Not evil twin to Phone Different Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple's current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place -- best not to linger...). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!
Blackberry Out of Outages?
Given CrackBerry.com's near-constant updates on RIM's outages, unscheduled, scheduled, re-scheduled, and beyond, I thought there would be no way RIM could top themselves again. Boy, was I wrong. This week marked the first time in a long time (long time being the history of this series, 'natch) that RIM was complete out of outages!
Talk about poor supply-chain management. Sure, they've had infrastructure and service failures before, but a failure failure?
Brain trust in Waterloo: get on it!
India to RIM: Push This!
Those hoping RIM would conceded to India's desire to invade the privacy and security of every user in the nation -- by, for example, setting up proxy servers the way they have in China and Singapore, or just giving Indian security agencies the keys to encryption-city -- tough luck!
Crackberry.com tells us Sriprakash Jaiswal, the Minister of State for Home Affairs, has gone and forced carriers to block any and all Blackberry to Blackberry messaging.
India and RIM will meet again soon, but the carriers aren't wasting any time in fighting back themselves. Expected this week: new advertising campaigns, boasting the first Blackberries in the world with equally good email and media handling!
Microsoft: Gotta Get You Some! (Taste, That Is!)
While WMExperts.com was all over the WinMob news this week (doubtless yet another iterative handset or 3rd party patch for missing OS functionality), I really couldn't follow it after exposure to Microsoft "leaked" "internal" "moral-booster" video for the troops. Blind and deaf, yet unmercifully not amnesia-tic, I'm left to wonder why they insist on releasing things the world can never un-experience?
(Poor Paul Thurrott was so traumatized he blamed the interwebs for not getting the "joke", not realizing there are levels of joke, and failing at a joke this spectacular becomes an even bigger joke -- laughing at it, not with it, b'okay Paul?)
Treo 800w -- Beta!
You're Palm. You revolutionized the handset industry only to fall so far behind you can no longer see the competition. You've saddled yourself with a monstrous OS almost as dated as your design specs. And due to chronic mismanagement you have no hope of releasing your own product or updated OS in the foreseeable future. What do you do?
Drop the beta bomb.
That's right. Treocentral.com brings us word that Palm is looking for a few good beta testers. Beta, of course, implies unfinished, unfinished demands forgiveness, forgiveness leads to understanding when the inevitable shortcomings and delays follow.
So the company that should have innovated us an iPhone-class device 5 years ago may manage to release a single, dated device this year. In beta.
Ladies and gentlemen, Joe Rubenstein!
And in No Other News...
Zip. Zippo. Ziltch. You'd have better odds getting Motorola's software and hardware divisions working together. Seriously. It's getting to the point where you just want to give Samsung a gesture alright...
We may earn a commission for purchases using our links. Learn more.
This is how to check if a used iPhone or iPad was stolen from Apple
With several Apple stores looted and their display devices stolen, make sure you know how to spot if a device was stolen from Apple.
No, this mockup isn’t the iPhone 13
There's a 3D-printed mockup doing the rounds and people claim it's the iPhone 13. But there are a few problems with that. Starting with the fact it isn't.
This is how Apple will keep people safe when reopening Apple Park
Apple has already started bringing people back to Apple Park, but things aren't how they were before COVID-19.
The best 40-inch and 43-inch TVs around
If you don't want a small screen, but you don't quite want to jump up to a big-screen TV, then the 40- to 43-inch range is your best option. Check out these 4K and 1080p options.
