The camel’s nose under Google’s tent

A trio of Apple filings seek to patent mobile-application “systems and methods” for travel and online shopping — and to move us three steps closer to a Google-free world.…

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(Source The Register)

As London’s Barclays Cycle Hire scheme launches, there’s already a third-party Android app to go with it

As sure as night follows day, mobile applications follow location-based public pronouncements.

It should come as no surprise then that canny Android developers Little Fluffy Toys have knocked up a widget to follow on the heels of London mayor Boris Johnson’s launch of the Barclays Cycle Hire scheme.

Cycle Hire Widget, a free application, uses a mixture of live Transport for London data and crowdsourcing to display the availability of bicycles at the nearest docking stations. Because TfL doesn’t currently share details about the availability of bikes at specific locations, the application screen scrapes TfL’s data and repurposes it for the app.

(From my chair at Kings Place, you’re probably not interested to know, the nearest docking station is 506m south west, with apparently only two bikes taken from nine slots.)

We spoke to Kenton Price, director of Little Fluffy Toys, to find out more about what’s behind the app:

“Many of the cycle apps that existed for other cities already, and to be honest a bunch of the new London ones, are really not much more than a Google Maps mashup of a bunch of locations superimposed on a map.
“We also chose the tiniest widget you can choose – a 1×1 that takes 1/16th of one of your home screen. Into that we’ve packed information about the nearest three locations, including the direction and distance, and the colour-coded known status of that location: Green for all OK, red for closed, orange for not enough bikes, yellow for not enough slots.
“But we expect most users will then click it again to open it up. And inside there we show more info about each location, including the best info we have about the status of the location. If we have recent live info from TfL, we will show the number of bikes and the number of slots, and the time at which we retrieved it.
“If we don’t have info from TfL then we can use crowdsourced info. If a user is within 50 metres of a hire location that doesn’t have recent TfL data, s/he will be prompted to report back on its status. That info is then shared with other users. You can select a location for walking directions to it. If for some reason you don’t want to show a location, perhaps because you know it’s closed whatever the buggy TfL feed tells us, long-press to exclude it from the widget.”

TfL relaxed its terms and conditions (find them here) in preparation for the cycle scheme launch, with the aim of encouraging third-party developers to create “innovative” apps based on “reliable and accurate information”. But Price claims his attempts to access TfL’s live data have been met with a wall of silence – TfL, on the other hand, said they have been in conversation with third-party developers from early on.

Price says: “We wrote to them the day they announced the locations were free-for-all, asking for free/busy status. They replied saying [there were] no plans. And that’s the last we heard from them. This £100m+ scheme that said it was reaching out to developers – and we haven’t had any replies at all to our emails since. We’ve done the best we can – the BarclaysCycle Twitter tag appears to be publish-only, no one gets responses from them.

“It’s very disappointing that we’ve basically filled in the blatant holes in their massively expensive scheme and we’ve had no thanks or even acknowledgement that we exist – although Boris started following us on Twitter the other day.”

A TfL spokesperson refused to comment on particular developers, but told the Guardian third-party developers will have access to more data in time. For the time being, TfL said, the “fundamental information [being used by developers] has to be right.”

“The up-to-date information listing all docking stations that are live in London is available on the developers’ area and must be used,” the spokesperson said. “The first thing is to get that information correct and have up-to-date information about where the docking stations are. It might sound slightly dull but the first port of call is that we know where they are and that the information is correct.”

There is no timeframe for the next bout of data rollouts, TfL said, but they are “forthcoming”.

For now, Price is happy. As he concludes: “It’s been a riot, I’ve loved it. My favourite moment so far was when CNet said we had all that geeky goodness with our crowdsourcing stuff – I practically burst with pride.”

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Phone-home copy protection

Android now comes with an API allowing applications to phone home to check for a licence when launched, locking out pirates and anyone with an unreliable data connection.…

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(Source The Register)

A crisp, bright screen makes this smartphone appealing – but Samsung’s new in-house operating system doesn’t

What is it? Samsung Wave GT-S8500 – the first device to run Samsung operating system Bada

Category: Hardware and software, given the newsworthy nature of operating systems these days..

You’d use it for… On the move, personal or business. It’s not going to intrude on BlackBerry’s ground as leading high-performance business mobile device, but the Wave sits happily as a phone suited to staying up to speed while on the move.

First impressions: what is it like to look at, to hold, to use? Perfectly good look and feel to the phone, a sturdy but slender shell encasing a fairly high-spec bit of mobile kit. It’s when you activate the screen things start to go downhill.

The home screen – quite separate from the screen of apps – has six iterations as you swipe your finger right-to-left, inching across a background of some picturesque eastern European town square.

Each of these five modules is for housing a quick access single widget – but the access isn’t so quick after four or five swipes of the finger. Navigating from the home screen to your downloaded apps directory takes another click. Granted, the software is snappy and quickly responsive, but these things all pile up in the “pointless” file.

And you can’t swipe up to the URL bar in the browser, forcing you instead to press an on-screen button. Seems needless.

What does it really do well? Mobile internet has a well-suited clean font, made all the more appealing by the crisp super AMOLED screen. Put the Wave side-by-side with an iPhone 4 and a 3G – you’ll see the difference. FYI: guardian.co.uk looks better on a Wave than a 3G.

