My end-of-year thoughts

So we are reaching the end of 2010, which was quite good year for every tech lover. And since it's technology blog, I won't cover in this article politics and economy, even if they often have influence on our hobby.


Windows Phone 7 launch

Microsoft decided to re-design their mobile operating system, so it will be more competitive in the market, among growing popularity of Android and iOS. You can call it what you want, but for me WP7 is a disaster.
I used Windows Mobile since 2003, and even if it was far from being perfect, I really liked that OS. In Windows Phone 7 all features of WM which I liked were removed, the UI is nice, but it's too simplified, and the idea of tiles doesn't suit me.


Progress in hardware quality

Manufacturers saw, that it's not only good software, what customers want. In 2010 the number of high-end smartphones made with shiny plasic cases (hello Galaxy S) was noticeably reduced, compared to previous years. They put impact on producing solid devices, made with high quality materials, great example is HTC, and their unibody aluminium design, sued in their best smartphones.



Growing popularity of Android

In 2010 we saw three new releases of Android: 2.1 Eclair, 2.2 Froyo and few weeks ago 2.3 Gingerbread. The popularity of this OS is growing very fast, not only among geeks and technology fans. The number of apps in Market is growing fast, some reports say that it's around 200k at the moment. Sounds very good, but it should be noticed, that 60% of the apps in the Market are just waste.



What to expect in 2011?

For sure the tablet popularity will be growing in 2011, with the upcoming iPad 2, and Android 2.4 (Honeycomb), and some big manufacturers joining the tablet market (Motorola, Acer, maybe HTC), these devices can be bestsellers in 2011.

The devices with dual-core CPU's should start roll-out in early 2011. I guess in next years this technology will be very popular, and will provide possibility to use features, which would be impossible with single core CPUs, including better UIs, and extended multimedia functions.