I think I’ve found it…

My Photoshop skills are legendary!

Here are the things that I want – no one platform covers them all, so I’ve nicked the best bits from each.

Blackberry

Here’s what BlackBerry provides that is missing on other phones.

Physical Keyboard

This is the big one. I’ve tried all of the touchscreen keyboards out there – nothing comes close to the physical click of keys.

I’m aware of a few Androids which have a keyboard – but they tend to be older models or underpowered and aimed at the teenage text market.
The Dell WP7 phone has a keyboard, but appears to have been abandoned by Dell.

Start up speed.

You never really switch a BB off, it just sleeps. That gives it a phenomenal start-up speed. When you shut it down, it also tells you when it’s planning to wake up – either due to an alarm, calendar, or because you set an “auto on” timer.

WP7 does have a very fast boot time – much speedier than that of Android. But there’s no auto-on / auto-off feature.

Deep Twitter Integration

I can’t believe no other phone has this. If I receive an email which contains a hashtag or @name, I can click on it and my Twitter client opens up. Same in calendar, documents, and (ISTR) web pages. Even if the text isn’t linked it was clickable.

Spell Cheque & Auto Text

Spell checking is available on WP7 – but not to the same degree as BlackBerry. The auto-text feature on BB is brilliant, I can type a short code and text is automatically filled.

• dt – prints the current time & date, perfect for note taking
• sig – prints my standard contact details
• ht – (one I created) prints the hashtag of the event I’m following

Android

Android is my main device. It’s not without its deficiencies – but here are the bits I wish others would copy.

Time of Day Email

Perhaps the best feature of the Samsung Galaxy S – and not something I’ve seen elsewhere. I can set a peak and off-peak schedule for my work email.

At 1800 during the week I stop getting work email – and it all comes through at 0800 the next morning. During the weekend, I get no work email. This is one of the major features which keeps me on Android.

FLAC and OGG

I’ve ripped all my CDs to FLAC. I hate the fact that I have to transcode all my music in order to listen to it on a portable device. All the high end Android phones I’ve tried play FLAC natively.

Open

I like the fact that I’m not tied down by the operating system. If I want to replace the lock screen, the email client, the web browser, I can. And I do.

If the device manufacturer abandons my phone, there’s a huge hacker community who can keep it running.

WP7

I’ve not had the greatest success with a Windows Phone – but there are some elements that I love.

Interface

The Metro Interface is amazing. It’s fast and fluid and generally really well laid out.

Camera

I found the camera to be very responsive – both at focussing and snapping. The integrated QR scanner was also a cut above the rest.

iOS

Media hype / Coolness

It’s a little depressing that all the media and developer attention is focussed on a minority platform like iPhone. Just for once, I’d like a cool game like Whale Trail to come out first on something other than iOS.

Misc

• Lanyard hook. Ever since smashing my BlackBerry, I’ve worn a lanyard strap.
• Front facing camera. I’m the only one I know who likes video calling.
• Trackpad. Even the best touch screen can’t get the fine grained accuracy of a touch pad.
• Removable storage. I like being able to choose how much I carry with me.
• Mass storage. I’m not always at a computer where I can install “media transfer” software. I just want to be able to plug in a USB lead and copy what I need.
• Call recording. Must admit – never had a phone that can easily do this. Always wanted it though!
• Removable battery. When the going gets tough, I don’t want to have to be chained to a wall-wart. The ability to buy higher capacity batteries is also handy.

What Hath Thou Wrought?

Essentially, I’ve created Homer’s Car – a monstrosity no one other than me could love.

So, tell me what would be in your perfect phone?

While undoubtedly cool, what amuses me about this game is why it has taken the gaming world so long to catch up with Symbian! Way back in 2003, I got my hands on the Siemens SX1. It was the first non-Nokia handset to be running Symbian. As well as “modern” features like GPS, web browsing, and apps – it also came with a very interesting game.

Mozzies

Mozzies was an award winning Augmented Reality game. Perhaps the first of its kind to make it in to a mass market phone. I can’t find any videos of it – so here are some screenshots.



