Bionic's still coming, is defintely new hardware - XT875

[CalBear96]

Oh man, I love Compiz, especially with Emerald running on top, it really blows people away when they see a refined and attractive interface that doesn't really look like either of the two commercial OS'es. Not too surprising he's not familiar with that though, many IT guys I've talked to run Windows most of the time, and they experience Linux mostly through SSH, no gui there, ha. Still, I find it hard to believe that many IT guys aren't also tech enthusiasts who wanna try everything, like we are.

But yeah, iOS is indeed forked from OSX, built on the same Darwin core components, which is itself BSD derived, as you know. Specifically, their kernels are Unix-derived, and therefore feel quite similar through a terminal to our preferred Linux based OS'es, including of course Android. I would hope there's not an IT guy out there who doesn't know that the phone in his pocket is running a Unix-based kernel, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

I find it amazing how narrowly focused some IT guys are. I actually met an IT girl who was extolling the virtues of Win 7 over everything. I asked how she felt about FreeBSD and she just looked blank. How can you call yourself an IT specialist and not know what I consider to be one of the best server OS's out there. And it ain't bad on a desktop either! I am so thrilled to see the surge in *nix popularity and advances the OSS world is making.

Getting back on to Bionic, I read the MMI FCC filing that is supposed to be the Bionic and it said the WCDMA/GSM funcitonality is disabled by firmware and SIM locked. Does that imply that there is a GSM radio in it that if the bootloader were unlocked and say a Vodafone or Orange GSM SIM were inserted, you could use it in Europe?

 

[shipwrestler125]

I find it amazing how narrowly focused some IT guys are. I actually met an IT girl who was extolling the virtues of Win 7 over everything. I asked how she felt about FreeBSD and she just looked blank. How can you call yourself an IT specialist and not know what I consider to be one of the best server OS's out there. And it ain't bad on a desktop either! I am so thrilled to see the surge in *nix popularity and advances the OSS world is making.

Getting back on to Bionic, I read the MMI FCC filing that is supposed to be the Bionic and it said the WCDMA/GSM funcitonality is disabled by firmware and SIM locked. Does that imply that there is a GSM radio in it that if the bootloader were unlocked and say a Vodafone or Orange GSM SIM were inserted, you could use it in Europe?

No it means the GSM needs a sim card to work(lte is GSM hence why it says aim locked as lte will not work without a sim

 

[ShiZero]

I think you guys are mistaking Macfag latte-slurping "I fix computarz" IT guys as real IT guys. I haven't had any extensive hands-on experience with Linux and am myself a Windows guy, but any respectable tech professional knows the power that Linux has in the enterprise market.

 

[corymcnutt]

I just hope that the Bionic gets updated to Ice Cream Sandwich

Let's just hope it ships with Gingerbread; infact, let's hope it just ships, PERIOD! I'll worry about Ice Cream Sandwich after that!

 

[shipwrestler125]

Let's just hope it ships with Gingerbread; infact, let's hope it just ships, PERIOD! I'll worry about Ice Cream Sandwich after that!

Agree who cares about ics now it most likely will take months to hit phones other than the nexus anyway. Ship the bionic moto!!!!

 

[neowarcloud]

No it means the GSM needs a sim card to work(lte is GSM hence why it says aim locked as lte will not work without a sim

LTE is LTE, similar to GSM.

 

[XDCX]

No way it wont. Its one of Motorola's headline devices this year. All of the Motorola Droids seem to get updated regularly.

How can you be sure ICS will be backwards compatible with older phones that still have buttons at the bottom of the screen? As I understand it ICS eliminates the need for buttons at the bottom of the screen and I've never heard anything indicating they'll have a version of ICS that will work on older phones.

 

[916ninja]

No it means the GSM needs a sim card to work(lte is GSM hence why it says aim locked as lte will not work without a sim

Sounds more like a world phone capable. I goggled wcdma and its like a mix of hspda and cdma. Something like that. You would have to read it yourself. I just woke up and still trying to start my brain beyond its basic functions. I think I need to battery pull myself. Lol

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

 

[shipwrestler125]

How can you be sure ICS will be backwards compatible with older phones that still have buttons at the bottom of the screen? As I understand it ICS eliminates the need for buttons at the bottom of the screen and I've never heard anything indicating they'll have a version of ICS that will work on older phones.

Nexus s that's why. They wwouldn't not update it. Also just because it geta rid of buttons doesnt mean it wont work with phones that have buttons.

