A quick burst of 12 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team
Discombobulated: Guardian iPad: Product challenges
Review: HTC Radar >> WinRumors
"HTC's new sleek Radar device is the second Windows Phone 7.5 available from the company this year. The Radar features moderate specs and an improved 5-megapixel camera alongside the latest forward facing camera support in Microsoft's new and improved "Mango" operating system. The look and feel of the Radar is very similar to HTC's original Trophy Windows Phone. Is it worth the upgrade?" Er - upgrade? Anyway, we also hope to have a Windows Phone review later today.
Free iPhone games making plenty of money on Apple's UK App Store >> guardian.co.uk
"Half of the 100 top-grossing iPhone games in the UK are free-to-play titles, indicating that while freemium games are proving lucrative for their developers and publishers, paid titles continue to have a strong role in the App Store ecosystem." Would not have guessed that.
Apple's iMessage cannibalizes SMS but is no threat to operators >> if connected
Ian Fogg's analysis is broad and insightful. There isn't a short version, but equally, it isn't long.
How To Price Software Without Just Rolling The Dice
The insights are from a new book ("Don't Just Roll The Dice") and begin with: "1. Your product is more than just your product. You might think that your software product is just the bits and bytes that your customers download (or access online), but you'd be wrong. What customers are actually paying you for is the entire experience of doing business with you Everything from how you market and sell the product, to how you help people use it and how you maintain it going forward. All of it. Your pricing should be based on this reality. "2. There's a difference between perceived and objective value. It doesn't matter how much "real" (objective) value you have baked into your product if your customers don't perceive that value, they are not going to pay as much for it. Hopefully, their perceived value is a function, to some degree, of the objective value. If not, you're screwing something up." Plenty more where those came from.
FixMyTransport: fix the ticket barriers at Paddington
"I'm writing to you and not Network Rail as they have told me that First Great Western manage the operations of ticket gates at Paddington. "Every time I try to put my ticket in the ticket barrier to exit at Paddington, the 'seek assistance' message is displayed and I need to join a queue to be let out." Have you done anything on FixMyTransport lately? Why not?
USB holds steady as 'most successful interface ever' >> ZDNet
"Although HDMI is exploding as one of the default connectivity options in electronics, USB is still the strongest standard for the near future. "A new report from market research firm In-Stat asserts that USB-enabled device shipments will approach six billion in 2015. Currently, more than 3.5 billion devices with USB onboard are shipping worldwide in the PC and PC peripheral, consumer electronic, communications, and automotive product sectors, making it the 'most successful interface ever'."
Four months with Android: reflections, grievances and some tenuous metaphors bundled up into a weighty tome >> My Dinner With Android
Thoughtful piece by someone who spent four months on an Android Nexus S, comparing it to iOS. Worth reading, especially for the points where - as he explains - Android is streets ahead of iOS, and vice-versa.
Google's Honeycomb offensive musters just 3.4m tablets >> SlashGear
"Apple's iPad may still be sitting pretty at the top of the consumer tablet charts, but questions still remain over whether Android 3.x Honeycomb really has been a sales failure so far. Google and its manufacturer partners are yet to announce official sales figures for tablets running Android, leaving us dependent on supply chain rumors and guesstimates. Android developer Al Sutton reminded us, though, that with a little math we could get an estimate of quite how many Honeycomb slates are in the wild. The number? Roughly 3.4m." Based on the 190m Android devices activated, and data from the Android Developer site. As has been pointed out by commenters here, this doesn't tell us about tablets running 2.2 or 2.3. But pretty much every tablet released in the West since January has been running Honeycomb.
Windows Phone Mango users reporting disappearing keyboards >> ZDNet
"The @WindowsPhoneSupport account on Twitter noted on October 14 that Microsoft Support is aware of the disappearing keyboard issue. I asked Microsoft officials for information on how and when Microsoft plans to fix this -- or at least what they're advising users who are affected to do to alleviate the issue." Peculiar bug; possibly linked to using (some) third-party apps; people using the basic build of Mango haven't seen it in any reports we've seen.
iPhone 4S vs. the smartphone elite: Galaxy S II, Bionic and Titan > Engadget
If you simply can't make a choice without seeing hardware stats including whether the screen is pentile-matrix or Super AMOLED, you're in luck. (Thanks @undersinged for the link.)
iPhone 4S preliminary benchmarks: ~800MHz A5, slightly slower GPU than iPad 2, still very fast
If you love to see bars where sometimes being longer is better, and sometimes being shorter is better, here's your comparison of the iPhone 4S with lots of other phones, including Android phones. (Thanks @OneHandWavingFree).
You can follow Guardian Technology's linkbucket on delicious
