You’ve probably all heard about the partnership announced by Nokia and Microsoft earlier this week, and maybe even all the hysteria over at Nokia dumping MeeGo and Symbian for WP7. ‘Desperate times call for desperate measures’, should have been the title of Nokia’s event at MWC earlier today, because this is definitely the time for Nokia to do or die.
That being said, Stephen Elop making the statement “first priority is beating Android” is pretty gutsy considering how much market they’ve already lost to Android over 2010 as we reported here. Thing is though, how exactly does Stephen Elop plan on taking down Android? I don’t see Windows Phone 7 showing numbers that even remotely suggest that OS gaining ground on Android, not even close.
With Nokia losing ground constantly, and partnering with a weak selling mobile OS like WP7, i don’t know…2 wrongs don’t make a right…do they?
We’re not trying to throw gasoline on the fire or anything, but here’s an interesting video of Flash and HTML5 duking it out on two different mobile devices.
Developer Chris Black shows us two versions of the same animation, one done in Canvas and JavaScript and one done in Flash. He first runs it on a brand new iPod Touch (HTML5) and then on an Android Nexus One (HTML5 and Flash). The framerate is much higher and steady on the Flash version — 57 frames per second versus 40fps in Canvas on the Nexus One and 22fps on the iPod.
A few huge caveats here: The animation is very simple, and is hardly on par with most web animations. Also, the JavaScript code is not optimized as much as it could be, which may be hurting the framerate numbers in the HTML5 portion of the test. Lastly, it’s only an experiment. The HTML5 test measures the rendering speed of the mobile browsers being used, so it can’t be taken as a true head-to-head Flash/HTML5 benchmark. Read the comments on Black’s post and you’ll see people reporting different results across different Android devices. To that point, he uses an iPod Touch, roughly the same as an iPhone and not as fast as an iPad (none of which can play Flash content).
So what’s the purpose, then? Black says he’s trying to take the temperature of the different choices to decide where it makes the most sense for him to focus his efforts as a developer. Here’s his rationale, in the comments of his post:
The bottom line is that I need performance out of new technologies that match that of existing technologies. I’m quickly growing tired of coding down to new technologies. I need code to work in both HTML5 and Flash, not one or the other. When I can build Flash in a quarter of the time that outperforms the same JavaScript, I begin to wonder where we should draw the line.
We found this video on the blog of John Nack, Adobe’s product lead for Photoshop who also has a long history of dealing with vector graphics in browsers. His thoughts:
Now, does this mean that HTML5 sucks or shouldn’t be used? Of course not! … All these implementations are new, and I expect they’ll all improve, especially as developers figure out what techniques work best for each. Competition is great. For things that HTML5 does best, use it; same goes for Flash.
In a surprise turn of events, it seems T-Mobile fans are eager to get the iPhone on T-Mobile and would rather purchase one over any current Android devices. Right nowy over at TmoNews, there is a poll asking your feeling on iPhone coming to T-Mobile and if you’d purchase one if it did. The topic, “Would You Buy A T-Mobile iPhone?”. The current results of the poll are not in Android’s favor. As of 2 a.m. Pacific time the votes look like this:
31% (1,806 votes) Hell yes, come to me Apple!
35% (2,051 votes) Only if T-Mobile kept their current pricing.
How is it Android is losing by more than 2 to 1? Could it be related to the popularity of Android or maybe big lack of cutting edge hardware available on T-Mobile’s network?
As far as rumor mills go, there is no official word that the iPhone is coming to T-Mobile in the near future. Will it at some point? It would be logical as it is a GSM phone. T-Mobile would be the most likely carrier to offer the device next. Do I think it would boost customers for T-Mobile? Absolutely! On a business side, bringing the iPhone to T-Mobile would deal quite a blow to AT&T. How many millions of iPhone users are out there already? There are over 3 million of them on the iPhone4 alone. So if even 1/4 of those people changed to T-Mobile, that’s 750,000 new activations. Not too shabby at all. I’m fairly sure more than 1/4 would change over to T-Mobile, especially if the antenna issue gets resolved.
Why am I ranting about the iPhone? If T-Mobile did launch the iPhone, could T-Mobile’s network handle the increased user load on the network’s infrastructure? T-Mobile’s network is more prepared for a device with such a large following. HSPA+ aka 4G, is rolling out to more cities and is expected to cover 185 million Americans by the end of the year. With only one confirmed official HSPA+ capable Android phone by T-Mobile (still not official on what it is yet though), is there enough bandwidth available for the iPhone and Android to share? Or will it be like a virus and eat us alive?
Here is my question. If or when the iPhone becomes available on T-Mobile, would you jump the Android ship and join the ranks of the iPhone users? If you would, is it because of the lack of cutting edge hardware available with Android?
I can with complete confidence say that I would never leave Android. Maybe I’m just crazy. Even with source not always being shared by the carriers, even with Motorola trying to lock down their devices and even with 45% of Android users on Android 1.6 (Donut), I won’t leave Android. I would be much happier on Android 1.5 (cupcake) on my G1 and open, than locked down and run by a dictator, but that’s just my 2 cents.
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