Google's Android guy Andy Rubin on lack of multitouch....

[slackerinabox]

Uhh, i'm not saying it's hard to type on the Droid. It's probably easier to type on the Droid than many of your resistive screen devices. I'm saying the Droid Eris does the job better which shows what multi-touch can do. And Motorola doesn't really make good phones in general. The Droid was a hit. Big deal. Moto's next few phones look good on paper. If they all turn out just as good, then maybe this will be a revival of the company. But there's a reason it's slipped to 4th or 5th place or wherever it's at now.

Why do you hate motorola so much? For the matter, why do you seem to personally hate a company at all, unless they gave your mom cancer or something. I could understand the mOTO hate then.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Why do you hate motorola so much? For the matter, why do you seem to personally hate a company at all, unless they gave your mom cancer or something. I could understand the mOTO hate then.

I'm just saying they haven't made good phones in the past. It's just like domestic cars sucked in the 80s and 90s. Supposedly they're better now like Motorola is. We'll see. Companies have cycles. I'll buy what's best on the market. It's not hate.

But I was addressing the issue of Multi Touch in general. Motorola didn't include it in their Droid, which is understandable. Patent issues. I'm just saying that HTC did slip it in for the Droid Eris.

I believe that multi touch is very important. I'm not faulting anyone for not slipping it in to phones in the US because Apple is the big bad giant. I've said that it is useful for web browsing even though there's double tap features on every other phone, but multitouch gives it a little more control. Would I like to see multitouch brought to Android like this? Yes.

 

[foghorn67]

I'm just saying they haven't made good phones in the past. It's just like domestic cars sucked in the 80s and 90s. Supposedly they're better now like Motorola is. We'll see. Companies have cycles. I'll buy what's best on the market.

But I was addressing the issue of Multi Touch in general. Motorola didn't include it in their Droid, which is understandable. Patent issues. I'm just saying that HTC did slip it in for the Droid Eris.

I believe that multi touch is very important. I'm not faulting anyone for not slipping it in to phones in the US because Apple is the big bad giant. I've said that it is useful for web browsing even though there's double tap features on every other phone, but multitouch gives it a little more control. Would I like to see multitouch brought to Android like this? Yes.

Are you kidding yourself? e815? RAZR? Q?

 

[slackerinabox]

I'm just saying they haven't made good phones in the past. It's just like domestic cars sucked in the 80s and 90s. Supposedly they're better now like Motorola is. We'll see. Companies have cycles. I'll buy what's best on the market. It's not hate.

Curious - how old are you? I'm pretty sure anyone over the age of 10 can name a few good motorola phones. Not saying that Motorola makes the best phone on the market now. Hell, I haven't owned a motorola phone for at least a decade...I currently own a palm pre and have no need to upgrade for a bit - BUT, yeah, thumbs up to Motorola for a good product with the droid - competition is good, after all!

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Are you kidding yourself? e815? RAZR? Q?

Are you kidding me? RAZR was good? You mean it was marketed to the masses in the US? It's the equivalent of the dirt cheap Spectre and Vizio LCDs they sell.

I'm not too familiar with the e815 but I did use the V710 for a bit. I'm not a CDMA guy so I can't comment that much. Bottom line is this was a Verizon locked phone. You couldn't do crap on it. The 1.3MP camera on the V710 was atrocious if you've used other 1.3mp cameraphones. I imagine the E815 can't be too far off. How was the OS? V-series was extremely slow even up to the V710. Samsung and Sony Ericsson and even Nokia had better UIs back then.

Maybe in the US because our phone market is very limited and we're restricted carrier by carrier, Motorola had some decent choices.

Curious - how old are you? I'm pretty sure anyone over the age of 10 can name a few good motorola phones. Not saying that Motorola makes the best phone on the market now. Hell, I haven't owned a motorola phone for at least a decade...I currently own a palm pre and have no need to upgrade for a bit - BUT, yeah, thumbs up to Motorola for a good product with the droid - competition is good, after all!

No I'm not 10, but I've followed the cell phone market closely for long enough. I'm very active on HoFo and have been so since ~2004 era. I've seen what Moto has become in the past few years. Look at their theme at CES. It's a "We're Back" theme. If you haven't figured out that Moto really stunk it up the past couple years and sunk like a rock, you really don't know cell phones yourself. The US market may be one thing, but it is far from representative of what "good" cell phones have been especially when we keep missing out on a lot of phones. In fact a lot of Motorola cell phones have been non-US releases and have been good and it was unfortunate that the US didn't end up getting them.