From a presentation by Andreas Jakl.

As you can see, not markedly different to the iPhone / Star Wars game. Sure, the graphics have come a long way – but it’s still just tracking movement through the camera and accelerometer, and then painting shootable “baddies” on the screen.

Seven Year Itch

What annoys me about Symbian is that it has all these amazing and innovative features and then squanders them. I’ve never seen another Symbian handset with Mozzies on it. You’d think that an award winning game like that would be on every Symbian handset.

Another example. The N95 was technically superior to the original iPhone. Yet Nokia dragged its feet on using the camera accelerometer to power the screen rotation. Barely any updates came out for the the N95 series – any hope of using that as a platform to beat the onslaught on smartphones was wasted.

I don’t know whether it’s Symbian or Nokia or someone else who is to blame. What I do know is that Symbian has lost any technical lead it may have had. And that’s desperately sad.

The Dark Side

In researching this blog post, I came across a delightfully disturbing tale of a young man who had his phone smashed for playing this game.

Heriyono said: ‘ I was so engrossed with the mosquitoes, I became oblivious to my surroundings.

‘Then, I saw through the phone, a figure behind the swarm of mosquitoes heading in my direction but I thought he was just passing by.’

Heriyono claims the man then shouted: ‘Trying to take a photo of my girlfriend, is it?’

And he smashed the phone on the floor.

I do wonder how many more phones will be destroyed when people think they are being used to take photos. Or how many photographers will use game playing as a cover?

Perhaps it’s time to make a video app which merely looks like you’re playing a game…?

Nokia phones "running" Android

Is this just a hapless Photoshop mistake – or a sign of things to come?!?!?!?!

It’s a daft graphic designer – obviously. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take the possibility of Nokia devices running Android seriously. Oh, don’t get me wrong, Nokia will never ship and Android powered phone – they’ve invested too much in Symbian and MeeGo for that. But Nokia devices will run Android.

A few years ago, I coaxed my Nokia N810 into running a prototype version of Android – NitDroid. The project has been resurrected by Stephen Hyde at NITDroid.com.

This latest video shows the Nokia N900 running Android’s FroYo.

Why Is This Useful?

Nokia coined the term “Mobile Computer” for its range of phones. Computers aren’t hermetically sealed consumer devices. They allow the customer to modify both hardware and software. You would be understandably upset if the computer you bought last year wouldn’t let you install the latest version of Windows, MacOS, or Linux. But that’s the situation mobile phone customers are faced with today.

The Android G1 has been abandoned by HTC and T-Mobile – much to the chagrin of customers.
The HTC Hero has only been grudgingly updated to Android 2.1.
Nokia left the N800 and N810 to rot. Nokia regularly stops development of its “mobile computer” software even when the devices are in active use.

Mobile phone manufacturers exist to sell phones. They don’t get any extra revenue for releasing new firmware. Indeed, the cost of developing, testing, and shipping new firmware is prohibitively expensive. Not to mention dealing with customer complaints when things inevitably go wrong.

We are finally in a position to change that mindset. Hackers (in the original sense of the word) are now able to create custom firmware for new phones. Take a look at the XDA Developer Forums. Almost every Android phone released can have an improved firmware running on it.

True, a significantly older phone may not have hardware capable of running bleeding edge code – but it’s enough to give it a new lease of life.

I’d love it if Nokia updated the N95 8GB firmware. The hardware is still incredibly capable.

In these tough economic times, it makes perfect sense to focus efforts on software, rather than hardware.

Look at the PS3 or the Xbox 360. A single model with firmware updates to increase its functionality.

Rather than tooling up a factory for a 6 month run of hardware – phone manufacturers should be looking to keep churning out a limited number of models of high spec phones for years. As manufacturing efficiencies improve, the hardware becomes cheaper and – like the PS3 and Xbox – cheaper models can be produced.

