Mobile Concerns

Has anyone with an iPad seen this rendering bug? It is most prominent in Safari, particularly when 3G network connectivity is poor and I am browsing between pages.

By now you will be aware of the reported problems with the iPhone 4 and its flawed antenna design. You know the one, where you hold the phone a certain way and the signal strength drops a couple of bars. Apple’s admission of the problem wasn’t great but reporting of the issues also left a lot to be desired.

Now Spencer Webb of AntennaSys Inc. provides a detailed quantitative analysis of the problem. Yes it is real. Yes using a bumper with your iPhone 4 helps. Yes the iPhone 3G suffers a similar problem without the external antenna design.

Read the full analysis and explanation of the testing methodology here.

With 15,000 applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch, I have to ask, “Is this really the long tail?”. The marketing department at Apple would have us believe that the App Store provides iPhone users with a myriad of applications to suit your every specific need. But is there really a need for 50 different task management applications? I think that iPhone customers would benefit from two or three best of breed applications for managing tasks instead.

So is the current App Store ecosystem in the best interest of consumers and developers? It is undoubtedly a great selling point for Apple and it is definitely easier to buy, download and install an iPhone application than a Windows Mobile application. However, Apple may have has set the barrier to entry too low for iPhone developers. Today the most popular iPhone applications will bubble to the top, but what will happen in the future? Will the next great iPhone application remain undiscovered among the noise of 100,000 lesser applications?

Apple unveiled iPhone OS 3.0 on Tuesday, addressing many of the short-comings iPhone users have had to suffer with in earlier versions of the OS. The most important feature – Cut & Paste – is now there, as is MMS support provided you have a 3G phone.

Apple has also included enhancements that will support the iTunes Store ecosystem including an API that allows developers to handle the purchase of content and services from the iTunes Store. They have scaled up their Push Notification service, allowing an iPhone to receive an application notification even when the application isn’t running. The Push Notification service is centralised meaning that all iPhone applications connect to the same set of notification servers. Apple’s rationale for adopting this architecture is that it eliminates the need to maintain applications running in the background which can significantly reduce standby battery life.

Interestingly, today’s smartphones seem to be just catching up to where the Japanese were with their i-mode service in 2002.

Other iPhone OS 3.0 features include Bluetooth peer-to-peer connectivity to support gaming between phones; inclusion of the Google Mobile Maps service; access to iPod hardware accessories and access to the iPod library.

Many of these feature will also be supported on the iPod Touch.

One of the most import aspects of this OS release is that is will be made available to all existing iPhone customers for free.

After having used the HTC Touch HD for just over two weeks now, I would like to share with you my experiences and discuss some of the pros and cons of HTC’s latest smart phone. Others have described the Touch HD as the Windows Mobile answer to the iPhone. When you first open the box you are indeed presented with a very sleek and stylish looking mobile with a form factor very similar to that of the iPhone 3G. It may be personal preference but I think the straighter lines and larger screen of the Touch HD make the overall look more appealing.

The thing that immediately stands out is the large 3.8” screen that screams promises of new entertainment and productivity possibilities. See the comparison table below to compare the Touch HD with the iPhone and Touch Diamond. With a resolution of 480x800 the Touch HD doesn’t disappoint. Reading documents, browsing the web and watching wide-screen video are now not only “doable” but also “enjoyable”.

Having used the Touch HD, Touch Diamond and iPhone 3G I found the Touch HD to have the most useable form factor. It is of a convenient size that you can carry around in your pocket or handbag but with a screen large enough to allow you to get some real work done.

When you turn on the Touch HD you are presented with HTC’s TouchFLO 3D Home screen. For those who don’t know, TouchFLO 3D is an application that sits on top of the standard Windows Mobile 6.1 user interface, allowing you to use screen gestures to navigate through your most commonly performed tasks and applications. At first responsiveness of the touch screen was sluggish but downloading a patch from the HTC support site quickly fixed this. Overall, TouchFLO 3D is a joy to use and had me accessing all of my most commonly used functions via a very stylish user interface. My only comment is that I wish that it went further, in terms of being more customizable and allowing similar control of all Windows Mobile windows and applications. Are you listening Microsoft?

The Touch HD is fully featured with 5 Mega-pixel front and rear cameras, Assisted GPS, G-Sensor and FM Radio. There is no proximity sensor but HTC have added some nice touches such as how the device comes out of stand-by mode when the stylus is removed. It would be great if all applications responded to the G-Sensor to automatically change orientation when switching between portrait and landscape orientations. The 3.5mm audio jack is a plus but the lack of a flash with the camera is a minus.

