Filed under Smartphones …

May 13 2013
Smartphones

If you’re going to buy a smartphone, read this article

Brian S Hall writing at Tech.pinions:

You’re saying the HTC One is better than the Samsung Galaxy S4?

No. I think the S4 is slightly better. But if you buy the S4 all your friends will think you did so only because of all those Samsung commercials.

Hall goes through the questions I get all the time, and nails the answers. If you’re getting your first smartphone or upgrading an older model, you owe it to yourself to read the whole thing.

SMALL ADDENDUM: The iPhone 5′s LTE capability is perhaps overlooked by Hall. I think the speed it offers outweighs any other compromises. His arguments are all valid nonetheless.

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Apr 30 2013
Smartphones

Samsung’s 16GB Galaxy S4 comes with just 8.8GB of free space

Via ExtremeTech:

Samsung’s entry-level superphone, despite being labeled as a 16GB device, comes with just 8.8GB of free storage — or about 55% of the listed 16GB. Other smartphones, such as the 16GB iPhone 5 or 32GB Lumia 920, have almost 90% of their listed storage available for consumer use.

ExtremeTech rips Samsung and other manufacturers that fudge their capacity numbers a new one. The list is longer than it should be.

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Apr 18 2013
Smartphones

BlackBerry owners ask: Where’s Skype?

Via The Wall Street Journal:

When Research In Motion Ltd. unveiled two smartphones in January, one of the few surprises at the launch event was that Skype would be available on the phones…

But nearly three months later, Skype is still unavailable for the new BlackBerry Z10. Since the launch event, RIM has said Skype will be available “in the coming weeks.”

Microsoft, owner of Skype, is battling with BlackBerry for third place in the smartphone wars. BlackBerry owners waiting for Skype should expect delays and a lousy Android port, not a native BlackBerry 10 app.

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Apr 17 2013
Smartphones

MLB’s app usage, revenue skewed towards Apple & iOS

MLB.com’s Bob Bowman at the D: Dive Into Mobile conference, via AllThingsD:

His user base, which used to split 80/20 in favor of iOS over Android, has now moved to 70/30… But the uptick in Android users, he said, doesn’t track with revenue. That still splits 80/20 in favor of iOS users. “Maybe even 85/15.”

Hit the link for more details and video. With numbers like that, it’s no wonder smaller developers and accessory makers don’t bother with Android support.

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Apr 02 2013
Smartphones

Some positive signs for Windows Phone

Via AllThingsD:

Windows Phone’s growth seems to be coming at the expense of BlackBerry and Nokia’s Symbian OS, which both lost significant market share during the period.

Microsoft’s partnership with Nokia has really helped Windows Phone get off the ground. A solid base of loyal Nokia buyers coupled with some very impressive hardware (even on “budget” phones like the Lumia 620) has made Microsoft’s platform a viable alternative.

As for BlackBerry, these distressing numbers come from before the launch of the Z10,  and might just be the low point before a 2013 rebound.

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Apr 02 2013
Smartphones

BlackBerry 10 can tell all your BBM buddies you’re watching porn

Via CrackBerry.com:

In BlackBerry 10, videos played in the browser invoke the media player when played, thus triggering as a “music” update.

So many videos that you play from within the browser will be shown as music status updates on BBM — this goes for any videos that you may want to be kept private as well.

Hit the CrackBerry link for a screen capture of just how embarrassing this can be and how to enable/disable the feature. Why is this even an option?

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Mar 26 2013
Smartphones

U.S. BlackBerry launch a dud?

Yup, according to this video from the Wall Street Journal.

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Feb 04 2013
Smartphones

BlackBerry Z10 off to good start?

Via AllThingsD:

According to channel checks conducted by Jefferies & Co., preorders in the United Arab Emirates and Canada have so far been “solid.” More encouraging, though, are early reports from the U.K., where Z10 sales are evidently off to a good start. Jefferies analyst Peter Misek reports lines outside a number of U.K .retailers selling the device, and says that sell-outs of the white Z10 have been widespread. The black Z10 is easier to come by, but Misek says that with that device, too, stocks are limited.

BlackBerry has always had this ace in the hole: Almost 80 million current customers, many of whom are still loyal to the brand.

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Jan 31 2013
Smartphones

Priority number one for BlackBerry

Brian Lam writing at The Wirecutter:

…there are a lot of missing apps, such as Instagram, Spotify, Netflix and Yelp, as well as ones I use all the time like Concur for expenses. I’m also concerned about quality. Some apps look just as good as their Android and iOS counterparts, while others (The Weather Channel and ESPN ScoreCenter) seem more watered down. Like mobile websites masquerading as apps.”

This is a big deal to me, because why pay the same for a handset with with less software to offer? You never know what apps you might need if you pick up hobbies or develop interests or need tools for work or life, and those tools are guaranteed to be more available on iPhone and to a slightly lesser degree, Android.

It all boils down to this for BlackBerry. For the platform to succeed, it needs developer support to flourish very quickly, delivering native BlackBerry 10 apps, not weak ports or the mobile web.

