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Monthly Archives: February 2010
QOTD: Smartphone cost?
What is the most you would pay for a smartphone? I suspect that many of you will say a lot and I probably fall into that category. If the functions are right and I perceive it to be good value, the sky is the limit. OK, £500 as a maximum for me, but it needs to be very good.
The iPad, the iPhone and the Netbook
The iPhone changed the smartphone market in the blink of an eye and the iPad looks set to do the same to the Netbook market. At this time you can go out and buy a Netbook for under £200 which will have a lacklustre screen, a cramped keyboard and specifications which make you wish you had paid £100 for a proper laptop. The Netbook market has never truly lifted off and the aim of the industry has been all about price rather than offering a user experience that makes the owner ‘want’ to pick it up and play. The iPad could change the Netbook industry in the blink of an eye.
Of course the iPad is not meant to be a Netbook at all and has no intentions to enter this market, but the addition of a keyboard and the potential for multi-tasking suggests to me that it could gain traction among those who want a portable computing solution which brings some fun to the experience at the same time. If Apple can make an iPad with superior components at a low price point there is no excuse for Netbook makers to not do the same.
If you want a Windows laptop you can pay £299 for a well specified unit which will do everything you ask of it. If you want an Apple laptop you will pay upwards of £700 for the same thing. A Netbook costs £200 yet the iPad will cost approximately £300 to give you the Apple experience many people want. The cost of an Apple laptop is high in comparison to Windows laptops, but you will get a much longer life out of it and superior hardware. It is hard to then reconcile the smaller cost differential between Netbooks and the iPad which courts exactly the same argument.
Apple will not put out a hardware keyboarded iPad because that will encroach on its other markets, but for many people an iPad with an optional keyboard represents much better value than a Windows or Linux powered Netbook. Me included.
7digital BlackBerry app Version 1.2 released
The 7digital BlackBerry app has been updated to v1.2 which brings many new features and changes. When I first tried it I was shocked at how well it worked on my BlackBerry and would recommend it highly to any BB user. Here are the main changes in the latest version-
•New: Last.fm scrobbling support
•New: Last.fm ‘now playing’ support
•New: BlackBerry Curve 8350i support
•New: 7digital store artist search
•New: 7digital store playback from locker
•New: My Music – Browse Purchased
•New: My Music – Track search
•New: My Music – Add Folder to manual playlist
•New: My Music – Delete Artist/Album/Track
•New: Media card encryption support
•Improved: My Music browsing performance
•Improved: My Locker refresh performance over WiFi
•Improved: Carrier network download performance
•Other minor fixes & improvements
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CoPilot adding Local Search as a standard feature
ALK will add local search as a free feature in a forthcoming update to Co-Pilot for the iPhone. In the quickly heating up GPS battle this is a good move as the free GPS solutions start to take hold.
From iLounge- “ALK Technologies has announced that it plans to include local Internet search as a standard feature in its CoPilot Live GPS navigation application for the iPhone. Local search was previously available only as a Premium feature via an in-app purchase. The integrated local search feature enables users to search for services and products directly within the CoPIlot application and be directed to the appropriate destination. Live Local Search will be available in CoPilot Live for North America, UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands. ALK plans to add the free Live Local Search in a forthcoming App Store update to the iPhone app.”
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NuevaSync makes webOS smarter
NuevaSync is a solution that many webOS users will find to be excellent value at $25/year and I tend to agree. Check out the instructions for setting it up on a Palm Pre to see if it will work for you.
“Sync your calendar, contacts, tasks and e-mail over-the-air to your smart phone. NuevaSync works with Google Calendar and Contacts, Yahoo Contacts, Toodledo, GMail, AOL Mail, and any IMAP mailbox. Use the iPhone, Windows Mobile and other smart phones. It needs no app. Your phone’s built-in sync client and inbox is used. Just configure and sync.”
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HTC and Telefónica introduce the HTC Smart
This is the first time in ages that I cannot categorise a new smartphone release because it uses a new operating system- Brew.
BARCELONA, Mobile World Congress – February 17, 2010 - HTC Corporation, a global designer of smartphones, and Telefónica are today announcing an exclusive partnership to sell the HTC Smart, an affordable and easy-to-use smartphone in Germany, Ireland and the United Kingdom. The HTC Smart is a new type of smartphone that offers easy-to-use widgets, browsing and connectivity at an affordable price.
“More and more people are craving advanced mobile phone experiences with email, web browsing and social networking but the cost and complexity often represent a significant obstacle for many. The HTC Smart introduces this functionality in an intuitive phone that is affordable,” said Peter Chou, chief executive officer, HTC Corporation. “With the HTC Smart, HTC and Telefónica share a similar vision for bringing easy-to-use, affordable smartphone experience to the masses.”