Connectivity is great and I love using Wi-Fi at home as a way to save on mobile access and data charges. The best thing about this phone is you can sit at home on the couch and browse the Internet, read email and blogs and watch YouTube. I downloaded my work email and thanks to Office Mobile could easily read attachments such as Word documents and Excel spreadsheets without moving back to the PC. It is also the first time I have been able to read PDF documents as in the landscape orientation I can easily fit a full line of text across the screen.

The Touch HD comes with an impressive suite of applications including Office Mobile, Adobe Reader, Google Maps, YouTube, Opera and World Card Mobile. World Card Mobile is an interesting applications that allows you photograph business cards and automatically generate contacts from them.

Battery life is a nice surprise. When the Touch HD was announced there was a lot of concern that the large screen would be a power drain. The specifications state talk and stand-by times that exceed those of the iPhone and I am happy to report that I can use Wi-Fi access for most of the day without needing to recharge. In normal use I am finding that it will run for several days without needing to recharge.

So are there any downsides? There are a few and I hope these will be fixed in coming releases. First I have tried downloading a couple of 3^rd-party games and found that they won’t run on the Touch HD. I am not sure if this is due to not supporting the device’s screen resolution or interaction with TouchFLO. I have however installed DivX player without any problems. My only other gripe is that I have no short-cut key to quickly lock the device. According to the documentation this should be possible by holding down the end key, but all this seems to do is take you back to the home screen.

Despite these short comings I am very happy with the Touch HD. It is designed to offer the perfect balance of business and personal use. It seems to have plenty of processing power and the 8GB micro-SD card will keep me going for a while

I am a little disappointed with the problems I encountered with 3^rd-party applications but in reality, the pre-installed applications do everything I need. I would love to see TouchFLO 3D extended and all applications respond to the G-Sensor. If the Touch HD did all this then I would have no hesitation in rating it 10 out of 10. Instead, HTC will need to be satisfied with a 9 out of 10. This is a great smart phone that I would recommend to anyone who needs a mobile for both business and personal use that justifies the price tag.

Comparison Table

Feature/Attribute	HTC Touch HD	iPhone 3G	HTC Touch Diamond
Height	115 mm	115.5 mm	102 mm
Width	62.8 mm	62.1 mm	51 mm
Depth	12 mm	12.3 mm	11.4 mm
Weight	147 grams	133 grams	110 grams
Screen Dimension	3.8”	3.5”	2.8”
Screen Resolution	480x800	320x480	320x480
Battery (Talk Time)	420 mins	300 mins	270 mins
Battery (Standby)	440 hrs	300 hrs	285 hrs
Camera	5.0 Mpx	2.0 Mpx	3.2 Mpx
Processor	528MHz Qualcomm	412MHz ARM	528MHz Qualcomm
ROM	512MB		256MB
RAM	288MB	128MB	192MB

Following Apple's 4th quarter report, Steve Jobs has said that iPhone 3G sales have eclipsed Blackberry sales for the most recent quarter, making Apple the no. 3 mobile phone vendor. Whether Apple can sustain this growth in coming quarters remains to be seen but there is no doubt the iPhone 3G is this year's "must have" device.

I was looking at Google Trends and thought it would be interesting to see how searches for information on the latest mobile development platforms have changed over the last year. I decided to look at searches for "Android SDK", "iPhone SDK" and "Windows Mobile 6 SDK". Note that the results do not reflect the relative volume of searches between each search term. Instead, they show how the search volume for each term has varied over the twelve months. Out of the three terms used, "iPhone SDK" had the largest search volume by a factor of 10. What I found interesting was that searches for Windows Mobile were pretty much constant throughout the period. Searches related to the iPhone SDK peaked suddenly in March - when Apple announced that the iPhone would soon support Exchange for business e-mail - and again in June 2008 with the release of the iPhone 3G. Searches related to Android peaked with Google's announcement of the platform in late 2007 and again with the release of the first Android enabled handset in September of this year, but whether this interest will be sustained remains to be seen. My interpretation - interest in iPhone application development has shown major growth over the last year increasing over 6 times, while interest in Windows Mobile Development has remained stable. As for Android, there are a lot of people watching what is going on here, but I'd question how many hardcore developers this platform really has.

Following on from the previous post, I thought it may be useful to compare the form factors and features of some current mobile devices.

Note: Dimensions are in mm and weight is in gr.

