Mobile Concerns

Your Mobile: Your Communications Hub

2010-08-05T03:00:00.000+10:00

How you use your mobile to communicate is about to change radically. Gone are the days of just phone calls, sms and patchy video. The latest generation of mobile devices allow you to keep up to date with your friends on Facebook and Twitter, centralising all your communication in one place.

However, this presents its own set of challenges:

* How do you triage your contacts? Not all contacts are created equal;
* How do you consolidate your contacts across different services (Facebook, Twitter, even Xbox Live)? and;
* How do you synchronise and manage all of this communication with your contacts when this is now in the cloud?

No one seems to have cracked this yet. Motorola have MOTOBLUR to centralise all your communications. They will even back up the communications stream for you. Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 will integrate your Facebook contacts and your friends on Xbox Live. Unfortunately both cripple you with this all or nothing approach.

Hopefully, in the not too distance future we will start to see some smarts in how our mobiles manage our contacts and communication. Learning about those we contact most frequently, automatically matching the different personas of our friends across different services and prioritising the messages we are most interested in at any given point in time.

iPad Rendering Bug

2010-08-03T17:14:00.001+10:00

Has anyone with an iPad seen this rendering bug? It is most prominent in Safari, particularly when 3G network connectivity is poor and I am browsing between pages.

The iPhone 4 Debacle

2010-07-31T00:00:00.000+10:00

By now you will be aware of the reported problems with the iPhone 4 and its flawed antenna design. You know the one, where you hold the phone a certain way and the signal strength drops a couple of bars. Apple’s admission of the problem wasn’t great but reporting of the issues also left a lot to be desired.

Now Spencer Webb of AntennaSys Inc. provides a detailed quantitative analysis of the problem. Yes it is real. Yes using a bumper with your iPhone 4 helps. Yes the iPhone 3G suffers a similar problem without the external antenna design.

Read the full analysis and explanation of the testing methodology here.

The Apple App Store - Is this really the long tail?

2009-03-24T08:00:00.000+11:00

With 15,000 applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch, I have to ask, “Is this really the long tail?”. The marketing department at Apple would have us believe that the App Store provides iPhone users with a myriad of applications to suit your every specific need. But is there really a need for 50 different task management applications? I think that iPhone customers would benefit from two or three best of breed applications for managing tasks instead.

So is the current App Store ecosystem in the best interest of consumers and developers? It is undoubtedly a great selling point for Apple and it is definitely easier to buy, download and install an iPhone application than a Windows Mobile application. However, Apple may have has set the barrier to entry too low for iPhone developers. Today the most popular iPhone applications will bubble to the top, but what will happen in the future? Will the next great iPhone application remain undiscovered among the noise of 100,000 lesser applications?

iPhone OS 3.0 Shines

2009-03-19T08:00:00.000+11:00

Apple unveiled iPhone OS 3.0 on Tuesday, addressing many of the short-comings iPhone users have had to suffer with in earlier versions of the OS. The most important feature – Cut & Paste – is now there, as is MMS support provided you have a 3G phone.

Apple has also included enhancements that will support the iTunes Store ecosystem including an API that allows developers to handle the purchase of content and services from the iTunes Store. They have scaled up their Push Notification service, allowing an iPhone to receive an application notification even when the application isn’t running. The Push Notification service is centralised meaning that all iPhone applications connect to the same set of notification servers. Apple’s rationale for adopting this architecture is that it eliminates the need to maintain applications running in the background which can significantly reduce standby battery life.

Interestingly, today’s smartphones seem to be just catching up to where the Japanese were with their i-mode service in 2002.

Other iPhone OS 3.0 features include Bluetooth peer-to-peer connectivity to support gaming between phones; inclusion of the Google Mobile Maps service; access to iPod hardware accessories and access to the iPod library.

Many of these feature will also be supported on the iPod Touch.

One of the most import aspects of this OS release is that is will be made available to all existing iPhone customers for free.