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Oct 15 2012
Smartphones

Making cellphone bills fun

Via AllThingsD:

Swedish customers of cellphone carrier 3 have access to a new app that is trying to make fun out of a typically un-fun experience — the monthly bill.

The Android and iPhone app, created with design firm Fjord, offers a bunch of different visualizations, including a look at data use by time, and which contacts are gobbling up the most of your minutes.

All carriers should give more information to consumers about how they consume their voice, data, and messaging plans. Let’s hope this idea spreads. Screencaps and video of the app are on the All Things D site.

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Oct 09 2012
Smartphones

The death of SMS

The iPhone is heralding the death of SMS. Via Forbes:

From October 2011 through August 2012, the average SMS volume of 400 Finnish iPhone users randomly selected for the survey declined by 14%. From the November peak of 111 text-messages, the volume dropped to 89 text-messages in August 2012. It’s worth noting that December was not the peak month despite the Nordic tradition of sending a flood of text-messages to friends on Christmas Eve and New Year. It seems that this tradition is already fading among iPhone users who are switching to Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp.

It’s not just the SMS that is dying thanks to the iPhone, the regular phone call is getting replaced by VOIP apps and FaceTime. How long until we’re just buying monthly buckets of data instead of plans for voice, SMS, and mobile internet?

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Oct 03 2012
Microsoft, Smartphones

Microsoft is going to Surface-ize its phone partners, too

Via Windows Phone Central:

Sold through Microsoft Store, the devices could fill in a niche for Microsoft while their OEM partners can have the carriers. This would allow Microsoft to have their own “vision” of Windows Phone and a way to update the devices directly, with no one compromising their vision. In addition, their OEMs will mostly be kept “happy” since unlocked phones are not the crux of their business model.

The other reason we raised was Microsoft maybe wanted a contingency plan—in case the Windows Phone 8 launch doesn’t go well and the currently announced devices don’t catch on. Nokia could be in trouble financially and Microsoft would need another dedicated hardware partner.

The Black Widow will strike again. Not a question of if, but when.

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Sep 25 2012
Apple, Smartphones

Apple’s iPhone 3GS highlights the problem with competitors’ smartphones

AppleInsider has an excellent and comprehensive look at how Apple has supported iPhone 3GS owners by including them in the latest iOS6 update:

Three years and three months later, and despite being discontinued from Apple’s iPhone lineup, the iPhone 3GS is still supported by the newly released iOS 6, making it officially the longest supported smartphone capable of running a modern OS.

This is in stark contrast to rival smartphones introduced alongside it just over three years ago: the entire range of Windows Mobile 6.x devices, Palm’s webOS Pre and Pixi, RIM’s Blackberry 5.x lineup and all hardware running Google’s Android 2.0 Eclair are not just unsupported today by those platforms’ latest releases, but were in all cases not even supported through the first two years’ contract life of those devices. That situation isn’t changing either, with Google, Microsoft and RIM’s platforms all gearing up to provide their new releases exclusively on new devices.

If you buy a Nokia Lumia today, you won’t get an update to the Windows Phone 8 operating system coming this fall. But if you bought an iPhone 3GS in July 2009? You have latest iOS 6. That’s an extreme example, but as AppleInsider points out, the situation isn’t that much better with Android phones.

With that kind of customer support, it’s amazing that competitors mock how loyal Apple users are in their ads.

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Jul 19 2012
Microsoft, Smartphones

The Windows Phone money pit

Via Business Insider:

Microsoft has spent $400 million launching Windows Phone, including the beautiful Nokia Lumia 900 version, according to the Guardian. That’s on top of the $150 million AT&T reportedly budgeted for the same thing.

The problem is, no one wants the phone. With $550 million in marketing dollars now mostly gone, Nokia has only sold 330,000 of the devices in the U.S. this year, according to one analyst.

It looks bad, but let’s not forget that Microsoft lost at least four billion dollars on the Xbox before it started making money. Their competitors in that market, Sony and Nintendo, weren’t exactly chumps either. Apple and Google are more formidable adversaries, but it’s just goes to show you shouldn’t count anyone out in the tech game until they give up. In smartphones, Microsoft certainly isn’t showing any signs of that.

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Jul 19 2012
Nokia, Smartphones

Nokia: The Finnish word for tragedy

Via The Wall Street Journal:

More than seven years before Apple Inc. rolled out the iPhone, the Nokia team showed a phone with a color touch screen set above a single button. The device was shown locating a restaurant, playing a racing game and ordering lipstick. In the late 1990s, Nokia secretly developed another alluring product: a tablet computer with a wireless connection and touch screen—all features today of the hot-selling Apple iPad.

“Oh my God,” Mr. Nuovo says as he clicks through his old slides. “We had it completely nailed.”

This is why it doesn’t matter how much money you put into research and development. You have to have vision to make it work. The management at Apple saw the touchscreen phone and made it a reality. The folks at Nokia shelved it.

