This Could Be Big
My wife was talking to her dad this morning – he’s has a farm in central Oregon and isn’t into tech – and he said “we need to become more computer literate so we can communicate with the younger generation.” We’ve helped her dad and his wife in the past with getting them a computer and setting it up in the Internet – it has never stuck. But he continued “…well, you know Apple is coming out with a new kind of computer today…”
Now maybe he happened to be listening to NPR or glancing through the paper, but this was an unusual, albeit impressive, statement that i feel point to the secrecy and buzz (and buzz through secrecy) that Apple is very good at.
Because if you give a farmer in Central Oregon a computer…
What’s in store for the 27th?
Tomorrow is apple’s special event during which many are hopeful/expecting a new category of device to emerge. The tablet. Much as been written and speculated over the past few months (years even) about what this will be. Before tomoorow’s event hit, I wanted to put down my thoughts on what this thing might look like – not so much that i want to get my $.02 of speculation in, but rather to see how accurate a prediction I could make (maybe those are the same thing?)
So here goes:
- thin, aluminum device with a 10″ screen. As thin as an iPhone
- few hardware buttons or controls. Like the iPhone.
- runs a new version of mobile OSX – 4.0. This version will also run on the iPhone but maybe with slightly fewer features
- will run iPhone apps, but perhaps be more HD-like
- will connect in with iTunes and app store
- at least 32 GB flash memory (perhaps with 64 GB model for more $)
- weight around 16-20 oz (about 4 iPhones)
- 7+ hours of battery life
- wifi and Bluetooth
- GPRS radio for connecting to Internet and downloading content. On Verizon.
OK, that’s what I’m going with – let’s see how this looks tomorrow…
Will the Real Google Phone Please Stand Up?
My colleague Chris gave a shout out earlier today about Techcrunch’s reported existence of an Android-powered device that will be offered directly from Google. There have been rumors for months about a Google Phone (even hints back when Android itself was first announced many moons ago.) Now this device from Google hasn’t been officially announced – just tweets from some Google employees who have be using the device, and some rumors at this point. The early impressions are very positive and the specs do look impressive: thinner than the iPhone, 1Ghz+ Snapdragon processor, unlocked, OLED display, great camera, sound-canceling technology. This all sounds good, but good specs don’t necessarily make for a good mobile user experience. However, there are a few “features” of this device that stand out and stand to make the Google Phone a game-changer. Here’s why.
First, this is Google’s first hardware entry into the mass market. This puts Google in the position of owning both the software and the hardware, and being able to optimize the user experience. They of course have to get it right – tight integration of all aspects of the device – but this puts them much more in the Apple and RIM (Blackberry) camp of being able to call the shots on all aspects of the device and how the user interacts with it. The fast processor will help as well. My experience from owning a G1, and more recently a Motorola Cliq, is that Android needs something fast under the hood to make the screens and interactions move fluidly. Both of my Android devices get bogged down easily from background processes, screen refreshes, and network activity, which make for a painful experience at times. I’m particularly not very fond of the unregistered screen presses and choppy scrolling.
The second “feature” worth noting is that the device is rumored to be sold unlocked by Google itself. What is this a big deal, considering you can already buy many unlocked devices? Several reasons:
- Google will most likely offer an attractive and competitive price point. Google will want to get these devices into many hands, and may be willing to cover the subsidization costs (that the carriers normally absorb). If any of the free (read: company subsidized) products that Google currently offers is any indication, the Google Phone may carry stong price appeal in the market.
- The device-network balance will shift. By buying an unlocked device, you get to choose the device first and then shop for the carrier. This flips the model we are used to in the U.S. where carriers tend to have “exclusives” on mobile devices – subsidized devices in exchange or 1- or 2-year contracts – thus locking the user onto a particular network if they want a particular device. Want an iPhone? You’re stuck with AT&T. How about a Palm Pre? Hello Sprint. By putting the device first, you are able to select a carrier that meets your particular needs, be that best nationwide coverage, lowest-cost plans, discounted international calling, etc.
- Carrier contracts may change or (hopefully) go away. If you buy an unlocked phone and can go to any carrier, what will the carrier be locking you into a contract for? If you are not getting the device subsidized by the carrier, they are really acting as your ISP and providing the data pipe. Aside from startup costs to joining a new carrier like porting your number or activating an account, the whole idea of the Early Termination Fee will become irrelevant.
Oh, and the Google Phone is rumored to have Google Voice included, which allow you to make VoIP calls and bypass many of the services offered by carriers such as visual voicemail, low-cost international rates, and built in SMS messaging – all additional charges by the carriers. Another thorn-in-the-carrier-side and disruptive (did Apple/AT&T ever get around to approving Google Voice for the iPhone?)
