Motorola’s Glam launched on August 4th in South Korea. The Glam is an Android 2.1 smartphone sporting a 3.7-inch LCD with a 854×480 pixel format. The LCD used in the Glam seems to be the same that is used on the Droid and Motoroi. From my limited experience of the Motoroi I can say without reservation that the display is fantastic. Note DisplayMate awarded the Motorola Droid the DisplayMate Best Video Hardware Guide Award for both smartphone and the entire mobile display category. check out the review of the Droid for a lot of detailed display info.

Other specs include: dual LED flash, a five megapixel camera, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, a 3.5-mm headphone jack, USB 2.0 connectivity (a microUSB I presume), GPS. SK Telecom is the carrier of choice and should be available at the end of August. via Engadget

Samsung’s SyncMaster FX2490HD is a 24-inch LCD monitor sporting an edge-lit LED backlight. The FX2490HD features a 1920×1080 pixel format, an integrated TV tuner, two HDMI ports, D-Sub and SCART. Other display specs include: 1000:1 contrast ratio, 250 cd/m2 brightness, a USB port. Priced around US$540 and should be available in September.

The stand. Some might like it but I just can’t muster up enough like. The matte display looks wonderful to my eyes but the bezels seem to be unnecessarily thick thanks to the useless transparent design sticking out.

Thanks to the integrated TV tuner the FX2490HD can be used as a LCD TV as well. But I think it is unnecessary. I am fairly sure most of us who watch TV do it not via a tuner but through things like iTunes, cable, IPTV, PlayStation, Xbox, etc. I think a HDMI connection is enough. Brown? Source: Engadget

I eyeballed the charts from Nielsen and recreated what you see above. Black is Android and red is iPhone. The numbers tell us Android beat the iPhone in Q2’10.

Units, do they mean anything?

I’ve talked about this before. Most market research is about units. Why? Probably because it is easy to gather, put together and then to figure out. But I don’t think units say much at all; I think they say much less than we think. Nielsen took a look in Q2’10 and found out 27% of 16,804 smartphone-buying folks bought an Android phone. That’s it? Only 16,804 folks in the entire United States of America bought smartphones in the second quarter? There is certainly growth: only 17% bought an Android phone in the same timeframe in 2009. 23% bought an iPhone and 33% bought a BlackBerry. 11% bought a Windows Mobile phone.

What I would like to know is what was the average selling price (ASP)? Why is this important? It is kind of an indication of how much the folks who bought Android phones will spend on apps. Cheap phones might mean little spent on apps. Expensive phones might mean lots spent on apps. I suspect a large portion of Android phones are cheaper than the main competition: the iPhone. I guess units matter a bit because you want to know how big the market is for your app. But that’s too simplistic. If you want to give away your app, then maybe a simple unit measurement might matter. If you want to charge something you might want to get a bit more granular data.

I’d like to know something else: returns. We’re not to worry about how many actually returned Android phones. I did, last month actually. Why? The Motorola Motoroi was an absolute lemon (read about the whole experience), rebooting a dozen times a day for reasons unknown to me and unknown to many on several Android forums. So this 27% bought Android phones in the last six months means almost nothing.

Bottomline: more folks are buying Android phones. In the US. Why? There are more models and they are available on all major cellular carriers. Again, in the US. On the other hand, the iPhone is only on AT&T and Apple can’t make enough of them.

Why is this important?

Back to units. If you were a developer you’d want to jump on the Android bandwagon. Growth is spectacular so why wouldn’t you? You make your Android app and sell it to the fastest growing smartphone market. Right? Well, not quite. I don’t know how the different Android versions are segmented right now but the fact is the versions are splintered. I personally don’t develop Android apps so I don’t know how big of a problem that is, but I think it might be.

Then there are all sorts of different Android phones with different hardware. About the display, since that’s what I’m most interested in: How do you develop for Android when you have so many different types of displays? Different display sizes and different pixel formats and different resolutions (PPI). How do you optimize your Android app for a particular phone? You can’t. And the folks that use Android phones suffer for it.

Is splintering going to get better?

No. Why? Because this splintering is the natural side-effect of Google’s open strategy. Will Android phones ever be as tightly integrated than the latest iPhone? If I were to bet, no. It’s like this. The BMW M3 is probably the most tightly integrated sports car for a precision sports driving experience. There is a reason why no one laughs at the company’s slogan: The Ultimate Driving Machine. There’s truth to it. There are faster cars and fancier cars but the M3 is considered one of the best driver’s car, ever. Now imagine how tightly a car could be integrated if the engine were made by one company, the chassis by another, and then the transmission by yet another. How integrated can it be? There are cars made like this but it won’t be as well integrated as the M3. iPhone = M3. The main problem as I see it is the AT&T limitation. Put the iPhone on Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint and it is sayonara to Android for a few more years. At least. For now Android is accelerating and passing the iPhone by.