Keyboard keys appear far too close together, but typing seems to work fine if not more usable than on the iPhone. When browsing the web, pinching zooms are clunky and not instantaneously responsive.

Video playback is impressive, on the eyes and the ears. Creating media is a good experience too, the 5MP camera shooting strong video and stills taking allowing nifty features like user-directed focus.

What’s the cost? Around £300 sim-free; a 24-month contract, free handset, will set you back between £25-£45 per month.

What’s it up against? A smartphone market with less wiggle room than the App Store. It’s a relatively ruthless market out there for high-end devices, software increasing in consumer importance at a rate of knots.

With Bada, Samsung is late to the party and forgot to invite its marketing muscle. For this reason alone, Wave falls short of the majority of recently-released Android devices – Samsung have plenty of work to do before the release of Bada-powered Wave 2.

Blind us with the tech specs, then: Quite a few headline tech specs come with the Wave: the 5MP video/still camera will draw the punters – 5x zoom for stills and 720p video recording make the feature more than adequate; the Super AMOLED screen is a turn on, but likely only to the techies.

As light as any iPhone, the Wave is slimmer but only at a stitch. At 3.3 inch, the Wave screen limits its viability as a comfortable-to-use mobile internet device. With 2GB internal memory as standard, most users will require a MicroSD card (up to 32GB capacity).

What’s it good for? Taking and sharing decent-quality stills. It would be good for accomplishing tasks quickly if there weren’t so many naggingly bad points of user experience making pretty much any task an exertion.

What are its failings? One word: Bada. A few more words: the cramped feeling while using SMS, the uneconomic use of the 3.3 inch screen made worse by the majority of the screen having a black (or very dark) background even when running apps.

Will I have to read the manual? Does anyone still read manuals? If new to Samsung, you may need to Google “Help! I’ve accidentally locked my Samsung Wave – what now?”

How long is the battery life? With its 3G signal sensor turned off, the battery will last you over 24 hours from full – more than can be said for any iPhone before 4.

What’s its USP? The Wave’s USP would have to be the Super AMOLED screen which, on this score alone, puts it near top of the class for smartphones. That said, I don’t know one single person who’s been sold a phone on screen specifications – and it’s not great marketing fodder either.

Rating out of 10: 6.5

Finally, is it worth it – yes or no? Not at the current price. There are countless devices (and countless yet to be released) doing a better job and with a better operating system. Don’t hold out for the Wave 2.

Rating: 3/5

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

The killer feature customers won’t care about

Changes to the small print of the Android Developers’ agreement show Google’s plan to hand over application revenue collection to network operators – a task they’ll be glad to take on.…

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(Source The Register)

Sales of Android phones have risen by more than 300% this year, new figures show

Sales of Android phones have risen by more than 300% from the beginning of 2010, with one in 10 contract handsets sold in the UK now running Google’s mobile operating system.

Android’s share of the UK mobile contract market grew by 10.2 percentage points from the first quarter of 2010 to the second quarter, from 3% to 13.2%, new figures from retail watcher GfK show.

From the beginning of 2010, most of the UK’s major mobile operators have started selling a number of hotly-anticipated mobile devices running Google’s Linux-based software. The HTC Desire and HTC Legend are among other devices lauded by critics.

Just last week, Samsung launched a direct marketing challenge to the Apple iPhone with its Android-powered Galaxy S device.

Many mobile operators were unable to keep up with demand for the HTC Desire when it launched in the UK in April this year. HTC, the Taiwanese manufacturer of many devices running Android, posted a 41% global sales increase for the first six months of 2010, with figures from April, May and June reflecting record sales, according to the company.

In the same period, mobile devices running “advanced” operating systems – defined as those able to run independent compatible applications – grew in the contract market from 55% to 66.7%. Figures available from June show mobiles with advanced operating systems now representing 73.5% of the contract market.

“The figures suggest an increasing number of consumers are now asking for Android handsets by name,” said GfK analyst Megan Baldock. “Operating systems are no longer simply a by-product but a key selling point in their own right.”

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(Source The Guardian)

Samsung has stepped up its marketing game against the Apple iPhone, sprinkling free Galaxy S devices across the twittersphere

Samsung is out with the stretchers, running full tilt towards the customer carnage left by antennagate. Yes, if you’re a disgruntled iPhoner, Samsung is coming for you.

Via Twitter and Facebook, Samsung is giving away (yes, literally giving away) its Galaxy S device, mostly to a “cross section” of customers reporting iPhone reception problems. And so comes the belated response to Apple chief executive Steve Jobs and his public dressing down of other devices – including the Samsung Omnia 2 – last week.

In a press statement, Samsung says: “Recently there has been a real increase in online activity from consumers dissatisfied with some of our competitors’ products.

“We decided to contact a cross section of individuals to offer them a free Samsung Galaxy S as a replacement, as we’re confident that once people have the phone in their hands, they’ll see how impressive it is for themselves.”

Samsung apparently started handing out the Android-powered devices ia Twitter on Wednesday.

Tiffany Nieuwland, Conde Nast digital marketing staffer, was among the first to be offered one after bemoaning the number of dropped calls she gets. Jose Espinosa, director of digital services at Connect Group, was next up for a Galaxy S in the post. And then DigitalNetwork, a London-based search and digital recruitment company.

You get the picture, right? Less a “cross section of customers reporting iPhone reception problems,” more of a cherry-picked bunch of digital influencers.

