Phones

Well, here we go again. So many awesome Android phones, so little time. I'm once again left dumbfounded by the sheer number of great devices currently available. The HTC One. The Samsung Galaxy S4. The LG G2. The Moto X. Four phones, (finally) available on all four major U.S. carriers. Or go for the Nexus 4 for just $249 outright. 

This is a really good problem to have, and the year's not even done yet. Figure we'll see a new Nexus in the next month or two. And it wouldn't surprise me to see another fairly major release on Verizon — Motorola or HTC would be my guess.

You almost can't go wrong at this point. Each phone is different, for sure, but I wouldn't steer anyone away from any of them.

A few other thoughts on the week that was ...

  • We've gotten a number of reports from folks who have been unable to activate their new LTE-capable Nexus 7 on Verizon — never mind what Hugo Barra said at the launch event. (For the record, it was "We're shipping a 4G LTE version of the new Nexus 7. It's unlocked, and in the U.S. you'll be able to get LTE data from AT&T, T-Mobile or Verizon, all from the same device.")
  • Yeah, AT&T did a good thing badly with its (since-deleted) 9/11 Tweet last week. I think its heart was in the right place, paying tribute on the 12th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. But, yeah, no need to frame it through the display of a smartphone. It's at least worth mentioning that AT&T at least scrubbed the BlackBerry branding from the Z10 that was used.
  • Glad to see the apology from Randall Stephenson out of that. But at the same time, I might cut 'em all a little slack. They blew it, yeah. But that tweet was hardly done out of malice.
  • We're experimenting a little with some Facebook promotion (read: small-scale advertising) for our app. It's been an interesting experience for me — and's cool how much targeting can be done with that sort of thing. Chances are if you're reading this you'll never see the ad. (In fact, I haven't seen it either.) It's just something we're trying for the sake of trying something new.
  • Speaking of advertising and experiments ... I'm no web designer by any stretch of the imagination. But my wife needed a place to continue writing after her newspaper tenure came to an abrupt halt. So I tried Squarespace. Not quite as easy as all those online ads make it sound — but on the other hand I didn't see a single line of HTML, either, for which my weary brain thanked me. It's also fairly feature-rich, and easy to set up a new domain. I think it turned out OK, and Squarespace is worth checking out if you're looking to build a new site.
  • Speaking of my wife ... We'll have been married nine years this week. If I remember correctly — and this is the important part, right? — I was either using a Samsung SPH-A500 or Sanyo SCP-4900 at the time. (Probably the latter.)
  • The updated Twitter app (still in beta at the time of this writing) isn't horrible, but it still does some silly things. Oh, well. Some progress is better than none.
  • If you're in the market for some awesome old webOS gear — and want to help out a good cause — check out former webOS developer Josh Marinacci's charity auction. Reminds me that I never actually owned a Palm Pre. Might have to change that. More here.

TTFN. Let's get back to work.