Convergence: More than just a word, finally!
A few days ago I wrote about the LG Optimus 7 and the Windows Mobile 7 experience. Basically, it wasn’t. Rather, it was a bad trip. It is every bit the customer lock-in experience that the Apple iPhone is and the Cloud Computing experience is all about parting you from your money through monthly tariffs and data charges. It is no wonder that the phone companies are so ready to subsidize these things for you. As for price, I got this for 89.00CHF ( $75.47 at 84.8 centimes to the dollar, with a new 2 year Swisscom contract).
LG Optimus 2x aka, LG Optimus Speed aka, LG G 2x
They’ve been talking and hyping Cellphone-PDA Convergence and it is finally possible. My standard scenario for skepticism about this convergence is the following Use Case;
You are on a conference call and need to lookup a Contact and send it to the others.
On a normal cell-phone, this cannot happen without dropping the call, even with a hands-free headset. However, with an independent PDA (Palm TX, iPaq, etc.) one can simply take out the device, look up the contact and verbally distribute it to the others, without interrupting the call. This is why I still use a PDA, in addition to my Cellphone. Also, as SG likes to point out, if you have a dead bat in your cellphone your PDA is probably still okay, that’s where the information is, and a landline can usually be borrowed in an emergency.
Until Android, this was never possible in the same device. This is because all the handheld operating systems were single-tasking. This is true for Palm OS, Windows Mobile (aka WinCE), Symbian, and Apple IOS. Android, being a derivative of Linux, is inherently multi-tasking. In fact, it is the first and only true multi-tasking operating system for a handheld device. It is the only OS where you can have a multitude of applications running at the same time and they will run until you tell them to stop, regardless of whatever else you are doing, even while making a call. I just had the weather application update, via WiFi, while SG called in to talk to me. Try that on your iPhone, it will fail.
That’s Android; now about this phone. The 2x designator means that it’s a dual-core processor. Currently it’s the only one on the market. A dual core processor makes no sense without a multi-tasking OS and therefore you will never see such a beast running Windows Mobile 7 or any of the other handheld operating systems out there. In addition, the others are also on lower speed CPUs. Android can run there too but, a dual core CPU really lets it fly.
For details on the features you can read this or that. What none of the reviews cover is that this phone is one of the few that still syncs with the standard PIM (MS Outlook) on the desktop. It doesn’t require MS Exchange like WM7 nor does it require an external Cloud like Windows Live, Apple, or Google. Although, the default is to use the Google Cloud. The LG PC Suite IV package does the job nicely but it doesn’t use Active Sync. However, M$ doesn’t use it anymore either so that’s a small loss. My point here is that you save a quantum shedload of monthly data charges by syncing with your desktop directly if you can and is one of my main criteria for a convergent device.
The other happy note is that many of the applications I use on my iPaq are also available on Android. These are specialty applications like SPB Mobile Shell and I just found out that my favorite alarm program, SPB Time, is also available, as well as my secure wallet, Splash ID. Many of those used to be home on WM6.5 (My iPaq PDA) and couldn’t launch on WM7 (MS exclusivity is almost as bad as Apple these days. Both companies seem to have forgotten who won the PC warz and why. MS was open development and market while Apple was closed and exclusive; MS won 1 ).
Anyway, the Cellphone/PDA Convergence foundation has finally been laid and now it’s time for the applications developers to catch up and quit thinking in terms of exclusive single-tasking. What’s there now is decent but it is bound to get a whole lot better.
One quick word about battery life; don’t count on it lasting much more than a day. Especially if you do a lot of calling and internet/data access. Mugen has both 1700 mAh and 4500 mAh batteries for it. the normal battery is a 1500 mAh pack. I am considering the 1700 mAh pack, for $49. However I’ll see after a month, how long the bats live. I have mine tethered a lot due to frequent syncing and every time it syncs, it’s also getting charged.
Specifications
Also known as LG P990 Star, LG P990 Optimus Speed
General
2G Network
GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
3G Network
HSDPA 900 / 1900 / 2100
HSDPA 900 / 1700 / 2100
Announced
2010, December
Status
Available. Released 2011, February
Size
Dimensions
123.9 x 63.2 x 10.9 mm
Weight
139 g
Display
Type
IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
Size
480 x 800 pixels, 4.0 inches
- Gorilla Glass display
- Accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate
- Proximity sensor for auto turn-off
- Gyro sensor
- Touch-sensitive controls
- Multi-touch input method
Sound
Alert types
Vibration, MP3 ringtones
Loudspeaker
Yes
3.5mm jack
Yes, check quality
Memory
Phonebook
Practically unlimited entries and fields, Photocall
Call records
Practically unlimited
Internal
8 GB storage, 512 MB RAM
Card slot
microSD, up to 32GB, buy memory
Data
GPRS
Yes
EDGE
Yes
3G
HSDPA, 10.2 Mbps; HSUPA, 5.76 Mbps
WLAN
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspot
Bluetooth
Yes, v2.1 with A2DP
Infrared port
No
USB
Yes, microUSB v2.0
Camera
Primary
8 MP, 3264×2448 pixels, autofocus, LED flash, check quality
Features
Geo-tagging, face and smile detection, touch focus, image stabilization
Video
Yes, 1080p@24fps, 720p@30fps, check quality
Secondary
Yes, 1.3 MP
Features
OS
Android OS, v2.2 (Froyo), upgradable to v2.3
CPU
Dual-core 1GHz ARM Cortex-A9 proccessor, ULP GeForce GPU, Tegra 2 chipset
Messaging
SMS (threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email, IM
Browser
HTML
Radio
Stereo FM radio with RDS
Games
Yes + downloadable
Colors
Black
GPS
Yes, with A-GPS support
Java
Yes, via Java MIDP emulator
- Social networking integration
- HDMI port
- Google Search, Maps, Gmail
- Digital compass
- YouTube, Google Talk
- DivX/Xvid/MP4/H.264/H.263/WMV player
- MP3/WAV/WMA/eAAC+ player
- Document editor
- Organizer
- Adobe Flash 10.1 support
- Voice memo/dial/commands
- Predictive text input
Battery
Standard battery, Li-Ion 1500 mAh
Stand-by
Up to 400 h
Talk time
Up to 7 h 50 min
Misc
- I don’t care who was better; who has all the market share now? Open standards will always beat closed shop. [ ↩]
Mirrored from The Slamlander.
You can comment here or there. This is also mirrored on Dreamwidth and Facebook.
All rights are reserved under US copyright law. More detail may be found on my Disclaimers and Rights page.