The PS3 came out in November 2006. Nearly 4 years ago. Can you think of a phone released four years ago which is still in production – let alone receiving firmware updates? The original iPhone was released in 2007 – it got a firmware update earlier this year but won’t be receiving iOS4. Also, you can’t buy a new iPhone 2G. Apple aren’t in the business of selling inexpensive hardware.

The Future

I predict – or rather, I hope – we will see the following pattern emerge. Either from Google or Nokia.

• An insanely expensive and over-spec’d phone will be released.  I expect in the £500 – £1,000 range.
• A public roadmap for its OS will be released – new features promised every 3-6 months.
• A guarantee that official firmware development will continue for at least 3 years.
• The OS will be sufficiently open to allow “homebrew” firmware to run.  Hackers will jump at it.
• The hardware will sell – poorly at first.
• As production efficiencies are found, the price will come down.  The hardware capabilities will stay compatible with older models.
• The firmware will progress based upon consumer need, manufacturer desire and what hackers manage to achieve.
• At around the 18 month mark, major new features in the firmware will be announced.  This keeps the MNO happy as they don’t have to subsidise the cost of new hardware for customers coming to the end of their contracts.
• At the 2 year mark, the next hardware revision will be launched.  More memory and megapixels – cheaper price.
• If the hardware is still selling, expect others to follow.

The fly in the ointment for this is continuous manufacturer profitability.  Apple, I understand, gets a cut of call and text revenue.  Google gets a cut of apps sold.  Microsoft and Sony sell licences for releasing games on their platform.

Would this “super phone” have to sell firmware updates?  Would MNOs subsidise firmware rather than hardware?  Would customers part-exchange  an unfashionably old phone for the latest model?

Or will we be stuck with phones that are thrown on the scrap-heap by their creator in order to force us into buying the latest model?

One thing’s for certain.  Where there are hackers – there will always be updates.

So it was with great mirth that I went along to a BizSpark event a few weeks ago. Microsoft were going to be showing off their latest “innovation” – Windows Phone 7.

I went along expecting to hate it and, instead, found myself curiously drawn to it.

Take a look at the emulator for an interactive demo.

I played with the demo hardware and software and had my expectations blown away.  I’ll be honest – I expected crap.  I had horrible memories of the stylus oriented Windows Mobile 6.  The phone which would display an hourglass if you had the temerity to receive a phone call while playing solitaire.

Windows Phone 7 (WP7) was a million miles away from the old Microsoft experience.

Pros

The user interface is refreshingly simple and fun to use.  It’s like nothing else I’ve tried before and I really think that Microsoft has outclassed both Android and Apple.

Pushing so much information to the homescreen really makes you want to use your phone constantly. iPhone only does this half-heartedly and Android does it without much animation or UI consistency.

App Store.  One excellent feature of the MS app store is the “Try Before You Buy” model.  Rather than a developer putting out a free, limited version and a “pro” version they can publish a single app.  They can restrict the features and functionality of the “demo” version until the customer makes the purchase. Or, after a set period of time, the demo version can become non-functioning. Or have reduced function.  Brilliant.

Gaming on this device will be huge. It looks like it will be simple to port games from the Xbox to WP7 – that gives it a great competative advantage. Tie in Xbox Live (or whatever it’s called) and you’ll get gamers buying the same game twice – once on the console and once on the phone.  The 3D power of the phones was stunning.

Cons

There are some serious shortcomings in the Windows Phone 7 vision of the future which Microsoft urgently need to address.

• Expand the development options.  If you want to write for Windows Phone 7, you’ll need Windows installed on your computer.  Given that Android allows you to develop on Windows, Mac and Linux, it doesn’t make sense to make developers buy a new operating system.  Especially as iPhone development is tied to Apple.
• Open it up.  I love the idea of integrating my phone with my Xbox live account – but I don’t have an Xbox! Open it up so that my Wii or PS3 gaming experience can be pushed to the homescreen.
• The same goes for mail and IM – don’t restrict it just to Exchange and MSN.  Openness is hard for Microsoft, but it will attract more customers to the platform.
• Have a firm, public roadmap for enhancements which all manufacturers stick to.  Android is currently being stifled by manufacturers like HTC who refuse to update the software on their customers’ devices.
• Revenue share for developers needs to be better. At the moment it’s the same 70/30 split being offered by Android and Apple.  It needs to be lower for two key reasons.