Will Critchlow, co-director of web marketing and development company Distilled, appears to have been the first recipient of the kindly offer. He received his no-strings Samsung phone this morning – with a handwritten courtesy note attached, no less.

“I asked my followers what phone I should get, a few people got back with various links, one of which I retweeted. It appears that’s the one Samsung picked up on,” Critchlow told us.

“We’re an office full of geeks here. It’s an effective strategy in terms of making me evangelise the phone. But will it make my followers buy one? Who knows. It ultimately comes down to how good the product is.”

Critchlow, an iPhone 3G owner, said he was relatively impressed with the Galaxy S (and you’d be forgiven for thinking they were the same phone, from the appearance), which is his first hands-on experience of Google’s Android software. (It runs the Android 2.1 software.)

Samsung kicked off its iPhone-bashing Galaxy S campaign with the below poster. But how long will it last? Bring on the side-by-side customer reviews, we say.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

• Quarterly figures show steep like-for-like decline
• Underlying profits also down 27%
• Sales rise 1% but handset prices are cut

Profits at Nokia have plunged over the last three months as the company continues to struggle against rivals such as Apple and RIM, maker of the BlackBerry, in the smartphone market.

The Finnish handset maker reported today that profits fell 40% in the second quarter of 2010 compared with a year ago. Underlying profits were down 27%.

Although net sales were 1% higher at just over €10bn (£8.4bn), the profitability of its handset and service division slipped as the company cut the prices of its higher-end phones to make them more attractive to consumers.

Nokia’s failure to compete better against Apple’s iPhone and the growing number of handsets running Google’s Android platform has put chief executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo in the firing line. The company is reportedly looking for a replacement, with analysts warning that Nokia needs to get its hands on a “European Steve Jobs” if it is to regain its dominant position in the mobile market.

Kallasvuo called for an end to speculation over his future, telling the US television station CNBC that it is damaging the company. “There has been a lot of speculation on my position, on myself, during the last couple of weeks and that is not good for Nokia and must be brought to an end one way or another,” Kallasvuo said. “At the same time, I’m not in a position here and now to really shed any more light on the topic so I guess this is a no comment. I really concentrate now on the task at hand.”

Kallasvuo also insisted today that Nokia, which makes roughly four out of every 10 phones sold worldwide, had reasons to be optimistic, although the company is only aiming to maintain its share of the mobile device market this year. “The global handset market has continued to grow at a healthy pace, led by some of the less mature markets where Nokia is strong,” he said.

Kallasvuo added that solid sales of cheaper phones to developing markets had boosted the overall performance of Nokia’s handset business.

The average selling price of a Nokia handset dropped to €61 (£52), from €62 in the previous quarter. For smartphones, average prices fell 8% quarter-on-quarter to €143, and are down 21% over the last year.

Today’s figures suggest that Nokia is having to cut smartphone prices to maintain market share at the expense of profitability. Its smartphone shipments were up by 12% quarter-on-quarter at 24m units, in line with Nokia’s estimate for the overall growth of the market.

The company is now pinning its fortunes on the new Nokia N8 smartphone, although its release has already been delayed until later in the year.

Nokia also maintained its prediction that the global handset market volume would grow by 10% this year.

Earlier this week, Apple reported its best ever quarter, partly due to strong demand for the iPhone.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Google has sold its last batch of Android-based Nexus One handsets, ending
its direct sales experiment with the product, and availability as a whole in the
US.

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(Source Yahoo UK News)

Google, you have three options…

OSCON  Linux kernel maintainers have offered Google three ways of returning Android into their good graces.…

Free On-Demand Webcast – Virtualizing the Hard Stuff

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(Source The Register)

Future control to curb OEM enthusiasm

OSCON  Google will crack open more of Android’s development process but keep new versions of its mobile OS closed for competitive reasons.…

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(Source The Register)

Data from the Android developers site suggests that lots of phones are running 2.1 – but there’s something missing from what we’re being told which may mean it’s exaggerated

How fragmented is the Android platform? Google knows. And it’s quite interesting. The problem is that it’s not quite ready to tell us in detail. Only with winks and nudges.

The chart above comes from data on its developer site about versions accessing the Android Market for apps. A point to note: there’s only one Android device out there which is running 2.2 (aka “Froyo”), and that’s the Google Nexus One. Which has been discontinued.

However, some of the other phones can be upgraded to 2.2; it will be interesting to see what sort of timescale there is on that.

But what must be encouraging for the folks at Google, and Android developers, is that 2.1 is so dominant in that pie chart. (There’s a tiny fraction, 0.3%, consisting of “incompatible versions” – not sure what those would be.)

Because certainly the biggest threat – and the biggest problem – for Android developers is platform fragmentation. Old version of Android can’t run apps that target more recent versions, though old apps can run on the new platform. (Think of it as being like Windows. Sort of.) But the later Android versions have all sorts of features that you don’t get on the others. (You can see the version feature comparison on Wikipedia.)

The timings of the version releases:

1.5: 30 April 2009
1.6: 15 September 2009
2.1: 12 January 2010
2.2: 20 May 2010

That means that this chart covers just one year (roughly).

