insidemobility.com

So, 2007 was the year when always-on wireless data became mainstream and affordable. For 2008, we will be hoping for something we might call OnMobile. Let me outline some thoughts on what the hallmarks are:

• Pointing, ie. a pointer-based user interface, for example using:
  • A finger-enabled touch screen, such as demonstrated by the iPhone, touch, or Prada
  • A pointer controlled by joystick, not requiring a touch screen, such as recent Nokias (a less good solution)
  • Stylus, like Microsoft’s five year old (awful) solution

  Pointing allows for intuitive device usage, and makes buttons obsolete

• On-Device: Code running on the handset through:
  • A scripting browser (meaning install-free experience) as provided by recent Nokias and the iPhone
  • Other scripting like Java ME or python
  • Native code, typically as C or C++

  Code on the client provides for responsiveness and graceful failures, and can enhance communications performance. The more and longer the application is to be used, the more native an application should be: for example messaging should always be native, while a no-install game is to prefer. A native solution is eased by C++ capabilities though portability to date has been unsatisfactory

• Server-Support: An experience enhanced by a server providing:
  • Data support (eg. Google Maps)
  • Storage (evolved iTunes)
  • Communications (gmail, instant messaging, Facebook)

  The server provides storage, availability, and computational power beyond handset capabilities

Then, what company might bring you this paradise vision?

• it’s not going to be wireless carriers, they only know how to keep the network running
• it’s not going to be handset makers, they only know how to handle warranties
• it might be a Web service company that can muster device engineers, which to date is a rare combination

What models would then make such a service profitable?

• paid-by-information source: the credit card company, Amazon
• paid-by-infotainment: Google Maps, MTV
• paid for by ads/privacy exposure

There is reasoning and conclusions around these assertions, though it kind of tells you what it’s about in 2008. Not that we won’t see another peculiar service out of Verizon, a new RAZR, or the Wi-Fi store. These companies will get it all put together eventually, it’s just that we want it now, OnMobile!

If you are NOT making a phone, and your name perhaps starts with G and ends with oogle, here is a really short recipe for you:

1. If there is no HSDPA radio, in the US, you will look REALLY STUPID
2. If there is not a capacitive touch screen, you will look REALLY RETARDED
3. And there is one more thing: a scripting browser, like you didn’t know already, that behaves like an app window

If that selling proposition is going to be “free” there is likely bad news in terms of how ad delivery is going to be guaranteed. Just make it as open source as you can.
Then, team up with your favorite disgruntled record company, Facebook, and some popular video clip site. You can’t fail.

Java went open source. It is now remarkably more easy to write Java code, now that you can not only step through your own source code, you can also step the source of the runtime, and the server code. This is extremely empowering for an independent software vendor. Any obscure crash or compile quirk can be examined and understood, something that would otherwise be prohibitively cumbersome, expensive or impossible in the world of secret software. This is not about religious beliefs, there is just nothing beating an open-source environment.

This is where mobility is headed within the next 12 months. Is it going to be OpenMoko, Qtopia, or whatever Google comes up with? Well, it does not really matter. I’m a programmer, I can program anything. What is important is what hardware the environment can run on, and it’s been pretty bad so far. There are plenty of great manufacturers (perhaps all of them) seriously challenged with producing good software for their devices. If the device was all open, there would be six billion people out there helping out ridding it of bugs. The proprietary makers such as Nokia, Apple and Microsoft, can beat that in time to market any day of the week, however, over time they will all loose. Any nice application you would want to run is highly dependent on where it runs: The uptime of Windows Mobile is one day. The uptime of Symbian is one week. The uptime of Linux, we have yet to find.

It used to go: God, Send gsm Mobiles…

There once was someone on the Exchange team on a tight budget, I believe it was one megabyte. Similarly today for handset hardware, Apple has tightened the budget on our incumbent manufacturers that don’t understand why they are still in business: it’s the one button budget. With a pressure-free touch screen built with capacitive technology, there can be a larger screen on the device than previously possible, and new intuitive ways of interaction without the use of buttons.

Adhering to the one button budget, of course, does not mean they will get it all right, either. Just look at the Prada phone: a royal UI mess. And these guys had nothing holding them back from greatness at all, other than themselves, apparently. I also remember counting the buttons on my favorite HTC a year back or so: i kept noticing how hard it was to grab it without pressing something, and I found out why: it had 15 buttons exposed in its closed state. We are talking about a phone with four edges, right? 15!

Some manufacturers are not even planning capacitive touch screens still today, I happen to know. That is the interesting thing with a disrupting technology change: the new entrant grasps the implications, while some incumbents keep polishing “the old stuff” to new levels of shiny, producing handsets far beyond the one button budget.

There is an apple under your tree, Stevie’s hand outs. So he is “giving” $100 to every iPhone owner. Well, the guy is smart, this one is a sales classic: when he gets me to the Apple store, I aint going to buy $100 worth of stuff. I am getting an Appletop with Leo which is the only thing I don’t have yet. Smart move. And I am still buying the HSDPA version. You always want one phone for development and another for calls.

At a recent moto event I got shocked. Moto, who let the market leadership slip through their fingers last year, was talking about how important social networking is on the mobile. Alright, if you do not have three clients running on your phone and count more hits than that other brand, it is not important to you, Moto. Interesting strategy, too: I don’t think there is one architecture for which Moto does not make a phone. However, I think Moto got the message: last year’s models don’t sell. You can still do it!

I am still trying to figure Nokia out (that’s what I am using right now.) Smart people, smart solutions, smart stuff. So what IS it with the awful designs? I can not comprehend how they can remain #1! Compare the iPhone to a Nokia, any model, there just can’t be a Finish person proud over that comparison. I do not see any reason for Apple being better than Nokia, quite the opposite. Doesn’t it seem to you like Tom Ford is looking for a new challenge? He probably could not resist designing a Nokman device with attitude. And then N has this new Microsoft-approach that does not make sense either, talk about selling yourself to the devil. Continuing that probably means no Nokia five years from now. Maybe it’s panic?

