what Motorola lacks.