The notable things that 2.2 has that 2.1 hasn’t? Adobe Flash 10.1 support [corrected]; “remote wipe”; Wi-Fi hotspot function; voice dialling over Bluetooth. So now the question is how soon operators (particularly UK operators) will be pushing 2.2 out to Android customers. The suspicion is that the answer is “not soon”, given that 2.1 only just made its way (via an over-the-air – OTA – update).

And be wary – very wary – of trusting these graphics as really indicating the preponderance of Android versions out there. What we don’t know, because these graphs don’t show us, is:

- whether people with newer versions of Android are more likely to access the Android Market (that would push the share for newer versions upwards: and it seems likely, since I’d be very surprised if Nexus Ones really were 3% of all Android phones sold)

- what proportion of Android apps are written for what version of Android. Although Android apps are forwards-compatible (ie if it’s written for 1.5, it will run on 1.5 and every successive release), you’d certainly be put off visiting the Market if you went there once on a 1.5 or 1.6 phone and found that pretty much everything required a later version: you wouldn’t go very much more. That would also push the numbers towards the later versions, and make it look like the more recent versions are doing better. (If you know any data about what proportion of apps in the Market target which version, do tell us in the comments.)

Here’s how the access has changed, according to Google. But again, the same uncertainties prevail: how many? Are people put off? What’s the real growth?

True, Android sales have accelerated this year and 2.1 is getting more prevalent. But that comparatively big chunk of 2.2 accesses indicates, to me anyway, that this is a distorted picture of what handsets out there are truly running.

Of course Google could help us to dispel this all by publishing how many accesses there actually were, and how many downloads. Whereas Apple likes throwing out numbers from the App Store, which gets lots of people going “ooo!”, the problem is that there’s nothing much to compare it with. Come on, Google, get into the game. You said there were 160,000 activations per day. Now tell us about Android Market transactions. It’s the least you could do.

Well, that, and pushing the network operators and/or handset makers to push out version 2.2.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

The new Nokia C6 is out now on T-Mobile and it comes with up to £240 cash back on an 18 month contract.

With a 4 row QWERTY keyboard and a 3.2 inch, HD touchscreen display the Nokia C6 brings social networking to the palm of your hand. The homescreen can be customised with your favourite applications and can display emails, messages and Facebook updates from your top contacts.

All the email accounts you could ask for are supported such as Yahoo Mail, Hotmail and Gmail. The C6 can store up to 10 different email accounts and let you simply flick between them. Access to the Ovi store gives a huge choice of applications for the handset including Instant messaging clients like Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk and Windows Live Messenger.

The built-in 5 megapixel camera features autofocus and flash and can also record video clips. A secondary video camera is also included for use during video calls. Nokia Ovi maps offers on-foot and driving navigation to help you explore new places. Other features include an expandable memory to 16GB, quad-band for international use and a multimedia player that supports all popular file formats. An FM radio is also included as well as Wi-Fi/WLAN for web browsing.

Compare all Nokia C6 deals

Netbook-cum-smartphone out next week

Anyone awaiting the arrival of netbooks running Google’s Android OS so impatiently that they’ll go anywhere to get one should take a trip to Tokyo next week.…

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(Source The Register)

Reports that phone-maker Nokia has launched top-level search as it struggles with falling profits and declining market share

Nokia is reported to be searching for a new chief executive as its CEO for the past four years, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, struggles with the company’s falling profits and market share, notably in the smartphone market.

The report in the Wall Street Journal of the top-level search follows reports on Bloomberg at the end of last week that the board of the Finnish company was calling for changes after seeing the company’s value slump by $77bn (€60bn) – about 67% – in the three years since 2007, when first Apple’s iPhone and then Google’s Android platform have transformed the smartphone market.

Although Nokia is the world’s largest phone-maker, and has the largest market share in smartphones at about 41%, it has issued two profit warnings in the past three months and seen its stock fall by 25% this year alone as it was forced to delay newer smartphones.

Nokia’s last big success in the smartphone market came four years ago with the N95, which boosted profits in its smartphone division to 21%. But since then Apple, Android and RIM, maker of the BlackBerry, have eaten away at Nokia’s profitability, so that the division’s profit in its most recent figures was just 12%.

James Kelleher, an analyst at Argus Research in New York, told Bloomberg that a new chief executive is “the first order of business”. Nokia’s share price has dropped to €6.83, from €20.81 on June 29, 2007, when the iPhone went on sale.

The Android platform also poses a considerable threat to Nokia: Google announced earlier this year that it was activating 160,000 Android phones every day.

An analysis by Goldman Sachs earlier this month comparing smartphone companies’ profitability in 2007 with 2009 suggests that Apple has grabbed a growing slice of profit from the handset industry. While total profits remained static in total at about $14bn since 2007, the American company took up to $8bn in 2009, and is expected to take more than half the industry’s profits in 2010 and 2011 – despite selling far fewer handsets than its rivals.

Earlier this month the new head of Nokia’s Mobile Solutions division, Anssi Vanjoki, wrote a combative blogpost on Nokia’s “Conversations” blog in which he declared that “the fightback starts now” and said that “I am committed, perhaps even obsessed, with getting Nokia back to being number one in high-end devices. Achieving this will require performance and efforts over and above the norm.”

