52: 52 Commits
3 June 2013
Mike and Chris chat about Firefox OS’s big boost, and how things could be starting to get very interesting for mobile and HTML5 developers. Then debate if Canonical is surrendering the desktop war. Plus Mike reviews his new HTC One, your emails, and more!
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HTC ONE: The Mike Review
The HTC One is the best Android smartphone in the world — period. It combines some of the best materials with the most incredible screen I’ve seen, and is the fastest and most responsive Android phone I have used.
I can boil the preceding 3,000 or so words into a few brief sentiments for you to chew on: the HTC One is easily the best device that the company has ever crafted, and it’s perhaps the single nicest Android phone I’ve ever used. Despite some minor faults, I haven’t so much as picked up any of the other Android smartphones scattered around my office during my time with the One unless I absolutely had to. It’s really that good.
The phone — like all phones — does have its shortcomings. There’s no way to expand the storage, which HTC attempts to address by shipping the base model with 32 gigabytes of memory instead of the more standard 16 gigabytes. There’s also no way to replace the battery. The power button on the top left of the phone is set at a bit of a downward angle that forces your finger to curl up and over the top edge of the phone in order to access it, which makes waking the phone up a tad cumbersome at times. And people with small hands may still find the 4.7-in.-screened handset too large to use comfortably.
Hoopla:
At a press conference earlier today in Taipei (2pm local time on/3/2013),****the Foxconn Technology Group announced their support for Firefox OS, Mozilla’s open Web mobile operating system. The partnership includes collaboration on the use of the Firefox OS on Foxconn devices to create new, integrated offerings. For complete press release, see Mozilla’s press center for more details.
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Mozilla inks deal with Foxconn to co-develop Firefox OS devices, shows off its first-ever tablet
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Mozilla inks deal with Foxconn to co-develop Firefox OS devices, shows off its first-ever tablet
As you may have already heard, the former company has signed on to become the 19th member of the latter’s Firefox OS alliance, and it’slready working on at least five devices.
Today, Shuttleworth has declared the bug “closed,” but the bug wasn’t fixed as a result of Ubuntu’s popularity. It was fixed by the rise of iOS and Android. As for Ubuntu, Shuttleworth now says, “it’s better for us to focus our intent on excellence in our own right rather than our impact on someone else’s product.”