Microsoft My Phone & Live Mesh

2009-02-18T11:00:00.000+11:00

At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Microsoft announced a new free service called My Phone. Currently in beta, this service allows you to back up your mobile phone data to a password protected web site. Check out the Windows Mobile Team Blog for more details.

When I first saw My Phone, the first thing I thought about was Microsoft’s Live Mesh service. This is where Microsoft is light years ahead of the competition - including Google.

Cloud computing services such as Microsoft's Live Mesh allow you to sync and share your data between devices as well as access your data from anywhere using the power of the Internet. Live Mesh also allows you to remotely control the desktop of any device from anywhere.

At the moment Live Mesh only supports devices with Windows XP, Windows Vista and Mac OS X but Windows Mobile support is coming soon. If you access the Live Mesh beta, you get access to 5GB of storage to get you started.

Windows Mobile 6.5 fails to impress

2009-02-18T08:00:00.000+11:00

Yesterday, Microsoft presented a first look at the next version of its Window Mobile Operating System (OS) – Windows Mobile 6.5 – at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. This version of the OS is due for release towards the the end of this year and will be the last Windows Mobile 6 release before Windows Mobile 7.

Although there have been some efforts to improve the usability of the user interface, initial feedback is that new honeycomb interface is too little, too late. What has many people baffled is how can HTC and Sony-Ericsson do such a good job of improving the usability experience on Windows Mobile 6.1 while Microsoft seems to still be behind the times with Windows 6.5.
I suspect one of the problems is that Microsoft needs to support a user interface that works on a wide variety of devices with different screen resolutions and form factors. Hence they must cater for the lowest common denominator. HTC and Sony-Ericsson on the other hand can build a fantastic user experience around their latest smartphones with state-of-the-art screens and features.

I think Microsoft should consider decoupling the user interface from the operating system, allowing each smartphone manufacturer to optimise the user interface experience for their specific smartphone. This may lead to inconsistencies in user experience, but hey, isn't that what we have had with WM 5, WM 6 and now WM 6.5?

Microsoft Tag & Nokia Mobile Codes

2009-02-05T08:00:00.000+11:00

Today I tried using the Microsoft Tag Beta with a Dopod smartphone. For those who don’t know, a Microsoft Tag is like a barcode that you can capture with your mobile phone’s camera and have the Tag Reader software on your phone decode. A Microsoft Tag supports different types of content such as URLs, vCards, Phone Numbers and Text.

The image above is an example of a tag. Click on it to view the the full-size image and then try capturing the image on your mobile with the Tag Reader installed. I had to try it a couple of times as the image needs to be in the centre of the view finder, but otherwise it worked seamlessly.

Anyone with a Windows Live ID can sign-in and create tags. The process is simple and done online. You can then render your tag in a variety of formats.

A Microsoft Tag is a similar to Nokia’s Mobile Code (seen to the left). I haven’t tried installing a Mobile Code Reader for my smartphone yet, but there are several available.

The benefits of using the Microsoft Tags include:

The ability to categorise different tags;
Define Start and End dates for your tags and;
Online reporting on how often each tag has been scanned.

These features will undoubtedly be of interest to businesses that need to analyse the effectiveness of marketing campaigns that make use of Microsoft Tags.

Mobile Concerns review of the HTC Touch HD

2009-01-07T10:30:00.000+11:00

After having used the HTC Touch HD for just over two weeks now, I would like to share with you my experiences and discuss some of the pros and cons of HTC’s latest smart phone. Others have described the Touch HD as the Windows Mobile answer to the iPhone. When you first open the box you are indeed presented with a very sleek and stylish looking mobile with a form factor very similar to that of the iPhone 3G. It may be personal preference but I think the straighter lines and larger screen of the Touch HD make the overall look more appealing.

The thing that immediately stands out is the large 3.8” screen that screams promises of new entertainment and productivity possibilities. See the comparison table below to compare the Touch HD with the iPhone and Touch Diamond. With a resolution of 480x800 the Touch HD doesn’t disappoint. Reading documents, browsing the web and watching wide-screen video are now not only “doable” but also “enjoyable”.