He also insisted that there were no plans to adopt Google’s free Android software platform; Nokia will instead remain with its own open-source Symbian and Meego mobile operating systems: “Symbian and MeeGo are the best software for our smartest devices. As such, we have no plans to use any other software. Despite rumours to the contrary, there are no plans to introduce an Android device from Nokia,” he wrote.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Early experiences by various testers show growing interest in new interface experience from Microsoft – but excitement is restrained

The early previews of Windows Phone 7 – for which reference hardware has started shipping to developers – are in. What to make of them? I think the best way to describe them would be a crouching ovation: people who’ve tried it like the fact that Microsoft is trying something different with the mobile experience, but they really can’t decide if it’s going to be a success or not.

Engadget’s in-depth preview (an intriguing concept) is sort of positive: “Microsoft still has a few months before it intends to get the first volley of Windows Phone 7-based products to the marketplace, but we’ve recently been provided with reference hardware — a not-for-retail Samsung called “Taylor” that’s closely modeled on the Symbian-based i8910HD — to get a feel for where they’re at as the clock ticks down.”

Quick briefs: “We were extremely surprised and impressed by the software’s touch responsiveness and speed. In fact, this is probably the most accurate and nuanced touch response this side of iOS4. It’s kind of stunning how much work Microsoft has done on the user experience since we first saw this interface — everything now comes off as a tight, cohesive whole. It really put one of our major fears about Windows Phone 7 to rest. We haven’t seen any substantial lag while using the device, and the short transitions between applications or pages are well suited to the overall experience.”

Although: “the controversial cut-off text is still present, and while we happen to like the way it looks, it’s definitely an acquired taste, and there are times when it just doesn’t work, like in the Office hub where PowerPoint looks like it reads “PowerPoir.” And two other things: “There are two big omissions here, in our opinion. The device won’t support copy and paste, and won’t support third-party multitasking of apps. We knew this would be the case given what we heard at MIX10, but it doesn’t stink any less now. The former really doesn’t make any sense to us, especially since Microsoft did a good job of nailing text editing and selection (at least in Word, and really… you guys make Word), and it looks like it would only be a short walk to a contextual pop-over for copy and paste functions. The latter is practically inexcusable in this day and age — even Apple (which has been a complete laggard in this area) now supports basic multitasking.”

But they like the keyboard (“the keyboard in Windows Phone 7 is really, really good. We’re talking nearly as good as the iPhone keyboard, and definitely better than the stock Android option. It’s one of the best and most accurate virtual keyboards we’ve used on any platform — and that’s saying a lot”) and screen resolution (“the Windows Phone 7 standard 480 x 800″).

Then again, there are points where Engadget’s not so happy, which tallies with some of the doubts I expressed earlier (though I must point out that I’ve not held a WP7 phone, nor seen it demoed): “Windows Phone 7 doesn’t have “contacts,” per se — it has a People app, and there’s quite a difference. This is a thoroughly social platform, and it doesn’t really seek to make any sort of differentiation between people you talk to / text / email, those you just casually observe, and those with whom you’re “friends” in name only. If that kind of philosophy reeks of Motorola Blur or Palm Synergy, you’re on the right track; as soon as you add a Windows Live, Exchange, or Facebook account, it pulls in every contact associated with that account and disperses associated content throughout your entire phone — there’s nothing you can do about it. That means, for example, that your Pictures app could have a bunch of shots of your ex’s aunt’s new boyfriend’s dog in it (more on that in a bit), and there’s not a whole lot you can do to stop that behavior without completely removing your Facebook account from the phone.

“With Exchange, this strategy is probably fine in most cases — contact sync is one of the main reasons you use Exchange ActiveSync, really — but seriously, Facebook is another matter altogether. If you’ve got a lot of Facebook friends, this renders your People app all but useless as a traditional phone contact list.”

Over at ZDNet UK, there’s another preview which goes (like Engadget) into plenty of detail: “Microsoft has stripped away all unnecessary information (almost too much, actually — the status bar displaying battery life, signal strength, and so forth goes into hiding after a couple of seconds) and soft buttons, and created a Start screen that consists of ‘live tiles’, which are essentially dynamic widgets to your favorite apps, contacts and hubs, and also display alerts, such as new email and missed calls. You can rearrange the order of the tiles and remove them by doing a long press on the screen. You can also ‘pin’ new tiles, but to do so, you must first navigate to the list of apps or the People hub, find the item that you want to add and then pin it to the Start screen.”

OK, and those hubs… “The names of the hubs are pretty self-explanatory. For example, the People hub merges contact information from your various accounts and then displays them in one long list. A swipe to the right will show you Facebook status updates (unfortunately, Windows Phone 7 will not have Twitter or MySpace integration at launch) and lets you add comments, while another swipe will brings up the people you’ve contacted most recently.”

“This type of panoramic UI runs across all the various hubs with bold, attractive text splashed across the top to identify different subsections (a.k.a. Pivots) and in some cases, a small contextual toolbar along the bottom of the screen to help you perform app-specific tasks.”

“Some might complain that this type of navigation requires too much scrolling and can be overly complicated. Admittedly, this is true when compared to Apple’s iOS 4 and Google’s Android, and may be a turn-off for consumers. On the other hand, we appreciate the ability to do so many things from one place without having to launch several different apps, so we have to give Microsoft kudos for thinking of this kind of organisation. We also like the consistent UI, which makes it easy to work the other hubs.”

