This is the age of true mobility

You may have heard about Android in the past few months. It’s the new Google Mobile OS that they announced last November. Developed as part of a Google led initiative, and backed by over 30 companies including many major manufacturers like Motorola and HTC, the SDK has gotten many thousands of downloads by developers eager to try it out.

2007 was marked, at least as far as news coverage goes, by the iPhone. Will 2008 be the year of the Google phones? Now that Apple has released it’s iPhone SDK also, the race is on to know which platform will come out on top. It’s hard to say yet who will win, and part of that is because both platforms share so much in common. The iPhone itself uses a lot of the same software. The map application, for example, is Google Maps for Mobile on both platforms. The web browser is based on the same open source code. Both support things like Bluetooth, touch screens, and threaded SMS.

Google has the advantage of being device neutral. Android is a software platform, so it will be implemented on an array of phones from many companies. Both low end and high end phones will be able to use the same interface, and have access to the same applications.

The iPhone however came out first, and has the power of the Apple marketing machine behind it. While Google is a name that’s just as known, since they aren’t making the actual devices, who knows how much hype each manufacturer can put out for their respective Android-based devices.

I think in the end the consumers will benefit from the increased competition. It’s obvious that with such close offerings, each company will be pushed to improve faster, and bring out more innovation to stay ahead. It’s too early to say if 2008 will be the year of the Google phones, but one thing I’m certain is that this year will see just as much development in the mobile arena than last year did, if not more!

New products are rarely released worldwide. This is especially true in the mobile world. Phones appear in one region of the globe, then the rest of us get to wait a few months (if not years) to see it. The iPhone, for example, was the hottest phone of 2007, but only in the US. It’s still not available anywhere else.

Those delays can be understood, since companies have to prioritize based on stock and manpower. Market studies can also make them think that it’s not worth their bottom line to sell an item in a country if the demand might not be there. I do have to wonder why some companies go even father, however, and actively prevent products from being bought or shipped overseas. Product restrictions, DRM, or lack of support shouldn’t be the standard, it should be seen as a poor business practice.

There is no reason, for example, that a company would refuse to service an item that it sold simply because the item was purchased in another country. If a cellphone is bought in Hong Kong, and brought to Canada, then the company will often request that the owner contact the office in Hong Kong. Worse, this still happens when the phone is finally being sold locally.

What really pushes the boundary of understanding behavior, and the point of this article, is when this starts to happen with software. The main one which annoys me right now is the Microsoft Windows Live Messenger. You may recall in May 2007, when an official MSN client was found on the MSN China site. At first it worked globally, but soon they restricted it to China and Taiwan only.

Almost a full year later, this restriction is still in place. While we have dozens of third party applications available on various phones that can connect to the Windows Live system, they still restrict their official player. Is it to force people to use Windows Mobile devices to have an official client? Who knows.

Now today I found out they have yet another client. This time it seems they followed in Yahoo!’s footsteps and made a full featured client for Live Mail, Messenger, Search, and so on. But what do we see? It’s only available to European countries. Sigh. Who would have thought Microsoft was a US company.

I’m sure there’s a reason, presented to management, behind closed doors, which must have made alot of sense at the time. But the reality is people will just use third party clients, or find some hack to use it. And what this means is we get partial support of the features, or people go to other services such as Yahoo! or Google. I would think the goal of free services such as Instant Messaging and web mail would be to get as many people to use them as possible. But apparently the hardware model is just as used in the software domain. And it’s a damn shame.

The speed of innovations in the smartphone market is almost exponential. Just five years ago smartphones were almost nonexistent, and most people didn’t even have a cellphone. In the past few years we’ve made huge progress. Last year we went from the mobile web to the full web. This year VoIP was the hot topic, with a series of software packages being released for various smartphones. Wi-fi and 3G fast Internet speed is now a common feature, and so are high resolution 3MPx cameras.

The same is true for mapping. GPS is now becoming more common and with the Google Maps mobile client, even without it anyone can get directions and see maps. Positioning is going to be a standard feature and integration with Bluetooth devices expands its capabilities.

