Keep Dreaming: 13 Technologies You Won’t See in 2013
Motorola Droid 5
The Speculation: Motorola is the king of the keyboard slider, having launched the original Droid with keyboard and then releasing three different sequels. The company's most recent entry, the Droid 4, came out last February on Verizon and launched on Sprint as the Photon 4G this past summer. If Motorola plans to continue offering keyboarded phones, it will need to release a Droid 5 some time in early 2013.
Why it Won't Happen: The other leading phone vendors have moved away from QWERTY phones in recent years, either giving up on them altogether or releasing them as under-featured budget phones such as the Samsung Stratosphere. Motorola's new owner Google hasn't put keyboards on its phones and, when the company launched its flagship devices this fall, it didn't even mention physical keyboards. Sadly, it looks like Motorola won't come out with another high-end keyboard slider.
More: The 7 Worst Smartphone Injustices and How to Fight Them
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December 26th, 2012 at 11:57 pm
Regarding Windows Blue – Microsoft has not denied the reports.
>So, for Windows Blue to launch even as late as Q4 of 2013, Microsoft would have to announce a developer preview or public beta at the
>beginning of the year.
They won’t be playing around with that this time around. Blue is coming as either an update or a massive service pack. Think of it this way: Microsoft is in a mad dash to converge Windows Phone, Windows Desktop, Windows RT and to some degree X-Box. To put it a more cynical way: they know their only hope in mobile is to leverage their existing monopoly (desktop) to create another (mobile), which has been the singular business tool MS has employed since the days of DOS. The OSes will be interlinked. To have a mobile phone/tablet OS that only updates once every three years is certain suicide. Windows Phone will need yearly updates and this will mandate Windows Desktop updates too.
There won’t be the giant 3+year roll-outs anymore. Think Apple and its more incremental yearly updates. This will be the new Microsoft approach. Whether it’s called a new version of the OS, a service pack, a “.5″ release, etc. is to be determined, but it is coming and there’s no way MS can finish integrating its product line without this release schedule change. Further point: Sinofsky, the Windows architect, infamous for wanting complete control of his division and anything that touched Windows, was canned a few weeks after Win8 shipped. All the reports said that his need for control was not going to work when the MS strategy was going to be to integrate the desktop, mobile and game divisions. If the next step in integrating is worth firing the man who was once talked about as the next Microsoft CEO, yearly Windows updates are hardly a major change in comparison.
December 30th, 2012 at 9:57 pm
Laptop Magazine BLOOOOOOWS
January 1st, 2013 at 9:30 pm
Please stop the slide shows. All of this could easily fit on one scrollable screen. Are you counting clicks for advertisers? This is getting annoying.
April 16th, 2013 at 8:59 am
HTC First, with Facebook Home. Get owned.
May 23rd, 2013 at 12:59 pm
Out of interest, were any of these actually “technologies”?
Or do we not know how to say “product” any more because ‘technology’ gets better SEO?