I haven’t heard (beyond speculation) about ad integration. It would seem that a phone built by Google would naturally integrate advertising (and they did just buy the mobile ad network AdMob.) Perhaps the device will be free, but will have banner ads in your calendar and music player. Who knows – we will hopefully see soon.
With the Google Phone, I see several wins for users here – the potential user experience win that comes from tight hardware and software integration, and the potential consumer win that comes from changing established models in the wireless industry. These aren’t a given, but we’ve seen boundaries pushed by the introduction of the iPhone – perhaps Google can push them even further.
AT&T Mark the Spot app
Makes me feel a little better about AT&T – their latest (only?) app allows iPhone users to quickly tag and submit areas of poor coverage. User location data is submitted, aggregated and hopefully used to improve the network.
A good deal for AT&T – crowdsourced network troubleshooting. One problem: as you are trying to mark a spot that has poor coverage, you need network connectivity to submit your location. At least they are trying (while shaking in their boots as the iPhone/AT&T exclusivity comes to an end soon.)
Two Upcoming Social Media Events in Seattle Area
Wanted to toss these out since they are upcoming, interesting, and may touch on mobile (who knows – mobile and social are good friends.)
- Ignite Seattle on December 1st
- Social Media Club on Tuesday, December 8th
Both are worth checking out and subscribing to their lists for future events.
Some of us at work were talking the other day about Android as an open platform and how it will continue to spread and if/how the user experience will fragment. Android is following the model of creating the OS that can be used by
whatever hardware company wants to use it. I think openness in
general is good, but I wonder if mobile, because of its specific
constraints on screen size, form factor, usage patterns (e.g. on-the-
go, standing on bus, etc.) make usability THE most critical factor for
widespread adoption. And if so, I wonder if the the Apple’s and RIM’s of the
world that tightly control the hardware and the OS will continue to
remain at the forefront and provide the best experience in the eyes
of consumers. This is not a plug for Apple, Blackberry, or any other vendor – rather it is a question about single companies controlling the user experience from end to end.
The other day I overheard two people talking about a new Droid phone that one of them got. His main selling point when describing it was “…the iPhone has the
polish, but [the Droid] is a phone a techie will love.” Makes me
think about how Android is already playing out to be a
different experience on the different Android devices like the
Motorola Droid, the Motorola CLIQ, the HTC Hero – something that is
easy for someone more technical to get their head around but not
necessarily something your average user will appreciate.
My colleague Ryan Turner pointed me to this Wired article that underscores the discussion. I’m loving how the mobile market is growing. Yes, there are a ton of players now (even Samsung is in the smartphone OS mix with Bada), but it makes things exciting!
Motoblur = Social?
Motorola just recently announced their first two Android-based devices, which is great news for the open source OS that has been gaining momentum over the past year. But Motorola has added a new twist, called Motoblur, that interconnects and automatically updates many of the “social” apps on the device. It has taken a play from Palm’s WebOS’s Synergy and extended it. In a nutshell, Motoblur is a customizable top UI layer that is viewed on the device homescreen that displays updates from various feeds from Twitter, Facebook, local weather, news, etc. Think auto-update widgets that you can pull to the surface and simply turn on so that whenever you take a quick view of your device you always see the latest updates from (your) selected friends, sites, etc. Very cool.
This is a great step in the right direction. When I think of mobile, I think of this kind of interconnectedness between apps. What Motoblur effectively does is move the device beyond application silos and instead focus on functionality. The key here is that the device provides a richer experience by pushing information to the user rather than making the user go find the information. For example, for me to find out about updates to a friend’s Facebook status, on the iPhone I have to open the Facebook app. When I’m done, I close the app (so I can use other apps), which effectively turns off any updates from my friends. With Motoblur, I simply pull the Facebook functionality to the homescreen and I can automatically see updates. The nice thing is that you can do this for many of the apps, for websites, etc.
Probably the best way to get a sense of the interface is by watching the hands-on video taken by the Phonedog folks embedded below.
Again, this is the type of innovation – one that I feel Palm kicked off earlier this year – that makes mobile devices more and more useful. The “interconnectedness” of the Motoblur layer also extends to contacts, email, and calendar – think unified address book between Facebook, Outlook, and Google, or a single “messaging” inbox that pulls in discussions from email, SMS, etc. Again, this is very much what Palm’s Synergy functionality provides – it’s just nice to see it hitting another OS, especially one that has been on the market for almost a year and is becoming more mature through the release of additional devices. At a more abstract level, Motoblur is pushing the Android OS to be based on a “collect-and-query paradigm” – information is pulled from multiple sources to create a searchable/filterable group – as opposed to a “structure-and-browse” approach (such as the iPhone) where you actively create and curate the repository (e.g. address book contacts.) Ars Technica’s WebOS review provides a deeper discussion of these two approaches – this discussion highlights to me the forward-thinkingness of Motoblur and WebOS and the importance of this approach to help evolve the mobile experience.