1. Attract developers to the fledgling ecosystem.
2. To avoid any accusations of a cartel.  To have all three major platforms “independently” converge on the same revenue share deal looks suspicious.

Now What?

I’ve played with the prototype hardware and I’m impressed.  The software is really good. Much better that Microsoft’s usual standard.

It has to be.

Microsoft are betting their mobile future on this platform.  Win6.5 failed. Kin failed. They can’t afford another high profile failure like this.  Mirosoft are putting their best people on this project and, as far as I can tell, are revisiting their Xbox strategy; SPEND SPEND SPEND.

By the time the phones launch (holiday season 2010) you won’t be able to move without seeing an advert.  They will crank up their media machine to 11.  Just like the original Xbox, they will buy their way in to the market with a view that – like the Xbox 360 – the real prize is several years away.

I hope they succeed.  Not because I have any love for Microsoft, but because Nokia, Apple, and Google will all have to raise the quality of their software and hardware to compete against Microsoft’s marketing expenditure.

I’m a Linux geek – and I think Windows Phone 7 is the best thing to come out of Redmond in a very long time.

Based on the evidence I’ve accumulated, mobile advertising is subject to a lot of hype and not a lot of professionalism.

Take this example as seen on my BlackBerry 9000.

Flickr iPhone Advert

First off the bat, it gets my phone wrong. It should be using the User Agent to determine which advert to serve.

Well, let’s be a good consumer and click on it any way…

iTunes Web Interface

What the deuce?!

It has taken me to the Desktop version of the iTunes installation page – despite knowing I’m on a mobile!

What Should Have Happened?

• My phone requests the advert.
• Advertising agency serves up a device specific ad.
• I click on the ad.
• The ad server sees my User Agent
• For iPhone, it should automatically redirect me to the App Store
• For BlackBerry / Android / S60  etc, it should automatically redirect me to the native app store
• For everything else, it should automatically redirect me to http://m.flickr.com/

How Can It Go So Wrong?!

I’m making the assumption that this is an advert by flickr.  It may well be an advert by a third-party who have a (chargeable) app for iPhone.

Even if it is the latter – why are they advertising on BlackBerry?  Or, rather, why is their advertising agency wasting their marketing budget by showing an advert on a device which can’t support the content?

Make Sure Your Advert Works

It’s not rocket science.  If people can’t get to your product, they won’t spend money with you.  They’ll also get a negative impression of your brand.

.tel is yet another top level domain to go with all those other highly profitablepopular ones. You know, like .biz, .museum, .info, etc.

This domain is different – this domain is single purpose. .tel’s raison d’être is to abolish the business card. No more handing over little cardboard oblongs, in the glorious future, we’ll just say

“Visit aitch-tee-tee-pee colon slash-slash edent dot tell… No… Tell. It’s spelled TEA-EE-EL. Yes. Just one EL. No, I don’t know why. Here, let me write it down for you on a little cardboard oblong…”

So, as you’ve guessed, I’m not the world’s biggest fan. But I was “lucky” enough to win a free domain courtesy of TelReg. As I’m a freebie customer, I don’t think it’s fair of me to critique them in any way – but I’m sure going to critique the whole .tel idea.

First of all, why not take a look at the site. edent.tel. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Yeuch! What a dull looking site. There is, at the moment, no way to customise the look and feel, I can’t even add my picture (not that it would make the site look much better…). I can, however, add some very limited information.

Now, I’m not a professional usability expert – but even I can point out the dull text, the huge dead space, the reliance on scrolling. Yeuch.

To make matters worse, there is a mobile version of this page. Seeing as most of the people to whom I’d give a business card will have a mobile phone, this makes sense. Let’s take a look at it in two popular phones.

iPhone 3G.

BlackBerry Bold (9000).

