HTC got friendly last week having a launch party for their yet unreleased Desire HD and Dersire Z phones. The phones are nice and light (maybe slightly too light) models with WVGA screens (the desire HD has a larger screen at 4.3").
The event was a bit misguided - the phones were in a separate room, in which only a few people were allowed to view them at a time. I think a better marketing technique would've been to have more phones so everyone that went could get a better look at them. It was quite annoying going to see new phones and not really being able to get a sense of what they feel like to use for a while. If you're going to spend all that money on marketing, then more actual phones definitely couldn't hurt, but who would say no to free food and beer anyway ...
The Desire HD borders on a mini-tablet device with such a large screen, though it is still very much a (big) phone. It also has the very nice feature of a built in DNLA server, which I am looking very forward to. Hopefully it will play nicely with MyPOD so you can easily have videocasts on your main TV. It is certainly a nice feature to have for a media device though, videos can be viewed without cables. I'm guessing more recent TVs have this DNLA client functionality built in, but I use my PlayStation which works fine (I haven't had a chance to test it with the device unfortunately).
The desire Z is slightly lower power (800MHz), and has a nice looking slide out keyboard.
The phone specs are available here:
HTC Desire HD
HTC Desire Z
Showing posts with label biz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label biz. Show all posts
Tuesday, 21 September 2010
Saturday, 11 September 2010
Android vs Oracle contradictions
There has been a lot of talk in the tech world about Oracle's patent infringement claims against the Android operating system. Oracle have not disclosed the details of the claims, and are highly unlikely to do so before the case goes to court. While I respect the right of Oracle to protect it's intellectual property, it seems this non-disclosure is more aimed at scaring people away from Android, even though ultimately they will be seeking some form of licensing arrangement for whatever patents/copyrights have been infringed in Android.
The best thing Oracle can do at the moment is to disclose the basis of their claims, not only are they hurting Android but they are also hurting the open-source Java community in its entirety, and in doing so the value of arguably the biggest asset they acquired in their takeover of Sun (i.e. Java). One wonders how they can't see this, possibly they think Java is too big to fail now (sound familiar?).
The whole thing rings of the IBM vs SCO case of a few years ago. They made claims Linux infringed their patents, would not disclose any information about it and then when the case came to court, they didn't really have much to stand on. SCO eventually filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and looks like it will go out of business. The lesson that could have been learnt is that these frivolous patent claims cost everyone money and to proceed you would want to be quite sure of wining, even though the lack of disclosure indicates they aren't really that sure.
It all adds a lot of weight to the argument that the patents system needs drastic reformation for use with software, which is re-used as a general development practice. Until this happens patents will be used as a tools for revenue generation and most likely result in mutually assured destruction for businesses looking to (mis)use them for revenue generation purposes.
The best thing Oracle can do at the moment is to disclose the basis of their claims, not only are they hurting Android but they are also hurting the open-source Java community in its entirety, and in doing so the value of arguably the biggest asset they acquired in their takeover of Sun (i.e. Java). One wonders how they can't see this, possibly they think Java is too big to fail now (sound familiar?).
The whole thing rings of the IBM vs SCO case of a few years ago. They made claims Linux infringed their patents, would not disclose any information about it and then when the case came to court, they didn't really have much to stand on. SCO eventually filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and looks like it will go out of business. The lesson that could have been learnt is that these frivolous patent claims cost everyone money and to proceed you would want to be quite sure of wining, even though the lack of disclosure indicates they aren't really that sure.
It all adds a lot of weight to the argument that the patents system needs drastic reformation for use with software, which is re-used as a general development practice. Until this happens patents will be used as a tools for revenue generation and most likely result in mutually assured destruction for businesses looking to (mis)use them for revenue generation purposes.
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