So now that we know where we’re at, what’s next? Well in my opinion, in the short term we’ll mainly see Internet related advances. For example, Google Docs currently doesn’t work with mobile browsers, but if they fixed that, it would bring all your web based documents on the road. IM clients could also use some love. Right now the situation is rather poor, with a series of third party applications that more or less support various IM protocols. I’d like to see the official vendors fully support smartphones, with emoticons, file transfers, video chat and so on.

In the longer term, I see the mobile applications themselves becoming more complex. This depends mostly on hardware advances, since any kind of complex process requires more CPU and processing power. For example, advanced picture editing right on the device, allowing people to edit their photos right after they take them. Same thing for video.

Current high end devices already have 400MHz and 600MHz processors. When we have desktop class 1GHz processors in those things, with big enough flash cards to be used as RAM, that’s when mobile software will really start rivaling desktop applications. While we may not see a Photoshop or GarageBand running on our phones quite yet, in two or three years I can definitively see that happening. With decent touchscreens those types of applications would make perfect sense on the road.

In the past five years we went from black and white phones doing calls and SMS only to full featured smartphones. In five more years I can easily see mobile devices becoming as powerful as our current computers.

Well the iDay came and went, now that we’re 2 weeks after the launch of the most over-hyped, over-mediatized phone ever, how did it fare? Well it did sell a lot, more than 500,000 just in the first weekend. Reviews came in from every possible source, and it was pretty much exactly as we had expected.

As I thought, many of the negative points got mentioned in the reviews, like the lack of a real keyboard, the price, the non-removable battery, the 2-years contract needed, and the lack of any third party software support. Some new things got found out, like the fact that if you have bad credit, AT&T will actually offer a pre-paid plan. Overall most reviews were positive, and since then people have been actively working on hacking it to enable even more features.

In the end it pleased a lot of phone users, but it’s of little interest to me, other than for the impact it will make on longer term phone development. Apple always has an effect on the industry, by proving that something can be made sleeker, easier to use, so we’re sure to see many more copies in the months to come, and user interfaces for phones in general should take a hint from the iPhone.

As this will probably be the last post on the subject, the reviews all over the web covered every possible feature of this device except one, so I have to ask the ultimate question to end this post: Will it blend?

I may not agree with John C. Dvorak often, but in this case, I have to agree with his latest editorial. iPhone buzz is out of control. Now I know, with a company like Apple, it’s easy to be quickly categorized as an Apple fan or an Apple basher. So let’s take the New York Times latest review of the iPhone. Their article has been linked in countless blogs and touted as “fair” by both sides. They have an actual unit, and have been testing it, and are writing a review of the actual phone, unlike 99% of the hype articles that we find in the media these days. Yet let’s see how even they have a tinted view of the whole phenomenon.

It starts with this quote: “The iPhone is revolutionary; it’s flawed. It’s substance; it’s style. It does things no phone has ever done before; it lacks features found even on the most basic phones.” I knew about the basic lacking features (no removable battery slot, no MMS support, no Java support, etc) but it does things no phone has ever done before? That’s news to me. Let’s read on: “once the phone goes on sale this Friday, you won’t sign up for service in a phone store, under pressure from the sales staff. You will be able to peruse and choose a plan at your leisure, in the iTunes software on your computer.” That can be good or bad. It’s less stressful to pick up your plans at home, but I can just see the nightmare all the CS calls will be. Now at least we know why an iTunes Music Store subscription is required.

“Better yet, unlimited Internet service adds only $20 a month to AT&T’s voice-plan prices, about half what BlackBerry and Treo owners pay.” That’s good news for future iPhone users. We knew a data plan would be required but the fact that they will be getting a special low price deal is good. Of course one has to wonder why a Treo or other smartphone user on AT&T should have to pay more for the exact same data plan.