Yeuch! Again, no panache, no style. Just dull dull dull text. You’d think that the .VCARD link would be the top link, wouldn’t you? That would be a basic usability feature. But no.

As an aside, the iPhone can’t even download the .VCARD. This is the fault of Apple.

But the .tel people shouldn’t even offer a link to a phone they know can’t support it.

Anyway. As I’ve said, I’ve got this free for a year. A few hours in and I can’t see myself renewing it. If .tel can improve some of their basic flaws and improve their customer perception, I might reconsider.

I sort of like the idea. But I prefer SyncML sites. Take ZYB – (owned by Vodafone, who own me. Yes, I am biased) – if I give you my ZYB address, and we connect, whenever I change my address or telephone number it is automatically updated on your phone. Smart. And also pretty. Two things that .tel is not.

A quick review of MobileCampBrighton.

Brighton is such a delightful city that it’s hard to begrudge it stealing one’s Saturday morning lie-in. As I wandered the laines looking for The Skiff, I was worried about how successful this BarCamp event would be. It was the same weekend as the popular Convention on Modern Liberty and it was being held outside London. Added to my worries was the fact that I had convinced Vodafone to sponsor the event – if it didn’t go well, it would be a personal and professional disappointment.

I needn’t have been so worried.

This was the site that greeted me at the door.

The Skiff began to fill up rapidly. One usually expect about a 30% drop off in participants – especially at a free event – but I think there were more attendees than were anticipated!

Usually BarCamps have several sessions running at once. The advantages being that more people can present and group sizes are manageable. However, this often leads to a bit of confusion as sessions finish at different times and a bit of heartache as one has to decide between two equally compelling talks.

Due to the relatively small number of participants, we managed to do all the presentations sequentially in the one room. This would not have been possible – or desirable – at a larger unconference, but here it worked beautifully.

The Sessions

(Photo courtesy of Pixelm Image is BY-NC-SA.)

So, a brief run down of the talks I found memorable.

Ribot gave a talk on the “Emotion, Behaviour and Human Context” focusing on the power of sketches. As designers & developers, we often go for the big bang approach. Often it’s more productive to paper prototype – it’s faster and you’ll be less emotionally attached to a “bad” idea.

Some sketches.

Marten van Wezel gave us his experience of building successful communities. I’d never quite realised the strategies one needs to employ to keep a service pleasant for its users.

A good looking fellow called Terence Eden, basically rehashed his blog post about mobile contextual advertising and its inasivness. A good points to come out of the discussion was the need for VRM (Vendor Relationship Management). Something I’ll be looking into closely.

Priya Prakash spoke about her research in to emerging market. This was an absolutley fascinating discussion about how different people use new technology. A choice quote was “if you want to see how people use technology, go to nail salons and cafes”.

That most melifulous of speaker, Terence Eden snaked his way onto the board again to say “Fuck the iPhone (and not in a good way)”. Regular readers will know of my distaste for Jobs’ Toy, but this was a discussion about how the focus on cool new phones and gadgets basically ignored a large swathe of the population. While it’s personally very exciting to develop for the cutting edge, we must not forget that the majority of people are on 18 month contracts and won’t be able to get to our products for some time.

Tom Morris gave us his thoughts on making mobile applications and services more relavent by making them easier to develop. It’s a good idea, but I still think the barrier to entry for programming (IDE, text commands, language paradigms) make it too hard for regular users to even think about programming.

Raul – a linguist – shared his experiences with how languages change to fit the digital landscape.

There were several other talks and I’ll link to the Qik streams / videos when I find them.

The final event of the day was a “fastest text” competition. Marten van Wezel won Army of Two and Nik won Spore. Both prizes were generously donated by Jessica Gwyther, the Games Content Development Manager at Vodafone Group.

I really got a lot out of this camp – it’s great to meet new people who aren’t afraid to challenge your ideas.