Manuf.	Model	H.	W.	D.	Weight.	Res. (H)	Res. (V)	Camera (Mpx)	GPS	Keyboard
Apple	iPhone	115.0	61.0	11.6	135.0	320	480	2.0
Apple	iPhone 3G	115.5	62.1	12.3	133.0	480	320	2.0	Yes
HTC	Touch Diamond	102.0	51.0	11.4	110.0	240	320	3.2	Yes
HTC	Touch HD	115.0	62.8	12.0	146.4	480	800	5.0	Yes
HTC	Touch Viva	104.5	59.0	15.8	110.0	240	320	2.0
HTC	Touch Pro	51.0	102.0	18.1	165.0	240	320	3.2	Yes	QWERTY
HTC	Touch Dual	107.0	55.0	15.8	120.0	240	320	2.0		Numeric
HTC	Touch Cruise	110.0	58.0	15.5	130.0	240	320	3.0
HTC	Touch	99.9	58.0	13.9	112.0	240	320	2.0
HTC	G1	55.7	117.7	17.1	158.0	480	320	3.2	Yes	QWERTY
HTC	P3300	108.0	58.0	16.8	130.0	240	320	2.0
HTC	P3400	109.0	58.0	17.7	126.0	240	320	2.0
HTC	P3470	108.0	58.3	15.7	122.0	240	320	2.0	Yes
HTC	P3600	108.0	58.2	18.4	150.0	240	320	2.1
HTC	P4350	109.0	59.0	17.0	168.0	240	320	2.0		QWERTY
HTC	P6300	129.7	69.8	18.8	200.0	240	320	2.0
HTC	P6500	137.4	72.9	20.5	220.0	240	320	3.0	Yes
HTC	TyTN II	112.0	59.0	19.0	190.0	240	320	3.0	Yes	QWERTY
HTC	S620	111.5	62.5	12.8	130.0	320	240	1.3		QWERTY
HTC	S710	101.5	50.0	18.6	140.0			2.0		QWERTY
HTC	S730	105.8	51.0	19.4	150.0	240	320	2.0		QWERTY
HTC	S740	116.3	43.4	16.6	140.0	240	320	3.2	Yes	QWERTY
Blackberry	Bold	114.0	66.0	15.0	136.0	480	320	2.0	Yes	QWERTY
Blackberry	Curve	107.0	60.0	15.5	111.0	320	240	2.0	Yes	QWERTY
Blackberry	Pearl	107.0	50.0	14.5	89.0	240	260	1.3	Yes	Numeric
Blackberry	7100g	117.0	59.0	21.0	120.0					Numeric
Blackberry	7100v	114.0	56.0	20.0	120.0					Numeric
Blackberry	7130g	115.0	56.0	18.0	120.0	240	260			Numeric
Blackberry	7130v	115.0	56.0	18.0	120.0	240	260			Numeric
Blackberry	7230	113.0	74.0	20.0	136.0	240	160			QWERTY
Blackberry	7290	113.0	74.5	22.0	139.0					QWERTY
Blackberry	8700g	110.0	69.5	19.5	134.0	320	240			QWERTY
Blackberry	8700v	110.0	69.5	19.5	139.8	320	240			QWERTY
Blackberry	8707g	110.0	69.5	19.5	139.8	320	240			QWERTY
Blackberry	8707h	110.0	69.5	19.5	140.0	320	240			QWERTY
Blackberry	8707v	110.0	69.5	19.5	139.8	320	240			QWERTY
Blackberry	8800	114.0	66.0	14.0	134.0	320	240		Yes	QWERTY
Blackberry	8820	114.0	66.0	14.0	134.0	320	240		Yes	QWERTY
Blackberry	8830	114.0	66.0	14.0	134.0	320	240		Yes	QWERTY
Palm	Treo Pro	114.0	60.0	14.0	113.0	320	320	2.0	Yes	QWERTY
Palm	Centro	107.0	53.0	19.0	124.0	320	320	1.3		QWERTY
Palm	Treo 500	110.0	61.0	16.0	120.0	320	240	2.0		QWERTY
Palm	Treo 500v	110.0	61.0	16.0	120.0	320	240	2.0		QWERTY
Palm	Treo 680	113.0	59.0	21.0	158.0	320	320	0.3		QWERTY
Palm	Treo 750	115.0	58.0	22.0	154.0	240	240	1.0		QWERTY

When it comes to mobiles there is a wide variety of device form factors to choose from and cater for. What I don't understand is why some manufacturers choose to segment their devices for business and entertainment use. I for one want to use my mobile to send email, manage my calendar and watch movies and listen to podcasts. Blackberry and Palm are definitely focusing on the business market - why else would you need that keyboard. The Palm Treo also has a square screen which isn't best suited to watching wide screen content.

In my opinion, the Apple iPhone and HTC Touch Diamond strike a better balance. They sacrifice the keyboard in favour of more screen realestate.

Now the HTC G1 running Google's Android tries to have the best of both worlds with its slide-out keyboard and iPhone sized screen. My question is, is the addition of the keyboard really worth it, given it is nearly 20% heavier than the iPhone?

This isn't really an iPhone issue (though it does say something about Apple's marketing). Is 3G living up to the hype? Here in Australia, there is enormous potential for this technology where people do not have access to fixed-line broadband services. Unfortunately, we are seeing experiences similar to those below when demand for 3G is so high it overloads the carriers' networks. What are your experiences with 3G?