“You were spending more time fighting politics than doing design,” said Alastair Curtis, Nokia’s chief designer from 2006 to 2009. The organizational structure was so convoluted, he added, that “it was hard for the team to drive through a coherent, consistent, beautiful experience.”

“Fighting politics” sounds a lot like Microsoft – the company that Nokia has put all its faith into by adopting the Windows Phone OS for its smartphones. Nokia now relies on Microsoft for survival, which is a real bad position to be in.

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Jul 18 2012
Smartphones

The AmazonPhone would be a dumb idea

Therese Poletti writing for MarketWatch:

Amazon, and perhaps Facebook as well, would be wise to stay away from the costly effort of developing a smartphone. But in the quest for world domination, these companies are unlikely to learn until after their devices end up in the tech graveyard.

There isn’t a riskier proposition in tech than building your own smartphone. Amazon may have pretty terrific customer service when it comes to fulfilling web orders, but providing customer support for smartphones is a different challenge altogether. One thing that makes an Amazon smartphone a possibility: The company has shown that they don’t really care about short-term profits, and may view an expensive and time-consuming smartphone project as a long-term necessity.

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Jul 18 2012
Advertising, Smartphones

Skyhook will know where you are without draining your battery

One of the few things holding back the next generation of location-aware apps is battery life. Nobody wants a smartphone that drains when it’s sitting unused in a pocket. Now Skyhook says they’ve solved that problem. Via Computerworld:

Some location services query a server each time they update the user’s location. Skyhook downloads compressed information about Wi-Fi access points and cell towers in a five-to-ten-mile radius the first time a smartphone registers a particular location. As long as the user remains in that radius, the device can determine location without calling a server. Fewer server calls means longer battery life.

This will allow a lot of apps to do more things while running in the background, and allow advertisers to target you with ads as you pass by shops and malls. The good always comes with the bad.

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Jul 06 2012
Amazon, Android, Smartphones

The Amazonphone

Amazon is probably making a phone. Via Bloomberg:

A smartphone would give Amazon a wider range of low-priced hardware devices that bolster its strategy of making money from digital books, songs and movies. It would help Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos — who made a foray into tablets with the Kindle Fire — carve out a slice of the market for advanced wireless handsets.

I certainly don’t want to buy a smartphone made by the same people who sell everything from DVDs to t-shirts, but there seems to be a considerable market of people who want dirt cheap electronics. Amazon doesn’t make a profit off their hardware like the Kindle Fire – they just want to use these devices as a vehicle to sell more product. A smartphone from Amazon would be a serious threat to the Android phones currently staking out the low-end phone market.

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Jul 05 2012
Apple, RIM, Smartphones

What BlackBerry’s recent history tells us

Great story in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week about RIM. Two sections I want to highlight, but read the whole thing if you have the time.

RIM executives also missed some internal warnings. The sales division produced a research report in 2010 on the future of tactile keyboards, the thumb-friendly feature that was a favorite in the early days of the BlackBerry. The report warned that in the era of Apple’s touch-only devices, keyboards would make up a diminishing share of the market, according to a person familiar with it, who said the warning was ignored.

The touchscreen won the war a long time ago. It doesn’t matter that there’s still a vocal minority of plastic keyboard lovers – touchscreens are everywhere and kids now grow up learning to use touchscreens before regular keyboards. Unbelievable to know that CEOs in the smartphone business couldn’t see that.

RIM’s carrier partners worried that the wild popularity of the iPhone could give Apple outsize influence in the market. Executives at Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group PLC approached RIM to work together on a phone that could compete with the iPhone, say people familiar with the matter. The collaboration resulted in RIM’s first touch-screen device, the Storm.

For anyone who laments Apple’s control, remember the above paragraph. Carriers, the companies that had the control before Apple entered the smartphone market, tried to hurt a product because it was too popular. Carriers don’t care one iota about users. If they did, they’d be ecstatic about the iPhone’s success, not petrified.

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Jun 22 2012
Samsung, Smartphones

Samsung launches software in effort to coax iPhone users to Galaxy

Samsung is trying to make the switch from iOS to Android as painless as possible with “Easy Phone Sync.” Via AppleInsider:

The software allows users to transfer music, videos, podcasts, pictures, contacts and text messages from an iPhone to a Samsung device, like its new flagship Galaxy S III. The application was announced on Friday by Samsung Mobile U.K.

“We’re really proud to announce the launch of this new application and can’t wait to hear what our new and existing customers think of it,” said Simon Stanford, vice president of Telecommunications and Networks at Samsung U.K. “We know that traditionally iPhone users have been reluctant to switch to an Android device because they couldn’t use iTunes to manage their content. Easy Phone Sync means people can now enjoy their iTunes content on a Samsung Galaxy phone. What’s more is that it’s really easy for them to do, and literally takes five minutes to set up.”

This is a great idea from Samsung. A friend of mine is thinking about switching from his iPhone 3GS to the Galaxy S III, but is hesitant due to the hassle of transferring contacts and other content from old phone to new phone. If this software works, it’ll be an excellent tool to convert iPhone users over to Samsung.

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