Background Location-Based Services on iPhone?
Filed under: iphone, mobile | Tags: iphone, iphone gps loopt, loopt
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loopt
To date the iphone has only allowed certain built-in Apple apps to run in the background – mail and messaging for example – that basically listen for new events to come through and update you in real time. Apple doesn’t allow third-party apps to run background processes – basically when you quit the app it is completely closed.
A big area where this lack of background processes is problematic is location-based services (LBS). If an app like Maps can’t run in the background, it can’t receive notifications as the user changes location. So even though the iPhone has the ability to know where you are at any given time via built in GPS, apps can’t take advantage of this information until you actually start an app. What that means is that cool services like being notified when you are near othe people or places doesn’t happen automatically – you have to intentionally have to check.
The social networking app Loopt, with the help of AT&T has somehow gotten around this problem. For $4/month you will be able to have background location enabled – for the Loopt application that is. So basically this will enable the iPhone to update the users’ location information even when the Loopt app proper isn’t running. That’s cool, but I say a) this functionality should be available to any developer building an LBS-based app, and b) it should be free. There are rumors that Apple may provide such an option in a future OS update, but for now they are tightly controlling this access.
Other mobile OS’s such as Android and Palm’s WebOS provide this ability built-in. This is one differentiator to makes me less of a fan of the iPhone OS and more open to moving to one of these other platforms. But it is clear that Apple has the capability to make this happen, so maybe they are just holding back and slowly releasing this functionality on a limited basis. Either way, background LBS-based services, especially tied to social networking apps, is going to become more and more ubiquitous and important on mobile. This IS one of the key differentiators between the mobile device and a desktop computer – it should be wildly taken advantage of.
More Android Devices
There are already two Android-based devices on the market: the original T-Mobile G1 and the recently released MyTouch. Both built by HTC. On September 10th we should finally be seeing an android device by a second manufacturer – Motorola. This is big because now we are starting to see more commitment to the platform and because Motorola has the experience to create a great hardware + software combo. As noted a few months back, Motorola has heavily invested in Android as their platform of the future, which bodes well for Google and the others involved in the creation of the free/open-source Android.
Sweet. Now let’s see some additional devices based on Palm’s killer WebOS!
The Pre – Pretty Close
I recently test drove a Palm Pre for a week. My goal was to shut my iPhone off and configure the Pre to connect to Outlook, grab my mail, connect to my online contacts, etc. – basically to set it up to be my only device for a period so I can see how it would function around a typical week. Here are are few highlights that stood out for me:
- The WebOS is sweet. After a few hours I got very used to having multiple apps open and being able to switch between them on the fly. No closing one app to open another as with my iPhone. This really stood out when running Pandora while doing other things. To me (and I think to a lot of people) multitasking is a biggie that sets this device apart from the competition. After using the Pre for a few days my iPhone felt kinda old and simple, like it was last year’s model. One usability element that really stood out to me was the use of the touch-sensitive area under the screen – brilliant. It basically supports additional “swipe” gestures that translate into a back button and application switching. I got used to this very quickly and found myself trying to do the same thing on the iPhone a few days later.
- Notifications are cool. This is a feature I remember standing out on the Danger OS (i.e. Sidekick) – notifications that show up on part of the screen but don’t take control. On the Pre you can continue doing what you are doing while being notified. And a simple thumb gesture allows you to dismiss the notification or you can tap on the notification to find out more. Very elegant. I think some of the interaction still needs to be worked out though – multiple notifications seem to get hidden and become difficult to track. Still better than the iPhone notifications though.
- The keyboard was tough. I know a lot of people complain about the iPhone virtual keyboard, but I had a hard time getting used to the tiny keys on the Pre. For how much room they fill up, they are not bad. But compared to the range of mobile device keyboards out there, the chicklets on the Pre were just OK. It didn’t help that I have big hands, so the keyboard might be great for many other people.
- The Sprint all-inclusive plan was quite good. When I went into the Sprint store holding my iPhone, one of the first things the store rep asked was if I had a corporate account. I said I wasn’t sure and they immediately offered me a 25% discount off my monthly service – so 1500 family minutes with unlimited data came out to under $100/month. Much better than a comparable AT&T family plan for the iPhone. And Sprint doesn’t jerk you around and charge you separately for text messages, navigation, video – they (rightly) just count this as data.
- Sprint network was pretty good. Very fast in Seattle, with very good coverage. Voice calls were very clear.
- Battery life was not so great. I think this is due more to the 3G/4G network than to having multiple apps running simultaneously. The device did get hot when using data – not unlike the iPhone 3GS.
Overall, I think the Pre has a lot of potential. The WebOS is amazing – I like it better than the iPhone’s version of OSX. I was less impressed by the hardware itself, but I think this will improve over time. For a first gen device, I think the Pre is great. And I’m really excited to see the next improvements of the WebOS.
