The soundtrack to this feature is “Not For You” by Pearl Jam, in which Eddie Vedder repeatedly – and appropriately, given the song’s title – shouts: “This is not for you!” If you don’t like Pearl Jam, I think we might be about to fall out.
So I was contemplating mobile phones and tablets (as you do), and realised there are a fair few recent beauties that aren’t coming to the UK for whatever reason. We’re not exactly hard done by in the grand scheme of things, but still… it’s the principal of the thing. And we deserve a good moan in the UK; the weather is mostly sh*t.
When Motorola followed up the Atrix with the Droid Bionic in the States, stretching the display to 4.3in and cranking the megapixelage from 5 to 8MP, our collective Mobo-brain was left wondering: ‘What about us?!’
We’re quite used to being overlooked by Moto (Droid/Milestone 3, anyone?), but of course the blow has been softened quite significantly with the release of the Motorola (don’t say: Droid) RAZR.
And heck, we might also see the Motorola Atrix 2.
The romantic in me loved the idea of the Nokia N9 receiving a low-key release in the UK, and us nerds would lap it up and grin inwardly, because only we – in our secret little Nokia N9 club – would truly understand the greatness of MeeGo.
Alas, Nokia apparently wants us to buy a Windows Phone 7-powered Lumia 800 instead. However, you can always grab an imported Nokia N9 from Expansys – if you don’t mind forking out £539.99.
Incidentally, you can read about my should-I-shouldn’t-I dilemma when I handled the Nokia N9 in Australialand.
Bah, this one really hurts. With the big manufacturers generally pricing their tablets in iPad territory (i.e. £400+), and ultimately serving up the same old Honeycomb dish (Sony’s S1 and S2 being the notable exceptions here), the Amazon Kindle Fire looked like a genuinely attractive – and significantly cheaper – alternative.
The Kindle Fire includes a completely customised version of Android, and boasts all kinds of Amazon goodness. It might not have full access to the Android Market, but it’s still an intriguing little proposition.
Still no word on Amazon Kindle Fire action in the UK, but we’re keeping our fingers (and toes) crossed.
We keenly awaited the HTC Vigor for weeks, only to discover that (a) it’d actually be called the HTC Rezound, and (b) it’s bloody 4G, which means little-to-no chance of a UK release.
The Taiwanese manufacturer reckons we in the UK should be happy enough with the Beats Audio-rockin’ HTC Sensation XE and HTC Sensation XL. But the HTC Rezound has better specs, man! Sob.
Having said that, with HTC’s rapid-fire Android output, it’ll only be a matter of time before we see a handset with even better specs than the HTC Rezound. But that requires patience, and that’s something we don’t have.
I’m off to kick something. Bye.