 

[916ninja]

How can you be sure ICS will be backwards compatible with older phones that still have buttons at the bottom of the screen? As I understand it ICS eliminates the need for buttons at the bottom of the screen and I've never heard anything indicating they'll have a version of ICS that will work on older phones.

It shouldn't be to hard to use physical buttons it just needs to be programmed that way. Other phones without buttons would just be the preferred phone. Just a guess.

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

 

[kca2000]

How can you be sure ICS will be backwards compatible with older phones that still have buttons at the bottom of the screen? As I understand it ICS eliminates the need for buttons at the bottom of the screen and I've never heard anything indicating they'll have a version of ICS that will work on older phones.

Having a setting that allows you to switch between On screen and physical buttons cant be that hard to include. Also why would google shut out every phone with physical buttons? Thats every Android phone ever made??? Including the D3, DX2, sgs2. Makes no sense. No way they will do that.

 

[mjforte]

There hasn't actually been confirmation that ICS is using no buttons. Plus Matias Duarte said in an interview a while back that it could be up to the manufacturers in the future to go buttonless or not. I think it was an Engadget review about Honeycomb or something.

 

[Johnly]

With ICS, you wont need "buttons" while older phones can still run ICS, the button area's will be dead. Having and OS that doesn't use them doesn't mean it wont run on old hardware having them in place for previous versions of Google, they will just be completely obsolete. It would make since that manufacturer re-enable the UI through their skins to keep the feel fresh.

 

[Johnly]

There hasn't actually been confirmation that ICS is using no buttons. Plus Matias Duarte said in an interview a while back that it could be up to the manufacturers in the future to go buttonless or not. I think it was an Engadget review about Honeycomb or something.

So all the buzz about the nexus prime going minimal could be wrong? Dang, what a bummer to have to still chalk screen real estate to 4 archaic functions. What a sober let down.

 

[Castor Troy]

Or they may simply code it to work with the soft/hard buttons.

Sent from my Droid

 

[mjforte]

It hasn't been confirmed either way if there's buttons or not. But think about if there isn't. The screen might be bigger but will be taken up by software buttons anyway so its not like the extra screen real estate benefits you in any way unless the software buttons could be called and dismissed on demand.

 

[Johnly]

Or they may simply code it to work with the soft/hard buttons.

Sent from my Droid

That wouldn't be built around specific hardware though, they may as well simply code it to work with several processors too, but that would just taint its performance on the nexus. I would think more like they would build a plug in for older phones. No such code for the pure minimum prime, as it would just be dead weight (on a micro level, of course) though it could be plausible I suppose, a plug in for non pure Google phones seems more appropriate.

 

[Johnly]

It hasn't been confirmed either way if there's buttons or not. But think about if there isn't. The screen might be bigger but will be taken up by software buttons anyway so its not like the extra screen real estate benefits you in any way unless the software buttons could be called and dismissed on demand.

Friend software buttons can be programed to appear when needed, and show whatever functions are specific to what program or app you are running, hardware buttons are like forks, not very intuitive for software soup.

 

[Jasper]

I for one like my buttons, to me they will use less battery than having additional screen to replace them. I get that they could set them to "auto hide" like on your PC so that they aren't under utilizing the screen. But waiting for them to "unhide" to me could be annoying. It's very fast and reliable to have a home screen, back button, menu button always there, always in the same spot as an override. How many times has a phone lagged up, locked up, timed out and you need the buttons to quickly launch you back or home? Just my 2 cents but I for one am not excited about going "button-less".

 

[CalBear96]

A little bit of disappointing news I think. I was seriously hoping for the OMAP 4460 at at least 1.2GHz, and being able to overclock with custom ROM's/kernels but according to FAUguy on HOFO after looking at the FCC spec sheet it looks like 4430.

"The ones for the IHDT56MX1 (which we think is the Targa/Bionic) lists a few things:

Processor speed 1GHz (we know this is dual core)
1GB DDR2 SDRAM (more than we thought)
16GB eMMC (internal memory, just like the DROID 3)
540x960 qHD display
1GHz video clock (maybe just the processor speed?)
HDMI jack with 1080p/720p output
1735mAh battery (good size battery)"

And the 1GHz CPU and GPU speed seem to point to the 4430, though it could be an underclocked 4460. AND retail versions can differ, right? I also was hoping for the original 1930 mAh battery from Etna.