“On the iPhone, you don’t check your voice mail; it checks you. One button press reveals your waiting messages, listed like e-mail. There’s no dialing in, no password” That’s a great improvement. But let’s face it, the iPhone didn’t invent that. The reason phones don’t do that is because the technology for this has nothing to do with the phone itself, it’s all based on how the network operate. The reason the iPhone can do this is because AT&T agreed to install special servers to convert voice mail into digital audio files then push the files to the phone. This is already possible with third party services, but it will be integrated and out of the box on the iPhone because of the unique partnership AT&T agreed on, not because of new technology breakthroughs.

“The Web browser, though, is the real dazzler. This isn’t some stripped-down, claustrophobic My First Cellphone Browser; you get full Web layouts, fonts and all, shrunk to fit the screen.” This is one of the major points the hype focuses on, and this review takes care to talk about it. Of course the fact that this browser is doing exactly the same thing as Opera Mini has been doing for a week, or that the S60 browser has been doing for more than a year, is nicely forgotten.

“Free live traffic reporting, indicated by color-coded roads on the map.” Again, I thought this was a review of the iPhone? This is simply one of the many features that the Google Maps mobile Java applet has had for a long time. This is exactly the type of buzz that makes it so easy for people to be taken into the hype. Mixing features of the phone with things that other third parties provided, such as the network or Google.

“There’s no memory-card slot, no chat program, no voice dialing. You can’t install new programs from anyone but Apple; other companies can create only iPhone-tailored mini-programs on the Web. The browser can’t handle Java or Flash, which deprives you of millions of Web videos.” I think this fairly describes the negatives that the phone has. To be fair, no mobile browser supports Flash and that isn’t the fault of Apple but the simple fact that there is no port of the Flash application that supports web based files yet. However the fact that no third party applications, not even Java applets, can be installed, is a design decision from Apple, for better or for worse.

“The two-megapixel camera takes great photos, provided the subject is motionless and well lighted . But it can’t capture video.” That’s surprising. While a 2MPx standard phone video never looks great, at least the feature is there on other phones, and people who really want to take videos can, even on phones with low end VGA cameras. I don’t know why the iPhone can’t take videos when the vast majority of phones have been able to for years, but it seems like an unnecessary lack of feature.

“The New York Times’s home page takes 55 seconds to appear; Amazon.com, 100 seconds; Yahoo. two minutes.” This is another surprise. Yes, EDGE isn’t the fastest around, but I use EDGE myself and I browse the web. I never get anywhere near those speeds. I can load most web sites including those inside of 30 seconds on a full featured browser. Now to be fair I’m not on AT&T, so I don’t know if the issue is with the phone’s software or the network, but those speeds don’t seem right to me.

“Apple points out that unlike other cellphones, this one can and will be enhanced with free software updates.” Another piece of twisted reality from Apple PR. Most smartphones can be updated, that’s called a firmware update. You usually connect your phone and click on the update button on your PC software. Some phones can even be updated over the air, from the phone itself.

I think their conclusion nicely displays why the iPhone brings out such strong emotions amongst many smartphone users: “But even in version 1.0, the iPhone is still the most sophisticated, outlook-changing piece of electronics to come along in years.” So after showing that the iPhone brings absolutely no feature that isn’t available in other phones, but lacks many basic features that most phones have, it somehow deserves the title of the most sophisticated piece of electronics in years. Right.

In the end I think the iPhone will be a big success. As with most Apple products, it looks sleek and easy to use. This review did confirm that the software mostly delivers, and typical Apple users will most likely be satisfied. But let’s be very clear, the iPhone isn’t any type of revolutionary device, and doesn’t provide any brand new technology, but brings restrictions that we should be moving away from in this day and age, not going head first into, such as network restrictions, and imposed contract plans. It will probably bring a lot of users into the world of mobility, and provide a pleasant user experience to many people who were frustrated by their current device, and I can respect it for that. But the hype is ridiculous, and the amount of twisted facts completely unnecessary. Shame on Apple for that.

Every few months that same old rumor comes back up, that Google is about to announce a “Google Phone”. The last in this long series was just yesterday, when the latest LG phone was announced to be bundled with Google applications. With a name so high profile as Google, this is surely not the last time we see that famous phone name in the media.

