Aight since I was a bit busy with stuff, its a bit late and still incomplete, will continually update it to finish it all off ------ So the digital age has brought us mini computers in our palms and viola we has smartphones. Theyre smart because they're able to replicate functionalities that you usually see on the computer. Lets first have some enthuists' history class. It all began with the PDA, personal diary assistant(something like that) then gradually we saw the introduction of the Palm OS with Palm machines then later Sony Clies and those. Soon after we had Windows Mobile / Windows CE starting to spawn with those mini laptops and stuff which were zomg less powerful than the ones we have today at the same size. It soon spawn the Pocket PC segment which all ran Windows Mobile starting with the Compaq ipaq. From then on we had Windows Mobile with Phone functionalities, and Symbian OS on mobile phones and then Palm OS with mobile phone functions as well later. So the fight goes on between these mobile platforms then Windows Mobile pratically took the whole segment away from them and symbian being used less n less and eventually only on Nokias. Palm OS... well it died for a while then they came back with webOS which then also saw acquisition of palm by HP so yah that basically sums up how they did. Then in came Apple with the first iPhone and introduction of the iOS. It slowly got the market share from windows mobile users (i believe it came out when we were still on Windows Mobile 5) but yeah then they fought the battle, Windows Mobile still held its ground till 6/6.5 then Apple came out with the 3G which went worldwide and then more n more people adopted to it. Then we start having the Androids trickling in and Windows Mobile waiting for the 7 to come out while losing chunks n chunks of marketshare. Blackberries were also around early on but yeah I dont really care for them though theyre canadian. People simply use it cuz their email servers were using blackberry service and now its the teenagers wannabe business men using it (including my sister). So today we are pratically left with the follow to even consider: iOS Blackberry Android Windows Mobile 7 So I own/have access to one of each except windows mobile 7 though I have been a heavy windows mobile user before with 6.5 and below so I'll give my take on that. Some fundamentals: We first need to understand the fundamentals on how programs work on a computer. So first we have technically 3 areas we're concerned about, Memory, Storage, and CPU. Your programs are in Storage at first, when you call it, it gets load into memory and then CPU. When you run multiple applications (including your operating system) the program gets cycled around from memory to cpu to memory to storage etc etc depending on whether its currently being used or not. Your program will not always be in CPU because the CPU's built in memory (cache) is real limited thus it gets swapped back n forth from main memory. I will place holder the following 4 posts for each smartphone operating system.
iOS or namely the iPhone operating system is based on darwin which is also what OSX is based on. Its an industrial standard unix operating system underneath. Hardware iOS are limited to only Apple thus theyre only on iPhones. Hardware specifications wise, the iPhone4 has a 1ghz processor, 3GS has a 600mhz~, 3G has a 400mhz~ (off the top of my head) Ram wise, we're talking around 512mb for 4, 128mb for 3 and 3GS (iPad has 256mb) Although the processor speeds are actually better than some older speced computers, it does not mean it is able to run say windows straight off, the A4 is a RISC based CPU which has special instruction sets while our computers are CISC. (yes greek talk) The next generation A9 Cortex which is what the Apple A4 CPU is based out of will be getting dual core so that is something we'll probably expect in the next itteration of iPhone. Jailbreak or not? By jailbreaking, it means that you will haev access to all the functionalities of the operating system and its core system. You're able to initiate commands in its unix shell which is forbidden by Apple by default. Pros: Ability to run more types of applications Other programming language software is able to run You're able to run applications that are not approved by Apple Cons: Big security hole risk especially if you dont know what you're doing Potential data theft as the default root (or admin) password is "alpine" So overall I would not risk it even if theres free apps simply because you dont really need all the functionality in general. Flash? Wah! The hardware is capable of running Flash however Apple has omitted it from every iOS iteration. The reason behind it is actually because Flash in itself is quite a powerful platform thats like Java, and because Adobe likes to leave a lot of security holes open, it is for the better to not have it. Did you know that Flash has capabilities to call your hardware on your desktops? Thus unless Adobe is able to make it bullet proof, it will not be adopted by Apple. Flash is also omitted from ingame browser of MMO EVE Online because of the security risk that it poses to account security. How is multitasking handled? iOS does not do true multitasking as it does not run the full application in the background. Multi-taskable applications in iOS have a shorter segment of code that runs in the CPU that only does bare minimum functions thus its practically a sleep state you can say. When you call it back up, it restores the full state from storage (or rebuilds it from the memory). By pressing home you're not quitting applications with the multitasking, you need to double click the home and close it from there just like the way you delete applications. Why my video doesnt play in mail? So to answer richy's question. It is simply because their email application does not have any codecs built into it or a player in fact. Apple applications will only call their own apps to run stuff, which in fact is also avaliable for developers to use for their own applications. It can handle everything that Preview can handle like PDF, doc, etc. however the only video format that iOS can handle natively is actually .mp4/.mov. Thus I believe if you do recieve a .mp4 thats encoded properly, it should be able to play it, any other formats are no go. There are players out there like VLC Player which has the whole VLC codec built into it and can play many other formats but its only able to read stuff from the Document Share area and not from your Mail. Cinexplayer also is avaliable but it only has XviD built in where as VLC can play MKV containers. thus in reality there is no real solution except to find a developer who made an application that can load email attachements into your document share or have a built in codec/player.
Hardware: Android is a Open Source Operating System open to manufacturers thus we have a lot of choice in hardware. Minimum CPU speed you will see is probably around 600mhz. RAM varies but in general they should have at least 256mb of ram. Root or not? Rooting is having the super user access to all the operating system's functionalities. There is no real downside to rooting an Android as the logins are not as generic as Apple. The only reason you wouldnt want to is because of warranty concerns. How is mulittasking handled? Android runs applications in background, its considered not to be as a low power state as say iOS way of management. Thus the more applications you're running, the hotter it runs and faster your battery drains. Are there any drawbacks? The only thing that Android lacks is a more user friendly app store and possibly user interface. You are able to install any application to the Android and is a very open platform for development.
Thanks for posting that. I was hoping you'd have better news for the videos in emails. Merde. Maybe that's the ace up their sleeve for the iphone5? Isn't it supposed to be launched in June? Heard any details or rumours about it? Thanks for taking the time to explain about the phones.
i highly doubt that we will see videos embedded in the email client as the screen size on mobile devices are quite small to have it playing, At the same time, it also means that the swapping becomes a lot more intensive, instead of buffering for video, you also need to worry about the data from the email client and such, the mobile CPUs have a much smaller instruction set than desktop CPUs thus it may take 3 cpu cycles to process a frame of video as opposed to 1, not to mention we could also push work onto the modern graphics card for high definition decoding, we do not have that on most mobile devices (it exists but it also means extra real estate required on the electronic board) The next iteration of iphone should be June in accordance to their usual life cycles but it may just be the "white" iphone first lol. We have yet to be able to see any new breakthroughs that would possibly be superior for mobile phones without sacrificing battery life. We must remember that battery life plays a big role in deciding how fast the CPU is set to. Its not good if you have a super fast cpu but an hr of battery life. anyhow I will get the other parts up within this week, just got a few things on my hands including helping shane make his logo for his business =p
