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Ars Technica reviews a $99 Android tablet

Ewwwwww: 

 
The Maylong M-150 TabletPC is an Android-based device sold by Walgreens for a mere $99 a pop. The obvious purpose for this tablet's existence is to appeal to bargain basement shoppers—grandmas, poor college kids, those on a tight budget—by claiming to offer a full tablet experience for cheap. I mean, it runs Android, right? That's a legit operating system nowadays. Unfortunately, the Maylong M-150 is the very epitome of "race to the bottom," and anyone looking to buy one would get more bang for the buck by setting it on fire for warmth. 

The truth of the matter is that the M-150 is so painful to use that you'll rarely find yourself looking forward to using it (not to mention that it feels cheap, flimsy, and barely lasts longer than a drunken fratboy in bed). Why would you do that to yourself?

All those 500,000 daily Android activations are worthy activations though, right? ;-)

[Ars Technica]

Patent wars: How much is a patent worth anyway?

According to Frost & Sullivan analyst Craig Cartier, the Pi-loving Googlers did some pretty simple math to reach $12.5 billion as a price for Motorola:

"Motorola has a portfolio of 24,500 patents and patent applications that instantly bolsters Google’s strength in the IP war. Looking at some recent patent auctions and using some simple math can show why these patents were indeed the target of Google’s acquisition.

Using one of the industries recent patent auctions as a baseline, in December of 2010, Novell sold off its portfolio of 882 patents for $450 Million. A simple division calculation leads us to a value of $510,204.08 per patent. Why not round that figure off you ask? Well, let’s look at the patent value of the Motorola acquisition.

Forgetting that Motorola also makes mobile phones, let’s say the entire value of the acquisition was in their 24,500 patents and applications. At a $12.5 billion price tag, that equates to…drum roll please…$510,204.08 per patent. Can anyone guess what heuristic they used in the board room in valuing the deal?

In the Motorola acquisition, Google bought a patent portfolio and got a mobile phone business thrown in for free."

I cannot find this quote directly from Craig Cartier, but originally saw it on The Economist site. As comments on that post say, not all patents (ideas) are created equal, but it sure looks like there's a healthy going (average) rate, with no economies of scale. Actually it's the opposite of that - a chunk of Motorola's patents are in 'application' phase, so potentially worth less than actual, granted patents. Did Google overpay? Do they have more money than sense?

[via David Olsen]

"Hardware is only a small part of the user experience, the UI brings it alive" [interfaces]

T3 magazine has published an insightful interview with HTC's Chief Innovative Officer, Horace Luke. Specifically they talk about HTC's new Hero phone (right).

The company really is leading the way with Google Android-based phones and Luke highlights the user interface - and HTC's customisaton of it with HTC  Sense™ - as the thing that really stands out on the new device.

"The hardware is only a small part of the user experience, the UI brings it alive. I can’t say whether we’ll be implementing the new UI on all Android phones already available, but we do want to bring it to as many devices as possible. But Hero is a very cool device, one of the best I’ve worked on. Once you’ve used it you can’t go back."

Read the full interview over at T3.

HTC Hero overview

[via Gizmodo]

Vodafone Spain gets ahead of the curve with the HTC Magic

Vodafone Spain has leapt ahead of the curve and launched the new Google Android phone, the HTC Magic. This is around a week before the UK and who knows how much ahead of Australia (Vodafone Spain).

As said before, this is a very, very sleek looking handset that's matched with the Android OS, itself soon to see an update. Check out this excellent video too (via Jennie Bewes):

iPhone OS, Android OS and WebOS
The next few months will really be interesting in this market as Palm, HTC and Apple all have top-end touch screen and multitouch products launching with the Pre, Magic and iPhone V3 respectively.

Apple currently has the jump with Apps (having reached a billion last week - in just 9 months), but the fight with all other features is predicted to be a little bit closer, and there's nothing like serious competition to push up the level of innovation.

[News source: engadget]