What many news sources don’t get, is that Google is a software company. They don’t do hardware, and there is no reason for Google to start making a phone. Not only would the cost of going into the phone market be huge, but it would actually restrict their user base. By making Java clients and mobile portals for their services, they ensure that anyone with a cellphone can use Google. That’s always been the way they’ve done things, and there’s no reason to think it will change. There will be no true Google Phone on store selves anytime soon, but you could make your own.

Google is probably the company that’s the most present in the mobile space, which is interesting since they don’t actually produce any mobile hardware. But with their many services, almost all of which now available on the go, any manufacturer, carrier or even mobile user can create a Google Phone. The only requirement for this experiment is to have a handset with Java support where you can access the Internet (unlimited data plan helps) and install third party software. Almost any unlocked phone works.

1. The first application to get is Google Maps for Mobile. From that you can browse maps, get directions, do local searches and get traffic reports.
2. Then get the Google Mail mobile app from your browser to download the Java client to access your email directly from Google’s servers.
3. Now it’s time to connect to the web. If your device has a decent browser, that’s plenty good, or if you want the full web experience download the latest Opera Mini.
4. Change your homepage to http://mobile.google.com so all the Google services appear right away, then you can access the news, your calendar and do searches from there.
5. Lastly, install one of the many Google themes out there such as this one, and put all the applets we installed on the main menu of your phone.

An optional step would be to print out a Google stamp and put it on the front of the phone, for complete and total integration with the online service, and there you go, your very own Google Phone. Next time, we’ll make an iPhone!

With yesterday’s release of Opera Mini 4 Beta, I thought it would be a good time to do a browser comparison to show what the options are in the world of mobile browsing. I’ll review a standard WAP browser (as found on the vast majority of cellphones), the S60 browser (found on recent Nokia smartphones), Opera Mini 3 (used by over 15 millions people on any Java cellphone), Opera Mini 4 Beta (just released), Pocket IE (found on Windows Mobile smartphones) and the iPhone (although no hands on testing can be done yet). First let’s see which criteria can differentiate the browsers.

Criteria

The look

The first and most visual feature in comparing browsers, is how the pages look. There are 2 typical presentation styles: phone view and desktop view.

Phone view is the typical view a WAP browser gives you. Basically it takes the HTML and other web input, and formats them to fit the screen. This means that the page isn’t shown in the way it was intended to be, it can be painful to scroll through, and some elements may not appear at all. However the data transfer is less since there is only a minimum amount of images, and the power required is less so rendering may be faster.

Desktop view is what newer browsers are starting to adopt, and instead render the page as it would appear on a desktop browser, and then provide 4 way scrolling, as well as a rectangle where the user can focus and zoom in/out to read a section of the page. This can be done in 2 ways, either the screen shows the zoomed in view, with a mini map showing the full page (the S60 browser does this), or the screen shows the full page, with a mini map allowing for zooming (the new Opera Mini 4 Beta does that).

To illustrate these features, here are shots of the same 3 web pages (Yahoo!, The New York Times and Digg) on a WAP browser, the S60 browser, and Opera Mini 4 Beta.

Features

The other obvious point to compare with these browsers is the features they support. This includes everything from web standards, JavaScript, AJAX, bookmarks, but also extra features like RSS feeds.

Also worth noting is if the browser is in beta or not, as it may contain bugs or stability issues. A crashing browser is not a pleasant web experience.

Availability

Finally of importance is also the availability of the browser: whether it comes pre-installed on handsets, if it’s available for download, and if it costs anything. It’s also worth noting which programming language the browser is written in, since different devices support different languages.

The browsers

WAP

The first in the list is the standard WAP browser. This is the browser that comes pre-installed on the vast majority of phones, and also the least powerful of the bunch. Some popular ones include NetFront, Openwave and PocketWeb. It’s the oldest type of browser and still the most used today on low end phones around the world.

These are usually part of the firmware of the phone and comes with handsets, and they provide a phone based look of the web. The early WAP browser only supported WAP pages, special sites ending with the extension “.wap” and not normal Internet sites. Modern WAP browsers also support basic HTML sites, and remove everything except text and sometimes images.