There is no doubt the Droid was a good start for them. Like I said before, the next couple of phones that are being rumored by Motorola are very good on paper. It's just like the new domestic cars are very competitive to the typical foreign cars like the Camry. I do hope that they release good phones and this can only mean a win for the consumer.

Anyway, my mention of multi touch here was just about multi touch. But it seems you guys took my message as some sort of Moto hatred. Obviously Moto doesn't rank high in my list of cell phone manufacturers, but that can change if they can show me otherwise.

 

[pm]

Are you kidding me? RAZR was good? You mean it was marketed to the masses in the US? It's the equivalent of the dirt cheap Spectre and Vizio LCDs they sell.

I thought the original RAZR was pretty impressive for what we had back in 2004/2005. First it was one of the first sleek cell phones to hit the US and really catch on. Back then everyone had candybar-style designs, the RAZR was neat because it changed the dominant form-factor in my mind. Beyond that it had very good call quality - I might argue that the original RAZR has significantly better call quality than my very modern iPhone 3GS. It had very good battery life - particularly for the time - as I recall my RAZR could go a week between charges. It had a camera at a time when cameras weren't common. The base GSM model was also one of the very few "world GSM" phones at the time.

When the RAZR first appeared, I remember it was a bit like the iPhone... it was expensive, hard to find, and people seemed to do bizarre things to get one. One of my co-workers bought his in England in Christmas 2004 and paid a crazy amount of money for it and brought it back. Similar to the iPhone, it didn't seem to take long before everyone seemed to have one too. I don't remember quite the level of mania surrounding the RAZR, but I do remember that it showed up in TV shows, in movies and it was a "cool" thing to have one in the spring of 2005.

 

[Demo24]

The Droid doesn't have multi-touch included as it's a google experience device. The HTC Eris is not and they chose to do so. Stop blaming Moto about it when it's Google's issue.

 

[sswingle]

Just install Dolphin on your Moto and you have multitouch. Christ.

 

[zerocool84]

Just install Dolphin on your Moto and you have multitouch. Christ.

But see that's the problem. You shouldn't have to. It should be out of the box

 

[foghorn67]

Are you kidding me? RAZR was good? You mean it was marketed to the masses in the US? It's the equivalent of the dirt cheap Spectre and Vizio LCDs they sell.

I'm not too familiar with the e815 but I did use the V710 for a bit. I'm not a CDMA guy so I can't comment that much. Bottom line is this was a Verizon locked phone. You couldn't do crap on it. The 1.3MP camera on the V710 was atrocious if you've used other 1.3mp cameraphones. I imagine the E815 can't be too far off. How was the OS? V-series was extremely slow even up to the V710. Samsung and Sony Ericsson and even Nokia had better UIs back then.

Maybe in the US because our phone market is very limited and we're restricted carrier by carrier, Motorola had some decent choices.



No I'm not 10, but I've followed the cell phone market closely for long enough. I'm very active on HoFo and have been so since ~2004 era. I've seen what Moto has become in the past few years. Look at their theme at CES. It's a "We're Back" theme. If you haven't figured out that Moto really stunk it up the past couple years and sunk like a rock, you really don't know cell phones yourself. The US market may be one thing, but it is far from representative of what "good" cell phones have been especially when we keep missing out on a lot of phones. In fact a lot of Motorola cell phones have been non-US releases and have been good and it was unfortunate that the US didn't end up getting them.

There is no doubt the Droid was a good start for them. Like I said before, the next couple of phones that are being rumored by Motorola are very good on paper. It's just like the new domestic cars are very competitive to the typical foreign cars like the Camry. I do hope that they release good phones and this can only mean a win for the consumer.

Anyway, my mention of multi touch here was just about multi touch. But it seems you guys took my message as some sort of Moto hatred. Obviously Moto doesn't rank high in my list of cell phone manufacturers, but that can change if they can show me otherwise.