• Steve’s third iPhone lie: there were no HSDPA chips available
  A full two years before the iPhone launched HTC had an HSDPA phone on the market. Apple just did not understand how important high speed, low latency, and simultaneous data and voice is, defending themselves that they made a consumer device. Ouch, we messed up, time for another excusing keynote…

Anyway, I am deeply in love with the iPod application! It uses the capacitive screen to the fullest, has a thought through user interface that (lacking a resistive coating) with clarity displays the infatuating beauty of Agnetha Fältskog and Louise Hoffsten. However, as a phone, your SIM card has things to do and places to go, and that is not in a yPhone.

So having HSDPA, growing the screen eight mm at each of its narrow edges, without changing the casing, would give:

1. True 16:9 screen format (HDTV)
2. Full (mobile) keyboard width

…and everybody happy! Beyond the phone design-debacle, Apple has done a truly awesome job on this device, my old iPod is long since in the can. If it is not apparent to everyone, Apple will own the mobile market for the next 12 months, using their digital music ticket to enter mobility. That leaves online personal data and real-time social networking for other companies to explore. Notably, when Steve says .mac needs an overhaul, he might be royally unhappy that iPhone could not get its music and calendar data over the air from .mac, such a future evolution would not surprise.

For the next hardware revision I can only say: rock me, give me that kick now!

Is Google aware of the SyncML standard that could enable many devices to synchronize things like e-mail, calendar, and data? They could do a GoogleMaps on the mobile market fairly easy in line with the GooSync or GCalsync. In 2007, when flat-rate data plans are finally mainstream, it’s time to make a move…

You may have noticed that the yPhone synchronizes using the 80’s technologies USB cable and desktop iTunes application. It’s like that phone was designed by Microsoft, there is just no professionals that will cable sync. And that very long cable ends at Yahoo!, not at Google. Is that what Google wants?

What were they thinking?

The iPhone virtual keyboard is the worst keyboard design I have ever tested, and why? The key spacing is 5 mm, and my (very thin) index finger is 16 mm, that’s three key tops per fingertip width, with no tactile feedback! Is anybody surprised that this is hard to use? Why was this design not reworked before somebody put it out in six million copies? A little Cupertino group think, perhaps? I don’t care how many keynotes, this is not good enough.

To show how extremely bad this performs, here is a little list of times to type the “brown fox” text three times:
1. 36 s HTC Wizard, 9.1 mm keys
2. 37 s HTC Tytn, 8.4 mm keys
3. 42 s Blackberry 8700, 6.1 mm, slanted layout
4. 45 s Nokia E61 6.3 mm
5. 105 s Sony Ericsson m600, 9 mm tilt-keys
6. 135 s iPhone, 5 mm key spacing

a. times for a novice typist
b. 40 seconds pace allows for taking speech notes
c. Desktop keyboards have 18.5 mm or so key spacing

I hope someone in the south bay will read this, because this can be made better with a software upgrade. There is a landscape keyboard mode that only works in the browser. This should be (yes, that’s a requirement, it goes in the PRD) available for all input, why each and every application in the name of usability must support landscape mode. The landscape keyboard has 7.3 mm spacing, if you would get rid of the funny margins around the keyboard and let the key edges spill over the side of the screen, you will be able to hit 8 mm spacing and perhaps below 50 seconds in the table above. That would turn the iPhone into a Macberry, give us that, please.

A post on the iPhone without actually using one:

You don’t have to read all this: If your phone does not have browser scripting, get this one

“Think of it not as a phone, but the greatest iPod ever made”

• iTunes must become a Web service
  Teathering the phone to the desktop is just awful. Since there is no HSDPA, and AT&T is scared stiff of people actually using their network, the iTunes Web service will take a while. It’s fine managing iTunes from your desktop, you just do not want to be required to connect your iPhone to it. Once unteathered, record companies either need to be convinced about iPhone security being as good as the desktop or go DRM-free. If Apple does not go in the Web service direction, someone else will
• Steve’s First iPhone Lie: The Keyboard Works
  The widest keyboard wins. This is the simple truth, why the winning design is a slide-out landscape-orientation qwerty keyboard, and this is what the iPhone must become or it will be beaten. Steve could also provide a stylus, which would bring speed at the expense of convenience. Apple are not the first, nor the last to lie about a useless on-screen keyboard design. On-screen is just not a winner.
• Steve’s Second iPhone Lie: Browser Applications are great
  Steve says programs can run in the browser just fine. Comparing Google maps between Java and the E61 browser, the Java client is at least three times faster, and functions much better, too, and that is not even native code. The truth is that the iPhone’s software can’t take poorly written native applications, and that AT&T is plenty scared of hackers and other people’s software.

A few reviewers have complained about the fixed battery and small storage. These factors will not be a problem, the world spins around chargers, not batteries, and 8 GiB is plenty for now. The potential of the iPhone, though, is the world writing native code for it, and this is when the device really will become a money-maker beyond Apple and AT&T. Finally, a widespread standardized device to write software for! This will, however, require a highly stable operating system, let me suggest the iPhone does not have that (for the next year.)

To conclude, the iPhone will be a huge success, Apple-oholics buy overpriced hardware all the time, however, to get to the next level the iPhone will need:

1. Native software
2. Mechanical keyboard
3. Broadband connection

And where in la chucha is the GPS? How about Bluetooth file transfer and connection sharing? And loose the Wi-Fi, alright, that is so nineties. Apple, dear, could be making a phone that communicates, not an iPod, Let’s just leave it at that.