As far as features, they usually provide bookmarking, and that’s about it. Very rarely will they support even basic JavaScript and secure transactions, and you can forget any Web2.0 sites.

Pocket IE

The second browser is Pocket IE (also called Mobile Internet Explorer), the Microsoft browser that comes with Pocket PC and Windows Mobile smartphones. This browser is made by Microsoft and has been through several versions already.

It provides a view of the web similar to the WAP browser, meaning it will take web pages and display them to fit the phone screen, instead of showing them as they were intended. It does display all the proper images, but they are smaller and not in their original locations. It’s worth noting that Microsoft currently has a new engine called Deepfish in development which will convert Pocket IE to display pages in the desktop view.

For features, PocketIE is much better than a WAP browser. On top of bookmarking and normal text and images, it supports the full set of web protocols like HTML, JavaScript, secure transactions and AJAX.

S60 browser

The S60 browser is an open source project from Nokia that uses the khtml engine and was introduced in the spring of 2006. It’s available pre-installed on all S60 smartphones since early 2006.

This is the first browser to provide a desktop like web experience on mobile devices. It provides a zoomed in version of the page, and allows users to scroll in all 4 directions with the joystick or keys. When scrolling, a mini map appears showing all the pages. It also provides a back feature which shows every page in a scrolling list. For devices that support landscape mode, the latest version also supports it.

The S60 browser supports all the web protocols as well, plus RSS feeds in a special Feeds folder.

Opera Mini

Opera Mini is the popular Java browser that runs on almost any phone which supports Java. It comes pre-installed on a few phones, but it’s also available for free download. The latest stable version is 3.1, but the beta version 4 was released recently.

The original look of Opera Mini was the same as WAP or PocketIE, meaning that web sites would be displayed to fit the phone. In version 4, this is changed to display pages in desktop view. Note that as of yet it does not support landscape mode.

Opera Mini supports all the web features, including RSS feeds. Note however that some features such as RSS and secure transactions are not available yet in version 4 beta.

iPhone

The iPhone will come with a version of Safari. This browser is based on khtml, the same as the S60 browser. It’s not yet available, so the only things we know is what Apple has said. We do know it will be exclusive to the iPhone.

The display will be like the S60 browser and Opera Mini 4, showing a desktop based view. It also supports landscape mode, and provides a zooming feature. Apple also said that iPhone applications will be built around Safari.

We should also expect similar features as what the S60 browser provides, since it uses the same engine.

Conclusion

Obviously, if you intend to do a lot of browsing with your mobile device, the browser is an important part of the buying decision. That’s where smartphones such as S60 devices come in handy. If your device comes only with a WAP browser, but you can install additional Java applets, the latest Opera Mini seems like a clear choice. It’s currently the best free browser that can be downloaded.

As far as look, it seems clear that the future is headed to web style browsing, with the S60 browser, Opera Mini 4, Microsoft Deepfish and the iPhone all heading that way. In a year’s time, everyone will be expecting this type of full web support on the road, as it should be.

Last year Google introduced a web based word processor. Then, they added a spreadsheet and called the package Google Docs. Today, they announced that they bought a presentation service to add presentations to Google Docs. The biggest issue with this, and any of the multitude of web services that Google has been introducing over the years, is the fact that since both the applications and your data are online, you always need to be connected to make use of them. Many media sources dismissed them as useless.

Yet recently a little product got introduced under the radar to the developers community by Google called Google Gears, and I believe this is the tipping point where everything culminates to. It allows any online service to be cached locally, used offline, and then synchronized when a connection becomes available. Suddenly, all those web based applications become available at all times. And that implies a lot of cool things.

First, as web services get improved, all users have access to the latest version instantly, for free. That’s a major bonus since you no longer have the need to push security updates to people, and software no longer compromises the stability or speed of the local desktop since it’s all running on the remote server.

Second, and perhaps most important, since it all uses open web standards, it’s not restricted to a platform. While a word processor, presentation application or feed reader would typically need to be developed for every operating system you want to run it on, it’s all available on the web and every computer or device with a full web browser can access it online. Then, all you have to do is port Google Gears, and instantly all the web services become available on that platform offline too.