You can view the back channel chatter on twitter (or Google’s search for mobileCampBrighton if twitter is down…)

From a professional point of view, I felt that sponsorship was worthwhile. I got to demo our new products in front of a very intense audience and they gave great feedback. Hopefully I’ve left a good impression in participants minds about Vodafone and Betavine – if nothing else, they’ll remember that Vodafone provides a decent lunch!

So, no post from me can end without criticism. This is no different, although it’s aimed at organisers for all the BarCamps I’ve been to.

1. Time keeping is paramount. After the first session we were already running 45 minutes behind schedule. With some quick thinking from DanW and a bit of discipline from the participants we were able to finish on time without curtailing the programme of events. Every BarCamp should have a big clock on the wall or each presenting space to let presenters know how long they’ve got.
2. Organisers shouldn’t feel afraid to call for order. It’s really tempting to let intra-audience discussions flow freely. Indeed, I’m as guilty as anyone of talking vociferously when I should be listening. But organisers have two main jobs – keep everything running on time and stop presenters from being intimidated. I noticed that a few times the audience took over from a presenter and – except that’s where it’s the presenter’s intention – it’s a little ugly.

Overall – a highly successful MobileCamp. I can’t wait for the next one!

The first – and last – Apple product I owned was a blueberry iMac.

I think it may have had an early version of OS X on it. It was fun enough, but I eventually replaced the OS with YellowDog.

Now I find myself in possession of a 16GB iPhone 3G. Nice! Or so I thought.

For various dull reasons, the iPhone is an unlocked Portuguese model. It was simplicity itself to set it to UK English and add my APN details etc. That’s where the fun & simplicity stopped.

I thought I’d try the fabled AppStore. Download a few free apps and the like – and thus the nightmare of “The-One-True-Apple-Way” descended on me.

First of all, all the apps were priced in €. I would have thought me manually setting the phone to UK & having a UK SIM in there & being on a UK network would have convinced Apple to price things in £. Not so.

When I tried to download a *free* app I was told to enter my iTunes account information. This was problematic for two reasons
1) It was a free app. On every other device I’ve ever owned I can click on a free app and install it without giving away so much as an email address.
2) I don’t have an iTunes account. As far as I can determine, there’s no way to obtain one from the phone.

This is meant to be a super-duper converged smartphone but apparently it can’t even handle a simple sign up process.

It turns out that the only way to get an iTunes account is to install the iTunes software. Again, this is problematic.
1) Not everyone has – or wants – a computer. Apple has drastically cut its user base for no reason as far as I can see.
2) Not everyone who has a computer has sole use of it. You might not be able to install iTunes on your work computer. If you & your family share a computer, how does iTunes handle multiple accounts?
3) How do you get the software? There’s no CD in the box, the iPhone doesn’t show up as a USB hard disk, so the software can’t stored on there like the Huawei/Vodafone 810.

So, off to the website to download iTunes.
It’s nearly 70MB! How the 40% of people without broadband are meant to grab this I have no idea.

The installation process was another of Apple’s famed usability triumphs…

I can’t choose my native language – “English (British)”. I can’t even trust it not to break Outlook.

It spent ~20 minutes installing the software, agreeing to two separate EULAs, only to be greeted by this screen.

So much for my language preferences.

Oh well, let’s ignore that. Let’s sign up for an account.

Oh.

All the settings on my computer are set to UK, iTunes is set to English. My physical location is in the UK but I go through a proxy in Germany.

Would it be beyond the wit of Apple’s usability guru’s to add a “Choose Your Country” option? Apparently so.

It also turns out that Apple insist that their products look like OS X apps even when they run on Windows XP. Great, yet another interface language to learn. I’m sure that Apple’s products are the most amazing in the world – but this looks out of place on my system. Why should I have to mould myself to Apple? Shouldn’t they work for my needs? No, silly grasshopper, The-One-True-Apple-Way has one path that all must adhere to or face certain death.

At this point, I got bored. If was a paying customer, I’d be on the verge of returning the device.

I’m obviously missing the gene that makes me fall in love with Apple products. Or is the rabid Apple fanboism just an elaborate hoax? Come on guys, let me in on the joke…

May be I’ll try again tomorrow.