RIM’s new BlackBerry Torch 9800 sports the company’s new BlackBerry OS 6 and will go for US$200 with a brand new two-year contact on AT&T. You can get one on August 12th. The BlackBerry Torch brings full touch-screen and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard together, like the Palm Pre. No other BlackBerry combines these two features. I’m also a big fan of slider phones that slide out the keyboard vertically. The Pre I didn’t like because of the non-linear curved sliding motion, among other things. The BlackBerry Torch is RIM’s top-of-the-line smartphone and is the answer for those who prefer a physical keyboard but who also want a full-sized touch display.

I wish the display was a bit bigger. That full-sized touch display is on the small side. iPhone’s 3.5-inch display is a bit bigger even. At just 3.2 inches the BlackBerry Torch barely makes it. I think there is some space on the top and bottom: get rid of the unnecessary logo and the touchpad. The curves at the corners are also too curvy in my opinion. Add to the small display the anemic pixel format: 480×360. If the BlackBerry Torch had been available last year the display would have been quite alright. In 2010 these display specs are at the low-end of the curve. With most displays on Android smartphones sporting 800×480 or higher, not to mention Apple’s industry-leading 960×640, the anemic 480×360 just doesn’t seem fitting on RIM’s new high-end smartphone.

The Torch’s resolution? Just 187.5 PPI. Even with an almost-too-largish 4.3-inch LCD the Motorola Droid X with a 854×480 pixel format registers a very decent 227.83 PPI. The iPhone 4′s PPI is a stratospheric 326. Maybe the new BlackBerry OS 6 take advantage of every pixel on the BlackBerry Torch…

Wired’s Eliot Van Buskirk in Research In Motion Bites Back With BlackBerry Torch:

… it failed one early test: Swiping my finger to the side to bring up a new screen of apps, I noted way more lag time than I did on my first-generation iPhone.

This isn’t good news. With large touch screens on smartphones the touch experience becomes very important. Actually, I’m a bit surprised to see RIM falter in this regard but maybe the company had too many things to deal with: new hardware and new software. RIM still has time to tweak some settings but I’m not holding my breath for an ultra-smooth experience. I think iOS 4 and Android 2.2 are way ahead in this regard.

There’s a lot to like for BlackBerry fans: a biggish touch display, a QWERTY keyboard that slides out vertically, App World pre-loaded, a new OS 6. I’m not so sure AT&T was the best choice since most business folks would prefer a more reliable Verizon. But to those who are on the fence and who appreciate a large touch display the BlackBerry Torch is yesterday’s news. The 3.2-inch display coupled with a 480×360 pixel format with a laggy touch experience fizzles in light of the latest iPhone and Android smartphones.

Corning’s Gorilla glass is chemically strengthened and designed to provide protection as a cover glass for displays. Demand for the company’s Gorilla glass is expected to grow significantly and the company is responding.

On August 03, 2010 Corning announced that its board of directors approved a US$180 million capital expenditure at its Harrodsburg, Kentucky manufacturing facility to add capacity for Gorilla glass and allow production of thin-film photovoltaic glass. James P. Clappin, president, Corning’s Precision Glass businesses:

We are on track to reach sales in excess of $250 million this year and sales could approach the $1 billion mark in 2011. We are making Gorilla glass manufacturing and technology investments today to meet the growing market need of the future.

Gorilla glass will be more widely used for LCD TV applications. With a much larger dimension the demand for Gorilla glass should grow exponentially in the near future. Clappin expects revenues from Gorilla glass to hit $250 million in 2010 and then to $1 billion in 2011.

Thin-Film Photovoltaic Glass
Corning’s Harrodsburg facility will begin producing specialty glass for thin-film photovoltaics using its fusion manufacturing process. Corning expects substantial improvements in energy conversion efficiency and weight reduction while maintaining product strength and long-term reliability.

Corning’s Harrodsburg facility opened in 1952 and originally manufactured various ophthalmic products including photochromic glass. In the mid-1980s small-generation LCD glass substrates were produced until recently shifting to Gorilla and photovoltaic glass. The facility is Corning’s glass-melting technology center collaborating with the company’s Sullivan Park Research and Technology Center to develop advanced glass for display, photovoltaic and other applications.

The state of Kentucky and Gov. Steven L. Beshear’s office through the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority will assist up to $4.5 million in Kentucky Business Investment incentives and up to $1 million in tax rebates for construction costs. Source: Corning

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