It doesn’t take much to envision what plans Google may have. They have always been active in the mobile space, so we can easily see all their web resources becoming available on mobile platforms. They are working closely with Apple so it may appear first on the iPhone, but Google always went for open standards in the past so they would introduce it to all mobile devices. This is also why things like Opera Mini 4, which provides the full web to any Java cellphone, is so important.

Just think what the future may look like. You go on your Apple desktop in the morning, access your text documents, presentations, read your news, watch your online photos and reply to your email. Then on the road during your commute you get your Windows Mobile smartphone and instantly have access to all of the same data and can work on it with an interface customized for the smaller screen. And once at work, you log on your Linux work computer, and your data is right there, waiting for you. No syncing needed, no need to transfer or convert documents around, everything always available regardless of the platform you use.

The future is truly web centric, and in that kind of future, what becomes important is the web services and web browser, and not which operating system you use, what desktop application you need to buy or which file formats you need to convert.

Opera Mini 4 Beta has been released this morning. It now provides the full desktop browsing experience. This is a revolutionary product. It’s bigger than the iPhone. Why? Because over one billion people currently use a cellphone, and are restricted to browse only WAP pages because they don’t have a smartphone. Yet the vast majority support Java, and by downloading this simple 200k program, they can now browse the full Internet with a desktop like experience, right now, for free.

But Opera Mini won’t get media coverage, I can guarantee you that. Yet these same media sources will keep running daily iPhone coverage stories, building up hype in the public. It’s not based on how useful it is for people, it’s based on how sleek and sexy looking it is. If it doesn’t come in a shiny box with an Apple logo on it then clearly there’s no reason to cover it.

The new Opera Mini 4 Beta uses a technique similar to the S60 browser to provide both the full screen view and a mini map to allow scrolling. It also brings other new features such as better CSS support and faster download times. An online demo of the new browser is available on the Opera site.

I for one am glad Opera made the transition to the desktop like browsing experience. Now alongside S60 users, any Java phone can have access to the full Internet, the way it was meant to be. But hey, it doesn’t have the Apple logo on it, so who cares, right?

I’ve been using an S60 smartphone for years now, and the ability to add third party apps is the cornerstone of owning a smartphone. I wrote a “must-have” list a few years back but over time applications changed so this list needed to be redone. Let’s start with applications every phone can use because they are Java based:

• Google Maps for Mobile is the Java based version of the Google Maps site. It allows you to see maps of every corner of the world, satellite images, ask for locations, directions and even traffic reports. It also now supports GPS on a few devices, and is a must have for finding your way on the road.
• Google Mail is the other Google application I use all the time, although for Yahoo! email users you would prefer the Yahoo! Go client. I find these applications very integrated and useful to quickly access your web based mail.
• Opera Mini is the most popular third party browser for phones and is really a nice way to browse the web if your phone doesn’t come with a full featured browser. One of the nice feature of this browser is the Opera proxy which compresses full web sites into a mobile friendly format. Almost all content except Flash and some more complex AJAX sites can be seen with it.

Now to some programs that require a S60 smartphone:

• MWeather is a mobile weather program which uses the Yahoo! API to get forecast. It provides all the basic information on upcoming weather and can be configured to show multiple cities.
• Fring is, out of all the multitude of choices, my favorite IM client currently. It supports MSN, SIP and Skype VOIP calls.
• Nokia Podcasting is the open source software that Nokia developed to allow people to download and synchronize podcasts directly from their smartphones. It works very well, especially if your device supports wi-fi.
• Nokia Internet Radio is another Nokia open source application which allows you to stream radio from your smartphone. It does use alot of data so 3G or wi-fi is recommended.
• ShoZu is a recent project which integrates your handset with various online services like Flickr. You can upload software directly to Flickr as soon as you take it, and that site comes up with more features all the time.
• Metro is a very old application that first came out for original Palm platforms and provides maps and directions for subway systems from many cities around the world.