Having used the Touch HD, Touch Diamond and iPhone 3G I found the Touch HD to have the most useable form factor. It is of a convenient size that you can carry around in your pocket or handbag but with a screen large enough to allow you to get some real work done.

When you turn on the Touch HD you are presented with HTC’s TouchFLO 3D Home screen. For those who don’t know, TouchFLO 3D is an application that sits on top of the standard Windows Mobile 6.1 user interface, allowing you to use screen gestures to navigate through your most commonly performed tasks and applications. At first responsiveness of the touch screen was sluggish but downloading a patch from the HTC support site quickly fixed this. Overall, TouchFLO 3D is a joy to use and had me accessing all of my most commonly used functions via a very stylish user interface. My only comment is that I wish that it went further, in terms of being more customizable and allowing similar control of all Windows Mobile windows and applications. Are you listening Microsoft?

The Touch HD is fully featured with 5 Mega-pixel front and rear cameras, Assisted GPS, G-Sensor and FM Radio. There is no proximity sensor but HTC have added some nice touches such as how the device comes out of stand-by mode when the stylus is removed. It would be great if all applications responded to the G-Sensor to automatically change orientation when switching between portrait and landscape orientations. The 3.5mm audio jack is a plus but the lack of a flash with the camera is a minus.

Connectivity is great and I love using Wi-Fi at home as a way to save on mobile access and data charges. The best thing about this phone is you can sit at home on the couch and browse the Internet, read email and blogs and watch YouTube. I downloaded my work email and thanks to Office Mobile could easily read attachments such as Word documents and Excel spreadsheets without moving back to the PC. It is also the first time I have been able to read PDF documents as in the landscape orientation I can easily fit a full line of text across the screen.

The Touch HD comes with an impressive suite of applications including Office Mobile, Adobe Reader, Google Maps, YouTube, Opera and World Card Mobile. World Card Mobile is an interesting applications that allows you photograph business cards and automatically generate contacts from them.

Battery life is a nice surprise. When the Touch HD was announced there was a lot of concern that the large screen would be a power drain. The specifications state talk and stand-by times that exceed those of the iPhone and I am happy to report that I can use Wi-Fi access for most of the day without needing to recharge. In normal use I am finding that it will run for several days without needing to recharge.

So are there any downsides? There are a few and I hope these will be fixed in coming releases. First I have tried downloading a couple of 3^rd-party games and found that they won’t run on the Touch HD. I am not sure if this is due to not supporting the device’s screen resolution or interaction with TouchFLO. I have however installed DivX player without any problems. My only other gripe is that I have no short-cut key to quickly lock the device. According to the documentation this should be possible by holding down the end key, but all this seems to do is take you back to the home screen.

Despite these short comings I am very happy with the Touch HD. It is designed to offer the perfect balance of business and personal use. It seems to have plenty of processing power and the 8GB micro-SD card will keep me going for a while

I am a little disappointed with the problems I encountered with 3^rd-party applications but in reality, the pre-installed applications do everything I need. I would love to see TouchFLO 3D extended and all applications respond to the G-Sensor. If the Touch HD did all this then I would have no hesitation in rating it 10 out of 10. Instead, HTC will need to be satisfied with a 9 out of 10. This is a great smart phone that I would recommend to anyone who needs a mobile for both business and personal use that justifies the price tag.