HTC Sense
The HTC Smart embodies HTC Senseä, HTC’s unique design philosophy that focuses the mobile experience on people. The HTC Smart’s compact touch design integrates the pillars of HTC Sense – Make It Mine, Stay Close and Discover the Unexpected – to deliver a user-friendly user experience. People can customize their own, personal HTC Smart experience using a variety of widgets for quick access to contacts, photos, music, weather and more. People are able to follow their friend’s status updates using HTC Friend Stream, an application that seamlessly aggregates all of your social communication including Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr into one organized flow of updates. This simple aggregation makes it easier than ever to focus on what friends are doing as well as the images and links that they share.
“We believe this is a key move in our ability to bring smartphones to a far wider cross section of the population,” said Matthew Key, chief executive officer of Telefónica Europe. “The benefits of web browsing on the move and ability to experience applications like mobile social networking will now be brought to the mass market and reinforces O2′s position as the home of the smartphone.”
HTC Smart utilizes Qualcomm’s Brew Mobile PlatformT (Brew MP), a powerful and popular mobile operating system that enables HTC to deliver the HTC Sense experience on more affordable smartphones. By pioneering a new era of mass-market smartphones, Brew MP also provides the HTC Smart with a mass-market opportunity for new applications and services from software developers worldwide.
“Qualcomm’s collaborations with HTC have resulted in some of the most innovative smartphones the market has seen in recent years,” says Paul Jacobs, chief executive officer of Qualcomm Incorporated. “The HTC Smart is a budget-friendly smartphone that delivers a really exciting user experience. We are pleased to be supporting HTC’s move to bring this advanced mobile experience and HTC Sense to the widest possible audience.”
Availability
In addition to being exclusively available through O2 in Germany, Ireland and the UK in April, the HTC Smart will also be available in Italy with Telecom Italia, Norway with Netcom and across Europe through the direct channel.
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Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Processor Is Coming To A Nokia Near You
Looks like Nokia smartphones will soon be powered by the processor of the moment. From The Symbian Blog- “We have all cribbed that Nokia’s Symbian devices are underpowered, that they need faster processors, that there is just not enough juice in them. That is about to change, Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs in an interview to the Helsingin Sanomat has said that we will see a Nokia Symbian device running on the Snapdragon processor by the end of this year. Awesome”
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Funkyball Worlds updated and Lite version now available
Just in from Astraware- I just wanted to drop you a quick note to let you know that our recent game release Funkyball Worlds has just been updated on the iPhone App Store. The update adds a new jump control method – tap to jump – which was added as a result of customer feedback and requests.
Gamelion, who developed Funkyball Worlds, have also created a free Lite version of the game with 3 worlds and 4 levels in each so players can get a taste of the game.
Both the full and Lite versions of the game include OpenFeint 2.4.
Here are the App Store links:
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Android getting 2 new browsers: NetFront and Firefox
Android is now expected to have 2 new web browsers available for it by the end of the year. First up is ACCESS who is bring NetFront to the platform. ACCESS also plans to develop NetFront™ Living Connect and NetFront™ Book Viewer EPUB Edition for Android and to make its NetFront products available to end users via web download.
Here’s a snippet from the press release- “ACCESS CO., LTD., a global provider of advanced software technologies to the mobile, beyond-PC and digital TV markets, today announced that its NetFront™ series technologies will now support the Android platform. The announcement comes as part of the company’s strategy to extend NetFront capabilities to any OS or CPU. NetFront technologies, including ACCESS’ acclaimed NetFront™ Browser as an embedded Internet browser, already support a variety of mobile platforms, including ACCESS Linux Platform™, Symbian OS, Garnet™ OS, BREW and Microsoft® Windows Mobile®.
Leveraging its successful track record of working closely with its partners to speed time-to-market and develop best-in-class solutions, ACCESS will provide development services for its NetFront technologies running on the Android platform. These services will help operators and device manufactures develop customized user interfaces and pre-install value-added applications…”
Next up is Firefox which is expected by the close of 2010. Jay Sullivan told the following to TechRadar- “It’s a modern OS, and it’s a great fit with us. It’s the type of platform that has a high affinity with the early adopter, and it’s seen a lot of uptake.” “Android has been built on a Java platform, whereas [Firefix Mobile] is based on C and C++ code. Until last year when [the Open Handset Alliance] released the NDK (native development kit) which allowed native code as part of the app, it was simply impossible.”
Acer announces the P300 and P400
Acer has announced the neoTouch P300 and neoTouch P400 which are both sporting Windows Mobile 6.5.3. Here are the main specifications-
neoTouch P300
- Unique slim and lightweight design
- Windows® Mobile 6.5.3, full Microsoft® Exchange support and Office Suite
- 3.2” touch screen
- Full slide down QWERTY backlit keyboard
- Qualcomm 7225 processor
- Microsoft® Office Mobile suite
- 3G+, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth™ connectivity built in
- Exclusive Spinlets™ application provides free streaming of worldwide music and video, that can be shared with friends and family via the web or e-mail.