You sorely missed the point of the RAZR. It was a great phone. It wasn't a smartphone, it didn't lag. It didn't send emails. It made calls, it didn't drop them. It had a complete BT suite that took others months and months to match. The battery lasted a long time. And it was pretty durable with great build quality. I am not sure what phone at the time you held over it. But I am sure it's in your imagination somewhere.
I'm not sure why you think it was a marketing scheme that kept it popular, or the fact that it was popular made it a turn off. It doesn't stop it from being a good phone.
The e815 was a godsend. It was bulky, but that is the only legitimate complaint.
These two phones alone prove your quote invalid. Proving your Moto hate is conjured by feelings and not facts.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

The Droid doesn't have multi-touch included as it's a google experience device. The HTC Eris is not and they chose to do so. Stop blaming Moto about it when it's Google's issue.

I did not blame Moto. Do you not understand? I said this is a patent issue, and I'd love to have multi touch on an Android device. Of course because someone randomly decided to say I have Moto hate, you all twist my words about multi touch into this.

It is true that I do not hold Moto has the top cell phone maker right now, or anywhere near the top, but I have tried to discuss about the multitouch here and I'm saying that even the Nexus One is disappointing because it lacks it. I completely understand this is a patent issue. I'd love to see things change, but we'll have to see what Google does in the end. I personally prefer Sense UI to Blur UI. I admire HTC for making nice Android phones such as the Eris AND the Hero and the Tatoo and even their excellent WinMo lineup. This is why I've said before that I would like to see the HTC Bravo come out which will be a Nexus One with SenseUI and other HTC customizations.

The raw Android experience is not the best out there to me, but it's a very good experience. Just like many people feel the raw iPhone experience is not good enough. Hence they jailbreak. Clearly the raw WinMo experience is a piece of crap which is why every manufacturer needs to put in their own UI (TouchFLO 3D + Sense UI, TouchWiz, etc). This is not anything against Moto, so there's no need to talk about that. I just hold a lot of praise for HTC in general because their UI is not just any UI. It's redefined the OS. TouchFlo 3D brings Windows Mobile to a whole new level. Sense UI really makes the Hero and Tatoo interesting phones, etc. They're not just themes. It's like jailbreaking your iPhone and just totally transforming it into a new device as some people have shown here. To me it's amazing what they have done, and so yes, to me they have set the bar at a certain level. Which is why a raw Android phone to me isn't as impressive. Unfortunately the Nexus One and Droid fall in that category. But they are the fastest phones you can get, and until HTC releases its Bravo, I'll be waiting.

You sorely missed the point of the RAZR. It was a great phone. It wasn't a smartphone, it didn't lag. It didn't send emails. It made calls, it didn't drop them. It had a complete BT suite that took others months and months to match. The battery lasted a long time. And it was pretty durable with great build quality. I am not sure what phone at the time you held over it. But I am sure it's in your imagination somewhere.
I'm not sure why you think it was a marketing scheme that kept it popular, or the fact that it was popular made it a turn off. It doesn't stop it from being a good phone.
The e815 was a godsend. It was bulky, but that is the only legitimate complaint.
These two phones alone prove your quote invalid. Proving your Moto hate is conjured by feelings and not facts.

The point of the RAZR was not a smartphone. I was not a smartphone user back in the day. I used the V600. I thoroughly compared it to a Razr. Everyone had one. They're the same phone. The RAZR just downsized the V600 into a flat credit card. It was about looks.

Feature-wise, it made calls. Ok, but so does every phone. It had a complete BT suite that took many others months and months to match? Really? I recall I had a tough decision between the Samsung flip, and some SE phones... I totally forgot their numbers, but there were more than a few phones that had BT. Of course given Verizon locked everything, did it really matter?

I've said before that pretty much most cell phone gurus consider Moto to have taken a dive. Why don't you go on HoFo and read for yourself. Motorola itself admits that it hasn't done so hot. Why do you think their CES theme is "We're Back?" This isn't' something that LG and Samsung has needed to do as LG has seen fantastic growth to replace Moto's old leader status and Samsung is a solid #2.

I've said before that the RAZR was a good phone when it came out. You can't just market the same thing over and over again when phones have moved on. I bought the V600 because it had a boatload of features. This was what the RAZR retained. But by the next year I was getting a phone with LED flash, 2.0MP camera, MP3 player... yes the first Walkman phone. Can the RAZR do that? Yes it can "play MP3s" but that was nowhere near revolutionary anymore. Its VGA camera was far out of date, and the UI was absolutely atrocious. I'm not telling you to compare it to today's phones. Compare it with the phones that were out there. There were plenty of phones that could do what the RAZR could do and more.