Another point which has been made elsewhere: “What’s interesting about Windows Phone 7, though, is that at times it feels as though you’re getting two completely different experiences on one phone. The Start screen/menu list and some apps — such as the phone dialer, email inbox and calendar — are completely minimalistic, while other aspects of the phone, including the aforementioned hubs and multimedia features, are more sophisticated and elegant. It doesn’t hurt the navigation, as such, but is doesn’t make the phone feel like a cohesive unit either.”

And the big question: “Will this resonate with users? Frankly, we think it’ll be a hard sell initially. Despite all the improvements made to the UI, it’s still more involved than other operating systems. That said, we’d also caution you not to dismiss it completely, simply because it’s different. Change is scary, but it can also be a good thing.”

It’s a long review, which you’re urged to read in detail.

Meanwhile the Wired Gadgetlab has put its sticky fingers all over the screen: here’s the video. Their principal comment: “Still the lack of any kind of real app store is a major hindrance. Also, Microsoft just will not give up on the Zune marketplace. It’s admirable, but maybe they should re-examine their reasoning for keeping it.” But surely the Zune Marketplace is Microsoft’s leg up to an App Store? Abandoning it would look weird.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Google has called time on US sales of its flagship Nexus One device, two months after pulling the plug on direct sales through its website.


Photo by mackarus on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Sales of the Android-powered device had been disappointing since its US launch at the beginning of the year, the unconventional initial point of sale – online-only – putting many customers off. The web store “remained a niche channel for early adopters,” admitted Google vice president of engineering in a blog post, adding: “It’s clear that many customers like a hands-on experience before buying a phone”.

Although the Nexus One will be a disappointing setback for Google, the device widely-heralded as a market challenge to the Apple iPhone, work on the Nexus Two will only be hastened.

Google’s end-of-the-line news was announced in a blogpost on Friday, when all eyes were locked firmly on Cupertino with Apple’s iPhone 4 showdown.

The Nexus One will continue to be sold through Vodafone in Europe, despite stumbling belatedly into a competitive market. Developers will still be able to get their hands on the phone, though the web store will discontinue shipping to Europe.

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(Source The Guardian)

Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s chief operating officer, certainly thought so. So we thought it might be worth a point-by-point comparison

Comparisons are odious. That’s why it’s usually journalists and marketing people who indulge in them. So indulge me while I pick some apart.

Quoth Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s chief operating officer – the man who makes sure that the money is coming in right, who makes sure that the wheels of the company’s bank accounts are turning fast enough to satisfy shareholders – earlier this week: “One of the things that I want to make sure that you know today is that you’re going to be able to use the Windows Phone 7 and not have to worry about how you’re holding it to make a phone call.” He said it at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference, adding: “It looks like iPhone 4 might be their Vista.”

Though Turner wasn’t to know it, Apple was even then preparing its press conference to explain what (if anything) it was going to do about the whole iPhone 4 reception issue. 22 days after the release of the iPhone, Jobs led a press conference explaining that anyone who’d bought an iPhone 4 could have a free “bumper”. (The office joke: 1 day to diagnose the problem, 21 days to prepare and rehearse the presentation.) Those reception problems? Common to all phones, insisted Jobs, who deflected lots of questions in his customary expert way.

That leaves the “PR experts” who earlier this week told Cult of Mac that Apple would have to recall the iPhone 4 looking pretty stupid. Because they were stupid. Pause for a moment and remind yourself: on what grounds are items recalled? Oh yes, when they cause injury or death, or pose a hazard to the public. Losing your data reception because you (avoidably) covered the exposed antenna definitely likes in the category that Twitter calls #firstworldproblems. The idea that Apple would recall a device on that basis is simply laughable. In every newsroom, there’s a point early in the day when your news edior asks you what’s going to happen over some scheduled story: on Friday morning (UK time, before Cupertino was yawning and turning the alarm off) I was asked what would come out of the Apple press conference, and I said that Apple would portray problems with antennas as common to the entire industry, that it would offer free bumpers or cash refunds, or a full refund for anyone who wanted them, and that there was no chance of a recall. Do you think I qualify as a PR expert on that basis?

But let’s go back to the eminently sane and reasonable Kevin Turner. In his speech, he acknowledged that in the areas both of Vista and mobile phones, Microsoft had a bad patch. He’s happy now to praise Windows 7, and is full of expectation for Windows Phone 7. (Others differ, of course, but we have to wait and see.)

However, the idea that the iPhone 4 might be Apple’s “Vista”? Let’s try the comparisons.

Vista: fell seriously behind schedule, requiring Jim Allchin to take the project through a “reset“.
iPhone 4: released on the schedule everyone expected, at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference.

Vista: dropped much-promised features including WinFS as part of the “reset”.
iPhone 4: we don’t know what features were planned for it; we only know what we got, which is a ceramic case to (try to) improve signal reception, and a screen with a remarkable pixel density.

Vista: met enormous resistance from consumers, who couldn’t understand why it looked and ran so differently from its well-received and hugely popular (if insecure) predecessor, Windows XP.
iPhone 4: sold 1.7m in first three days, of whom 75% were owners of the previous version, according to data on both sides of the Atlantic from Bloomberg and AQA.

Vista: met even greater resistance from Microsoft’s main customers in enterprises, who didn’t like the fact that it didn’t run a lot of the software that ran on Windows XP.
iPhone 4: ran any and all apps that ran on previous iPhones and/or iPod Touches.