Comparison Table

Feature/Attribute	HTC Touch HD	iPhone 3G	HTC Touch Diamond
Height	115 mm	115.5 mm	102 mm
Width	62.8 mm	62.1 mm	51 mm
Depth	12 mm	12.3 mm	11.4 mm
Weight	147 grams	133 grams	110 grams
Screen Dimension	3.8”	3.5”	2.8”
Screen Resolution	480x800	320x480	320x480
Battery (Talk Time)	420 mins	300 mins	270 mins
Battery (Standby)	440 hrs	300 hrs	285 hrs
Camera	5.0 Mpx	2.0 Mpx	3.2 Mpx
Processor	528MHz Qualcomm	412MHz ARM	528MHz Qualcomm
ROM	512MB		256MB
RAM	288MB	128MB	192MB

Blackberry Storm without Keyboard

2008-11-21T10:00:00.000+11:00

RIM has just announced the Blackberry Storm - the first Blackberry to come without a physical keyboard. In a previous article I discussed device form factors and suggested that including a physical keyboard at the expense of screen real-estate was a bad idea. It looks like RIM agree, creating a smart-phone designed to compete with Apple's iPhone. An interesting innovation that RIM has introduced is "SurePress" - physical feedback the device sends when you press a key on the touch screen. This is undoubtedly to placate Blackberry diehards who love the sensation of tapping tiny keys. With dimensions very similar to those of the iPhone and a slightly higher screen resolution, RIM have released a device that may appeal beyond their traditional business market.

Android Security Vulnerability

2008-10-26T04:00:00.000+11:00

Google's Android mobile operating system (used to power the HTC G1 smartphone), is vulnerable to a security exploit. The exploit was discovered by ISE (Independent Security Evaluators), an independent consulting firm focused on improving system security. The vulnerability has come about through Google's use of an unpatched version of an open source software library in Android. The impact of the vulnerability is that users of Android's web browser could visit a malicious web page, giving the attacker access to information available to the browser including cookies and passwords. Technical details of the vulnerability will not be made available until a patch for the exploit becomes available.

HTC Forecast 600,000 G1 Sales

2008-10-25T04:00:00.000+11:00

In an interview with the Mercury News, HTC CEO - Peter Chou - forecasts that HTC will sell more than 600,000 of the Android powered G1 smartphones. He predicts that within 5 years, the percentage of mobile devices that are smartphones will increase from the current 15% to 40-50%.

Time to get your latest smartphone software application out there.

iPhone now no. 3 by revenue

2008-10-23T04:00:00.000+11:00

Following Apple's 4th quarter report, Steve Jobs has said that iPhone 3G sales have eclipsed Blackberry sales for the most recent quarter, making Apple the no. 3 mobile phone vendor. Whether Apple can sustain this growth in coming quarters remains to be seen but there is no doubt the iPhone 3G is this year's "must have" device.

.Net Compact Applications on Symbian

2008-10-20T04:00:00.001+11:00

Now this is interesting. I have just found Net60 from RedFiveLabs - an implementation of the .Net Compact Framework designed to run on an S60 Symbian mobile. It allows you to do your development in Visual Studio 2005 or 2008 and builds an SIS file for you so you can deploy your application on your mobile device. You can use C# or VB.Net from Visual Studio and make use of the .Net Compact Framework class libraries. You can also make Symbian API calls using the the .Net Platform Invoke (PInvoke) services.

Malicious Smartphone Code

2008-10-15T04:00:00.001+11:00

Speaking in Sydney (Australia), Kaspersky Labs founder Eugene Kaspersky says that he has seen smartphone software being written in developing countries, that is designed specifically to increase call costs for the end user. Hopefully not a market readers of this blog will want to get into. What I found most disturbing was that he says it is the telecommunications providers in these countries who are paying to have this software written.

Fortunately, a lack of understanding about writing software for the popular mobile platforms has stemmed the proliferation of malicious smartphone software, though he expects this to change in coming years. I am sure he is right.

BTW, Kaspersky Labs sells AV protection products for both Symbian and Windows Mobile smartphones.

Blackberry Bold & Mobile Software Reliability

2008-10-13T11:00:00.000+11:00

There are reports that Orange in the UK has suspended shipments of the Blackberry Bold to customers due to problems with the device's software. I don't want to focus on RIM specifically, but rather explore the issue of software reliability on mobile devices. Why should creating software for mobile be any more challenging than for the desktop or the enterprise? I believe there are four factors at play here:

The current crop of devices and their operating systems are still severely limited in their ability to manage scarce resources (processor, memory, threads);

Applications for mobile are typically integrated very closely with other applications on the device such as PIM;

Mobile devices can connect using a variety of protocols. Not only do they connect to the Internet but they also support voice, sms and mms and;

Mobile applications may make use of device hardware such as cameras and GPS, that can vary across device makes and models.