- Windows® Media Player 10 – a great way to enjoy music, video clips and pictures on the move.
- Instant access to Windows® Market Place
neoTouch P400
- Unique, lightweight design with signature Home Ring (just 125g)
- Windows® Mobile 6.5.3, full Microsoft® Exchange support and Office Suite
- 3.2” high-definition (HVGA) screen
- Qualcomm 7227 processor reduces CPU power consumption
- 3G+, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth™ connectivity built in
- Soft touch black and glossy silver battery covers
- Windows® Media Player 10 – a great way to enjoy music, video clips and pictures on the move.
- Exclusive Spinlets™ application provides free streaming of worldwide music and video, that can be shared with friends and family via the web or e-mail.
- Instant access to Windows® Marketplace place
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QOTD: Where now?
Where is your phone at this precise moment? Also, for how much of the day is it with you? My Bold seems to be with me all of the time these days and beep beep of the new email arrivals is slowly driving me crazy:)
The mobile web: too big for the small screen?
Time was that PDAs and smartphones could only successfully access the web via websites specifically formatted to allow quick loading and readable content. As mobile network speeds increased and the ambitions of smartphone manufacturers reached fever pitch, we now have a mobile web experience which is designed to be as close to desktop web browsing as possible. The problem is that it doesn’t work.
No matter how many fancy navigation tricks the developers include and no matter how quickly they bring us to the web standards we live by on desktops, we are still using incredibly small screens to view the web on smartphones. Even on an iPhone or a new Android device browsing a full web page can be tricky and requires too much scrolling to view specific content, but it’s also true to say that mobile formatted sites can be too basic to take advantage of the advances we have seen recently.
I think there will have to be a middle ground for the mobile internet and that will be catered for by apps. The Guardian for the iPhone is a classic example of how the web can be presented to a smartphone user without the need to navigate from screen to screen. It also delivers all of the content you can read on the main website, but in an orderly fashion which suits the device it is being used on well.
Apps have the added advantage of requiring one hit on the mobile network which aids congestion. The pages are loaded and away you go. However, you could then be loading more pages that you will read so let’s leave the network side out of it because I just tripped myself up there.
I really cannot see a day when the full web will be workable on a phone purely because of the physical restrictions, but I am not blind to the advances that have been made. We cannot have websites which pander so much to mobile devices that they become dumbed down from a design perspective and we cannot expect to view intricately designed websites on a smartphone and use them to their full potential.
Millions of dollars are being poured into creating advanced web experiences by the likes of RIM, Google and Apple, but ultimately it could all come to nothing.
Smartphone Essentials Magazine now on the iPhone
Smartphone Essentials Magazine is now available to read directly on the iPhone and the initial price is value worthy at just £1.19. “Finally an application to view your favorite issues of Smartphone Essentials Magazine, Purchasing the app automatically includes the latest issue of the magazine for free!
Today’s smartphones do a whole lot more than make calls: they are web browsers, social networking tools, mobile offices and satnav systems. Smartphone Essentials is the UK’s only magazine dedicated to guiding you through the complexities of this rapidly changing technology. It is packed with comprehensive reviews of the latest devices, plus in-depth tutorials and features to ensure you get the most from them. Aimed at everyone from businessmen baffled by their BlackBerrys, to tech enthusiasts who lust after the latest gadgets, Smartphone Essentials is the ultimate guide to mobile computing.
You will be notified of any new issues, which can be purchased from within the App, as well as your favorite back issues. With interactive page flipping where pages follow your fingers and a zoom feature, which overcomes the inherent problem of reading magazines on mobile devices. A unique fun sharing feature allows you to share magazines with your friends just like you would in the real world! You will have access to bookmarks, a contents page, and a great search tool, which allows you to not only search the magazine you are reading but all of your back issues too. A Pixelmag can be read anywhere regardless of a data connection, essential for reading on the move on planes, trains etc…”
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Avatar reaches webOS
Avatar (the game) is now available to webOS users and is the latest example of 3D gaming on the platform. Looks like things are moving steadily forward on webOS in terms of gaming possibilities.
From pre central- “Avatar is the latest PDK-enabled 3D game, and it promises to be one of the more impressive. Not only do you get to dive deep into the world of Pandora, you get to make the same choices made in the film: save the Na’vi or work with your fellow humans. Or are they your fellow humans? The lines get predictably blurry. But this isn’t just any-old scripted role-playing game – you get to fight against the Na’vi, humans, giant beastly things with nasty big pointed teeth. Oh, and did we mention that you get to fly? How cool is that”
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Windows Phone 7 Series hands-on
Slashgear has posted extensive hands-on details of Windows 7 and included a video which tells us much more. I have to say that it looks very good indeed, but at the expense of some feature we expect from Microsoft.