Vista: offered substantially greater security and reliability than predecessor.
iPhone 4: offered the same security and reliability as predecessor, plus cooperative multitasking.

Vista: was the subject of a court battle which exposed internal emails from Microsoft, revealing disquiet inside the company over OEM PCs which described themselves as “Vista-ready” even though they would not be able to run any but the lowest-specified versions of Vista.
iPhone 4: is the subject of a claim by the Wall Street Journal that people within Apple knew about problems with the antenna, but that Jobs nixed their criticisms because he liked the design. At the press event on Friday, Jobs called this “total bullshit”. Decide for yourself who’s telling the truth.

Vista: Microsoft never “apologised” for Vista, since it didn’t feel the need to.
iPhone 4: Jobs admitted that “we’re not perfect” but then added that nobody is. You’d be hard-pressed to really call it an apology.

Vista: Wouldn’t run on some Microsoft execs’ machines when they tried to upgrade them.
iPhone 4: Worked OK – though some people updating older phones have had problems with the latest (iOS 4.0.1) update “bricking” them.

So on balance, is the iPhone 4 really like Vista? It’s hard to overstate how monumental a screwup the development of Vista was. The entire development had to jettison key elements, such as WinFS (for search), and try to focus on getting the operating system out of the door. And as soon as it was released, people started complaining about its weird user interface experience; which led a Chinese Australian to set up a site where people could unload about it. (He was snowed under within days.) It’s still worth looking at that site, and seeing whether the points that people have made there have been fixed in Windows 7.

In short, the iPhone 4 antenna issue isn’t Apple’s “Vista moment” – despite what Turner might wish. It’s an annoyance to people who’ve spent that money, but Jobs’s numbers about the low level of returns (1.7%) compared to the 3GS (6%) – which will be pored over by analysts, and will have the force of a financial statement, meaning that if Jobs has fibbed then he’s theoretically liable to be hauled in front of the Securities and Exchange Commission – indicates that unlike Vista, users are actually very happy with it. (That’s also the anecdotal response I’ve had on Twitter.)

Sure, you might be annoyed, if you queued overnight or for hours in the baking sun, that the phone isn’t perfect. But there are lots of phones; personally I don’t have an iPhone or an iPad, because presently I think they’re too expensive for what they offer. You could easily choose another. The snark on view on Twitter indicates, to me, a strange sort of envy on the part of many people; a desire to see a company brought down because of its hubris, rather than its failings.

Certainly, Apple has never wanted for hubris, but it does try to live up to its own aims.

But what about the company that made Vista? There are still challenges ahead for Microsoft: the fact that Google is winning Office customers over to its much cheaper Google Apps products (something that Turner alluded to in his speech – search for the first mention of ‘Google’); the fact that it is only managing to grow its Bing search engine share by spending $1 for every $1 of business it brings in; the fact that Windows Phone 7 remains an unknown quantity which the company has all but staked its reputation in the mobile market on. (Sales of Windows Mobile licences, the previous generation, are dwindling; it would be interesting to see what the licensing revenue is for them. Apparently HTC, once – possibly still – the biggest licensee of Windows Mobile is going to go with Windows Phone 7 – though it seems to be doing rather nicely out of Android at present.)

Lastly, the point that so many people overlook about Apple relates to its ambitions for the iPhone. These are rarely stated. When Steve Jobs launched it in 2007, he said the ambition was a 1% share of the entire phone market: “10 million units and we’ll go from there.”

That’s not the sort of barnstorming that you expect from most companies; they talk about capturing huge chunks. Apple wasn’t looking to get huge share. But you can bet that, being Apple, the plan was to make a lot more than 1% of the profit out there. Apple doesn’t necessarily want to dominate the market for smartphones (though it would certainly be happy to do that, just like the market for digital music players, where it effectively has a monopoly). It just wants to dominate all the profit. The cost of issuing these free bumpers to iPhone owners is going to be about $50m at the most (assuming 5m buyers and a $10 cost to Apple for the whole transaction.) The issue might have cost it more – but you can bet it’s not going to stop it rolling on. That’s perhaps the only way in which the iPhone 4 is really like Vista: it’s not going to stop the next stage of its ambitions.

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(Source The Guardian)

Final shipment arrives in Mountain View

Google’s Nexus One will spend the end of its brief, sad life as a developer phone sold through some unnamed partner.…

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(Source The Register)

Microsoft should abandon or entirely reboot its mobile strategy because its latest product is barely as good as the iPhone from 2007 on the present developer offer

The as-yet unreleased Windows Phone 7 is a “waste of time and money”, a “disaster” that Microsoft should kill as soon as possible. So says Galen Gruman of Infoworld, who has watched an in-depth demonstration of the new phone software at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partners Conference which has been going on all week at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

Windows Phone uses a “contact-centric” approach, where rather than doing “tasks” (in the iPhone app way), you are presented generally with contacts, and informed when someone has done something (updated their Facebook/Twitter feed, called you, etc). My personal first impression of the screenshots was “that’s really not going to scale to the point where you have 300 people in your contacts book and 20 Facebook friends and 50 emails and 100 people you follow on Twitter and 30 apps”, but I thought that was just me not following the thinking behind it.

But it looks like I may have been right.

Gruman started the year being impressed with early demos of Windows Phone 7 – but that’s worn off in a big way.