These four factors increase the complexity of writing software for mobile and these are the issues mobile operating system makers should focus on to simplify the work for mobile application developers.

Search interest in Mobile Development Platforms

2008-10-08T04:00:00.006+11:00

I was looking at Google Trends and thought it would be interesting to see how searches for information on the latest mobile development platforms have changed over the last year. I decided to look at searches for "Android SDK", "iPhone SDK" and "Windows Mobile 6 SDK". Note that the results do not reflect the relative volume of searches between each search term. Instead, they show how the search volume for each term has varied over the twelve months. Out of the three terms used, "iPhone SDK" had the largest search volume by a factor of 10. What I found interesting was that searches for Windows Mobile were pretty much constant throughout the period. Searches related to the iPhone SDK peaked suddenly in March - when Apple announced that the iPhone would soon support Exchange for business e-mail - and again in June 2008 with the release of the iPhone 3G. Searches related to Android peaked with Google's announcement of the platform in late 2007 and again with the release of the first Android enabled handset in September of this year, but whether this interest will be sustained remains to be seen. My interpretation - interest in iPhone application development has shown major growth over the last year increasing over 6 times, while interest in Windows Mobile Development has remained stable. As for Android, there are a lot of people watching what is going on here, but I'd question how many hardcore developers this platform really has.

Device Specifications

2008-10-01T04:00:00.003+10:00

Following on from the previous post, I thought it may be useful to compare the form factors and features of some current mobile devices.

Note: Dimensions are in mm and weight is in gr.

