The Disappearing SMS Conundrum
I am a digital packrat, there is no way around it. I have saved every text message I sent and received since I got my new smartphone, The Droid Incredible, in May of this year. That is almost 6 months, for me that is well over several thousand text messages. I say this to set up how completely devastating it was to me yesterday. It was like any normal day at work and near the end of the day I was finishing some projects up and texting with a person about some things. When I got a response back from a message I went to check it out. I opened my messaging app and there was no messages at all, nothing was in there. I felt a great disturbance in the force. I started to panic a bit figuring that maybe it was the phone glitched on me.
I rebooted.
“It probably just needs a reboot as the OS needs to refresh itself to get the messages back” I said to myself.
I was trying to reassure the panicked part of me freaking out that I lost SOOOOO many text messages. I watched as the phone booted up, this had to be the longest boot up I had ever witnessed. When everything loaded I went to my messaging widget.
Nothing. I open it up, I see a blank screen. I go to the android app marketplace and downloaded handcent. No messages at all. Nothing, nada, empty. I am not sure why I feel sad, but I did. On my previous HTC phone I was flashing a new rom and wiping text message out, this time it felt different. I checked the Application info in the Settings menu. There is 820kb of data it is taking up. Do I delete the data and just toss the towel in or do I research this problem more.
I do some research and find this seems to be a problem in at least several cases. I think the data is still on the phone and I will look for was to access it, but for now I have lost a lot of text messages I wanted to keep and I blame HTC and Verizon for this.
The Smartphone Wars
When you think of smartphone wars you think of the battle between the likes of RIM, Microsoft, Google, and Apple in the ad space. Apple has decided to take the fight one step further. They have filed suit against HTC for Android and WinMobile devices. The Windows mobile devices seem to be unimportant part of the suit for Apple. The majority of the suit is patent claims are against HTC for Android devices. Engadget has a very good breakdown of the patent claims on HTC Android devices and Ars Technica has a good write up on this fight.
The is going to be a very interesting fight. Apple is right to sue because they have to protect their patents, but this feels like a vindictive move. I’ve read the Engadget breakdown of the patents and this seems to be an attack on the Android OS rather then HTC and it’s hardware. it makes one wonder why hasn’t Apple named Google instead of HTC in this suit. It seems Apple is trying to send a message that the smartphone market is theirs and stay out. While this is one sided right now we don’t know what patents HTC has that will back up their position.
When this get this sorted out I wonder how the touch screen phone market is going to be like if Apple is victorious. Most phones out there with a touch screen violate these patents also. On the other side I wonder if there will be fallout for full OSes like Windows as part of the patents are for desktop OSes regarding background applications. In the end I don’t think anything will happen in the OS space, but it is interesting thing to consider.
The most common thing people on both “sides” are complaining about is software patent reform. Which I do agree needs to be fixed, but I’m not a patent expert. Most of these patents Apple is suing for are very common in the phone market now. I wonder how long before other phone manufactures are sued by Apple.
In the short term Google’s Nexus One will still go on sale this year and more Andriod devices will hit carriers. It will take years for this to resolved through the courts. Most of theses patent cases get resolved through settlements. Time will tell if there will be a settlement on HTC’s side.
