Google Phone

blog.wired.com

8 points·vlad··6 comments

I hope it has some programmer-friendly features. I crave a small, inexpensive device that would let me leave my laptop home on trips. I.e., it would allow me to program on it. The problem with this dream of mine is that it necessitates having a text editor on the phone, and tiny keyboards means it's hard to issue Emacs commands.

Now, I do think Google will do a better job than Apple has in letting their device be "open", so I think that will be good for programmers. We'll see.

> ...it's hard to issue Emacs commands.

But not vim commands :)

Honestly, if that was the only thing preventing me from using a device like this, then I'd probably suck it up and learn how to press 'i' before I wanted to start typing.

Openness is good, but if they want wide adoption, UI is a huge factor. Google's history is pretty hit-or-miss in that regard. GMail: hit. Google Video: miss. The inevitable iPhone comparison (in the event that this even turns out to be a real product) is probably spurious, but it bears mention that the iPhone salient feature is brilliant UI. That's what makes it a good device.

That said, I'm sure that Google would keep programmers very much in mind, so if that's your concern, there's probably not much to worry about.

I'd buy it.

Depending on the price and the functionality of the browser (support for java, etc to run my web app), and the networks that support it, I would too.

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