“Announced to much bravado in February as the platform that would breathe life into Microsoft’s mobile ambitions, Windows Phone 7 looked based on very early previews as if it might bring something new and exciting to the table. Back then, I noted that I was impressed by what I saw — with the caveat “so far.”

“No caveats now: Windows Phone 7 is a waste of time and money. It’s a platform that no carrier, device maker, developer, or user should bother with. Microsoft should kill it before it ships and admit that it’s out of the mobile game for good. It is supposed to ship around Christmas 2010, but anyone who gets one will prefer a lump of coal. I really mean that.”

Ouch. What’s happened, Galen?

“The early demos were intriguing due to the use of the card metaphor to organize apps and information, providing a possible fluidity among apps and information that would let users swim through their business and social activities. And the distinct UI — though based on the unsuccessful Zune media player — looked as if it would stand out from the crowd of mobile devices that have largely copied the iPhone UI, such as Google’s Android, RIM’s touch-oriented BlackBerry Storm, and Palm’s WebOS.”

Hmm.

“But that was just the lipstick. Now, in Microsoft’s in-depth demo this week at the Mobile Beat conference, there’s no mistaking the big pig behind the gloss. Seeing the UI in action across several tasks, not just in a highly controlled presentation, shows how awkward and unsophisticated it is — I had the same feeling you get when you got a movie based on a great trailer, only to discover that all the good stuff was in the trailer and the rest of the movie was a mess. A pig, in fact.”

There’s plenty more; it’s worth reading in depth. Gruman says that as well as resting on old technology, Windows Phone 7 is simply outdated:

“The bottom line is this: Windows Phone 7 is a pale imitation of the 2007-era iPhone. It’s as if Microsoft decided in summer 2007 to copy the iPhone and has shut its developers in a bunker ever since, so they don’t realize that several years have passed, that the iPhone has advanced, and that competitors such as Google Android and Palm WebOS have also pushed the needle forward. Microsoft is stuck in 2007, with a smartphone OS whose feature checklist might match that era’s iPhone but whose fit and finish would look like a Pinto next to a Maserati.”

Gruman went along to a presentation at WPC (which has been generally described as “lacklustre” – and certainly seems to have been much smaller than in previous years by all accounts) and was worried by what seemed like poor responses to the handful of outside developers who had come along.

Arguably, WPC is not the place where you’re going to find the hottest WP7 developers; it’s more about geeing up the people who will resell Microsoft products. But the fact that only a few months short of the grand launch of WP7 it can’t wow even developers for the platform sounds bad. Gruman’s description of the presentation makes it sound like one of those uncomfortable events where the tumbleweed was always at risk of rolling past.

And as for the “locked in a bunker since 2007″ jibe – don’t forget the Kin, which seems to have been the victim of political infighting at Microsoft, as the incoming developer team from Danger (which Microsoft bought to produce the Kin) found themselves mired in layers of management that effectively brought them to a dead stop. Read the full horror of it at the Mini-Microsoft blog (by a disaffected Microsoft manager, but the comments are from ex-Danger staff and others).

Back to Gruman, who points to the flaws with the “tiles” method:

“… the big tiles quickly eat up screen real estate (about four fit), so you don’t get the compact access to apps that all the other major mobile operating systems provide. I bet this will depress app sales for those poor souls unlucky enough to get seduced by the Microsoft brand or the inevitable discounts at the cellular stores as the carriers try to dump these devices in January 2011 for $25 (shades of the unlamented Kin).

“Plus, Microsoft has done its usual trick of gumming up the UI, even though this one is relatively simple. There are two ways to navigate through tiles: in panorama mode and in pivot mode. In both cases, the tile continues to the right, and you swipe to see more. In panorama mode, cut-off text on the right indicates there’s more (at Mobile Beat, a developer asked if users knew what that cut-off text was for, and the Microsoft rep essentially admitted they didn’t get it was a way to say “more”). In pivot mode, each tile is self-contained, and there is an icon to indicate there is more. It’s a subtle difference: Using a panorama basically means the tile continues because it won’t fit on screen, while using a pivot means you have a series of what are essentially pages. I bet developers and users will get confused very fast.

“Visions of Vista’s litter of control panel dialog boxes, Microsoft Bob, the Office ribbon, Clippy, and Windows 3 flew through my head — not that Windows Phone 7 looks like any of these; it just shares the same flaw of being obtuse.”

And that’s only for starters. Other complaints: the browser, IE7 with a bit of IE8, doesn’t support HTML5; there’s no multitasking except for Microsoft’s own apps (Android and, now, the iPhone both support cooperative multitasking by all apps); there doesn’t seem to be interapplication communication for third-party apps; there’s no copy-and-paste (emphasis added) – even though Apple was roundly and rightly criticised for not introducing it until summer 2009, and Windows Mobile 6.1 did have it.

Gruman says there’s going to be no come-from-behind take-over-the-world for Microsoft if this doesn’t succeed: RIM (prepping BlackBerry 6), Android, Apple and Nokia will all eat its lunch and dance on its grave.

At this point, people usually begin an ad-hominem, to ask whether Gruman is biased or (sigh) in the pay of company X or Y. Judge for yourself from the Infoworld author bio and item list.

Meanwhile, if anyone else has had a hands-on with Windows Phone 7 – via the developer kit or other methods – we’d love to hear about it. Good? Bad? Indifferent? What’s it really like?

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)