No, my Moto hate isn't fueled by feelings. It's there because of the terrible phones they made in the past years. I followed HoFo when I first got my Motorola V600. Man that forum was crawling with Moto guys. I was jealous when the RAZR came out. But I saw the forum shift. More and more people talked about SE phones. I saw the SE phone forum filling up. I jumped ship. Years later, I saw that forum die too. The Nokia one was building up really well, especially the S60 forum, and so was the Windows Mobile forum. Now the WinMo forum there is as good as dead, and the Nokia S60 forum is filled with "When is Symbian gonna change" crap. The iPhone forum had a lot of love for the past few years, and recently the Android forum has picked up.

Similarly back when AMD Athlon 64s rocked, the AMD forum @ XtremeSystems would have 3x as many viewers as the Intel forum. After C2D came out, it was 1:1. Now it's like 2:1 in Intel's favor. These may be numbers, but it certainly shows not only what brand is hot, but clearly where the gurus are migrating. You may not believe Motorola has suffered big in the past few years, but clearly the cell phone gurus seem to think so, and so does the company itself.

In the end I don't care if the company succeeds or fails. I just want it to keep releasing phones and inspiring competition. The past couple years weren't great for a lot of companies (Sony Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola). This might be a new beginning for Motorola as it has said at CES itself. That's great. More choices for consumers, more competition. More innovative phones. That's what we're all after now anyway.

But see that's the problem. You shouldn't have to. It should be out of the box

Well the iPhone should have multitasking too, and it should've had cut copy paste out of the box. But I guess we had to jailbreak to get these things. I think there's the ideal picture of the cell phone, and the iPhone has really made multi-touch a desirable feature for all phones.

I don't think anyone will NOT want MultiTouch on their phone or at least they shouldn't mind. We can hope one day the patent issues get resolved, and we can all benefit from such a great feature.

 

[zerocool84]

Well the iPhone should have multitasking too, and it should've had cut copy paste out of the box. But I guess we had to jailbreak to get these things. I think there's the ideal picture of the cell phone, and the iPhone has really made multi-touch a desirable feature for all phones.

Well that's the argument I have with iPhone people. It should have multi-tasking out of the box and many other features. You shouldn't have to hack the OS to get it.

 

[YoungGun21]

You sorely missed the point of the RAZR. It was a great phone. It wasn't a smartphone, it didn't lag. It didn't send emails. It made calls, it didn't drop them. It had a complete BT suite that took others months and months to match. The battery lasted a long time. And it was pretty durable with great build quality. I am not sure what phone at the time you held over it. But I am sure it's in your imagination somewhere.
I'm not sure why you think it was a marketing scheme that kept it popular, or the fact that it was popular made it a turn off. It doesn't stop it from being a good phone.
The e815 was a godsend. It was bulky, but that is the only legitimate complaint.
These two phones alone prove your quote invalid. Proving your Moto hate is conjured by feelings and not facts.

I know you're in the middle of a heated debate and all, but I would just like to point out that the RAZR did lag. A lot. Especially when your inbox was nearly full of text messages. It was an innovative phone, but it had its flaws. This is true for every phone today.

 

[sswingle]

But see that's the problem. You shouldn't have to. It should be out of the box

So do you run IE because thats how it comes out of the box? Shouldn't have to install Firefox or Chrome or anything else.

 

[slackerinabox]

Nerd fight about phones! Even people proclaiming their loyalty to CDMA (vs. gsm). Sometimes I wonder why I even bother coming here....

Motorola's startac made cell phones hip... The razor made high end "luxury" phones something you'd want to have in your well tailored pockets (at first at least). Motorola did a lot for the industry and, yes, has had a shitty few years. But it's ignorant and short sighted to forget their contribution to tech as fashion, and making cell phones something more than just something nerds argue about....

This is coming from a PALM guy - I <3 palm!

 

[vshah]

Nerd fight about phones! Even people proclaiming their loyalty to CDMA (vs. gsm). Sometimes I wonder why I even bother coming here....

