Potentially the longest thread in history...

[PP Mguire]

Actually, I should change that. The GoPhone I got is a Pantech, so naturally stupid connector on it.

 

[hikaricloud]

PANTECH DIIIIEEEE AAGGGGHHHH

I always hated Pantech. Worst phones I ever sold.

 

[PP Mguire]

My mom had one for the longest time and actually liked it. She now has an Android based phone and wonders how she ever liked that POS.

 

[carnageX]

Right, once smartphones started becoming the norm after the iPhone launch, methinks the big companies finally started to understand that proprietary stinks, especially with phones that have higher capabilities to their flip predecessors. More people would be needing USB cables for them as opposed to flip phones, so switching from proprietary to mini USB variations made sense. HTC was one of the only ones I can name with certainty that still had proprietary charger ports on smartphones up to late 2009/early 2010 like my HTC Hero CDMA version...you could still fit a mini-USB cable in there even though it wasn't made for it, which is nice.

My Rezound still has a funky-ish looking connector, but a microUSB still fits in it. So they kind of make it look proprietary still...but any microUSB still works.

 

[hikaricloud]

So. Um.

 

[Oreo]

I'm guessing they did it so they wouldn't be tied to ARMs roadmap for future devices. Although until we see more specs and performance it's hard to tell how successful they have been, it appears to be quite a bit slower than Krait which is Qualcomm's custom ARM design but without knowing the core count of A6 it's hard to say how significant that is.

Given the pile of cash they are sitting on they could have just bought AMD and Global Foundries if they wanted to go the 100% in house route.

Well if it is indeed only dual core, then they've done a good job - because general iOS performance is roughly 2x across the board while getting better battery life than the A5 on the 4S.

If they've done that then they've made a good choice. The same performance gains they would of got from going to Quad core A9 based, but with none of the issues with apps not supporting multithreading for 4 cores.

 

[Yami]

Right, once smartphones started becoming the norm after the iPhone launch, methinks the big companies finally started to understand that proprietary stinks, especially with phones that have higher capabilities to their flip predecessors. More people would be needing USB cables for them as opposed to flip phones, so switching from proprietary to mini USB variations made sense. HTC was one of the only ones I can name with certainty that still had proprietary charger ports on smartphones up to late 2009/early 2010 like my HTC Hero CDMA version...you could still fit a mini-USB cable in there even though it wasn't made for it, which is nice.

Plus they were all forced to over here by an EU law. I'm guessing they thought they may as well switch to mUSB over there as well, to make manufacturing cheaper not having to make two different connectors for the same phone.

 

[PP Mguire]

So. Um.

Oh know, looks like your XFX 5770 took a dump on you. That is what all 4 of mine did to me. None of the RMAs I had from them fixed it.

 

[Oreo]

RIght, my new phone data plan allows 1000GB per month before any traffic management policy kicks in. ****ing sweet.

However.. how would one go about using two internet connections simultaneously ? What I would love to do would be connect my phone via USB for tethering, have my usual ADSL via ethernet. So then I can browse on internet along with the rest of my family, and do hefty downloads over my phones 3G connection without affecting me or the rest of the household. On a technical level within windows, it looks like its going to be pretty complicated if not impossible. I just want to be able to select what connection to use when I go to download something. But as far as I can tell, it does not exist.

 

[Yami]

Depends if there's a Lightning-to-Ethernet adaptor, you get them for some Samsung phones.