Manuf.	Model	H.	W.	D.	Weight.	Res. (H)	Res. (V)	Camera (Mpx)	GPS	Keyboard
Apple	iPhone	115.0	61.0	11.6	135.0	320	480	2.0
Apple	iPhone 3G	115.5	62.1	12.3	133.0	480	320	2.0	Yes
HTC	Touch Diamond	102.0	51.0	11.4	110.0	240	320	3.2	Yes
HTC	Touch HD	115.0	62.8	12.0	146.4	480	800	5.0	Yes
HTC	Touch Viva	104.5	59.0	15.8	110.0	240	320	2.0
HTC	Touch Pro	51.0	102.0	18.1	165.0	240	320	3.2	Yes	QWERTY
HTC	Touch Dual	107.0	55.0	15.8	120.0	240	320	2.0		Numeric
HTC	Touch Cruise	110.0	58.0	15.5	130.0	240	320	3.0
HTC	Touch	99.9	58.0	13.9	112.0	240	320	2.0
HTC	G1	55.7	117.7	17.1	158.0	480	320	3.2	Yes	QWERTY
HTC	P3300	108.0	58.0	16.8	130.0	240	320	2.0
HTC	P3400	109.0	58.0	17.7	126.0	240	320	2.0
HTC	P3470	108.0	58.3	15.7	122.0	240	320	2.0	Yes
HTC	P3600	108.0	58.2	18.4	150.0	240	320	2.1
HTC	P4350	109.0	59.0	17.0	168.0	240	320	2.0		QWERTY
HTC	P6300	129.7	69.8	18.8	200.0	240	320	2.0
HTC	P6500	137.4	72.9	20.5	220.0	240	320	3.0	Yes
HTC	TyTN II	112.0	59.0	19.0	190.0	240	320	3.0	Yes	QWERTY
HTC	S620	111.5	62.5	12.8	130.0	320	240	1.3		QWERTY
HTC	S710	101.5	50.0	18.6	140.0			2.0		QWERTY
HTC	S730	105.8	51.0	19.4	150.0	240	320	2.0		QWERTY
HTC	S740	116.3	43.4	16.6	140.0	240	320	3.2	Yes	QWERTY
Blackberry	Bold	114.0	66.0	15.0	136.0	480	320	2.0	Yes	QWERTY
Blackberry	Curve	107.0	60.0	15.5	111.0	320	240	2.0	Yes	QWERTY
Blackberry	Pearl	107.0	50.0	14.5	89.0	240	260	1.3	Yes	Numeric
Blackberry	7100g	117.0	59.0	21.0	120.0					Numeric
Blackberry	7100v	114.0	56.0	20.0	120.0					Numeric
Blackberry	7130g	115.0	56.0	18.0	120.0	240	260			Numeric
Blackberry	7130v	115.0	56.0	18.0	120.0	240	260			Numeric
Blackberry	7230	113.0	74.0	20.0	136.0	240	160			QWERTY
Blackberry	7290	113.0	74.5	22.0	139.0					QWERTY
Blackberry	8700g	110.0	69.5	19.5	134.0	320	240			QWERTY
Blackberry	8700v	110.0	69.5	19.5	139.8	320	240			QWERTY
Blackberry	8707g	110.0	69.5	19.5	139.8	320	240			QWERTY
Blackberry	8707h	110.0	69.5	19.5	140.0	320	240			QWERTY
Blackberry	8707v	110.0	69.5	19.5	139.8	320	240			QWERTY
Blackberry	8800	114.0	66.0	14.0	134.0	320	240		Yes	QWERTY
Blackberry	8820	114.0	66.0	14.0	134.0	320	240		Yes	QWERTY
Blackberry	8830	114.0	66.0	14.0	134.0	320	240		Yes	QWERTY
Palm	Treo Pro	114.0	60.0	14.0	113.0	320	320	2.0	Yes	QWERTY
Palm	Centro	107.0	53.0	19.0	124.0	320	320	1.3		QWERTY
Palm	Treo 500	110.0	61.0	16.0	120.0	320	240	2.0		QWERTY
Palm	Treo 500v	110.0	61.0	16.0	120.0	320	240	2.0		QWERTY
Palm	Treo 680	113.0	59.0	21.0	158.0	320	320	0.3		QWERTY
Palm	Treo 750	115.0	58.0	22.0	154.0	240	240	1.0		QWERTY

Device Form Factors

2008-09-27T03:00:00.000+10:00

When it comes to mobiles there is a wide variety of device form factors to choose from and cater for. What I don't understand is why some manufacturers choose to segment their devices for business and entertainment use. I for one want to use my mobile to send email, manage my calendar and watch movies and listen to podcasts. Blackberry and Palm are definitely focusing on the business market - why else would you need that keyboard. The Palm Treo also has a square screen which isn't best suited to watching wide screen content.

In my opinion, the Apple iPhone and HTC Touch Diamond strike a better balance. They sacrifice the keyboard in favour of more screen realestate.

Now the HTC G1 running Google's Android tries to have the best of both worlds with its slide-out keyboard and iPhone sized screen. My question is, is the addition of the keyboard really worth it, given it is nearly 20% heavier than the iPhone?

How fast is 3G really?

2008-09-25T03:00:00.000+10:00

This isn't really an iPhone issue (though it does say something about Apple's marketing). Is 3G living up to the hype? Here in Australia, there is enormous potential for this technology where people do not have access to fixed-line broadband services. Unfortunately, we are seeing experiences similar to those below when demand for 3G is so high it overloads the carriers' networks. What are your experiences with 3G?

Windows Mobile Tip and Tricks 1

2008-09-23T03:00:00.000+10:00

When developing applications for Windows Mobile, you can use the Calendar button in the device emulator to quickly see how your application behaves when you change the screen orientation. Below is a sample application in portrait orientation. Pressing the calendar button in the device emulator immediately switches you to a landscape orientation. The image above is anchored to the the top, left of its parent form. If we change the anchoring behaviour so it is anchored to the top only, we get the following behaviour so it is centred in the form when we switch from a portrait to landscape orientation.