Motorola's startac made cell phones hip... The razor made high end "luxury" phones something you'd want to have in your well tailored pockets (at first at least). Motorola did a lot for the industry and, yes, has had a shitty few years. But it's ignorant and short sighted to forget their contribution to tech as fashion, and making cell phones something more than just something nerds argue about....

This is coming from a PALM guy - I <3 palm!

i had a startac in high school, that thing was awesome. went from that to a ericsson T28 world, which was TINY and awesome too.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I remember the Ericsson T28. And then the T68 got IR. I remember transferring a ~70kb JPEG file through my PDA to my friend's T68. IR transfer. WHAT A JOKE!

And then BT came out. I transferred stuff with my laptop, but my friend's Moto V710 was locked. Ew. Stupid Verizon! My V600 from T-Mobile worked just fine.

 

[sygyzy]

http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/08/andy-rubin-on-multitouch-in-android-i-personally-dont-like-tw/


I guess Steve Jobs doesn't have a monopoly on refusing features b/c it doesnt fit his personal whims....

With the two options being:

1. There's either a gentleman's agreement or something legally stopping Google from activating multitouch

or

2. Google simply doesn't "feel like it"

You choose the latter?

 

[zerocool84]

So do you run IE because thats how it comes out of the box? Shouldn't have to install Firefox or Chrome or anything else.

Of course I run something other than IE. I will mod my phones like I'll mod my computers but just telling someone to mod something and voiding their warranty for basic features is not the same. The average person is not going to put different programs on their phone/computer as we all know.

 

[sswingle]

Of course I run something other than IE. I will mod my phones like I'll mod my computers but just telling someone to mod something and voiding their warranty for basic features is not the same. The average person is not going to put different programs on their phone/computer as we all know.

How is downloading an app a mod? And how does this break the warranty? And you expect me to believe the average person is not going to download apps? How many millions of downloads does the App Store have and you expect me to believe that?

 

[sygyzy]

How is downloading an app a mod? And how does this break the warranty? And you expect me to believe the average person is not going to download apps? How many millions of downloads does the App Store have and you expect me to believe that?

sswingle - What app allows my iPhone to multitask? Can you give me a link to the App Store so I can download it?

 

[zerocool84]

How is downloading an app a mod? And how does this break the warranty? And you expect me to believe the average person is not going to download apps? How many millions of downloads does the App Store have and you expect me to believe that?

Rooting or jailbreaking voids the warranty and most won't go that far cus they're scared to do it. Also most people won't get something that's not from the app store and how many apps from the app store add multi touch to the OS???

 

[sswingle]

sswingle - What app allows my iPhone to multitask? Can you give me a link to the App Store so I can download it?

This entire thread is about multiTOUCH on the DROID, not about multitask on the iPhone, so not sure what you are getting at here.

Rooting or jailbreaking voids the warranty and most won't go that far cus they're scared to do it. Also most people won't get something that's not from the app store and how many apps from the app store add multi touch to the OS???

All I have said all along is that you can download Dolphin to get multitouch browsing. Dolphin is in the marketplace. The fact that programs can use multitouch if they so desire shows that the phone supports it, it is just the included software that does not.

 

[TheWart]

This entire thread is about multiTOUCH on the DROID, not about multitask on the iPhone, so not sure what you are getting at here.



All I have said all along is that you can download Dolphin to get multitouch browsing. Dolphin is in the marketplace. The fact that programs can use multitouch if they so desire shows that the phone supports it, it is just the included software that does not.

Your second point raises an issue I have been wondering about. If Apple has a patent on multitouch and that is why Google doesn't include it on its US software package, wouldn't that patent cover the implementation of multitouch at a *hardware* level? My point is this - how can the developers of Dolphin (or any other Android software that uses multitouch) get around this supposed Apple patent, but Google can't? Apologies if I am missing something obvious, but I am not a patent lawyer...

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Your second point raises an issue I have been wondering about. If Apple has a patent on multitouch and that is why Google doesn't include it on its US software package, wouldn't that patent cover the implementation of multitouch at a *hardware* level? My point is this - how can the developers of Dolphin (or any other Android software that uses multitouch) get around this supposed Apple patent, but Google can't? Apologies if I am missing something obvious, but I am not a patent lawyer...

I suppose Google is more afraid of a lawsuit than some developer is while in his mom's basement.