Nokia's fired out some interesting concept phones this year, but this newest "People First" design centers more on the functionality of the device than its physical shape. The idea is based around what Nokia calls "three human universals of the way people think about communication" which are time, lists and people. So instead of being the standard pile of multi-option menus, the UI relies on a scrolling history list, with the most relevant and recent things popping onto the top.
The phone would have a kind of dual-layer display: the main monochrome "history" scroller, and a smaller color display that deals with your selected options. At heart it's very simple, having just the "mobile essentials" of phone (or push-to-talk), camera, calendar and calculator. But this is where hacking comes in: the idea is that the phone would have widgets support, a simple and accessible programming language and openly available software and hardware specs. Presumably Nokia imagines a host of applications would arise, better-suited to user's needs than "default" applications, and saving them the bother of designing them too.
Matching the list-like, graphic-heavy nature of the UI, the phone would have a long, slender screen with a kind of jog-dial interface. Do we expect to see a real phone just like this anytime soon? Probably not. But we kind of like the direction this concept is taking— placing how people use their phones at the heart of design. What's your opinion guys: do you think this would work?
This page is extracted from: http://gizmodo.com/388025/nokias-people-first-a-concept-cellphone-that-encourages-hacking
visit site for more info
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Useful application for N95 mobile
Especially when you just got a Nokia N95 (or planning to buy one), it is good to know what applications there are to extend your multimedia computer.
In order to get you started, I have compiled a list of must have applications that should enlighten the use of your Nokia N95 and give you even more pleasure.
So here you go, in non-specific order (with my own experience/comments quoted):
1. Fring
fring™ is a free mobile VoIP application that enables free mobile internet calls and live chat (IM) to other ‘fringsters’ and PC-based services including Skype®, Google Talk™, ICQ, MSN® Messenger and Twitter, using free Wi-Fi or your 3G or GPRS internet data plan instead of costly mobile airtime minutes
Since September 3rd 2007, fring delivers Fixed-Mobile-Convergence (FMC), auto-connecting to Wi-Fi and 3G networks without manual user involvement. Furthermore
Have this installed on my N95 and it works like charm: Now I actually use Skype while walking through my house… sweet, especially taking into account that I do not own a regular phone.
[visit fring.com]
2. SlingPlayer Mobile
Offering a familiar SlingPlayer Mobile experience, this version lets users
Conveniently switch among video input devices ranging from basic cable, digital cable or satellite receiver, to DVR and DVD players
Fully control programming via full menus and intuitive icons
Watch TV in different viewing modes such as Full Screen and Audio Only, and adjust video screen size/ aspect ratio
Enjoy stereo audio and listen via Bluetooth headset where supported by mobile device
Stream from Slingbox with advanced connectivity such as 3G and beyond cellular connection (e.g. HSDPA) or WiFi where supported by mobile device
Not installed, here in Holland I have not seen much of SlingMedia. More important: I do not own a TV.
[visit slingbox.com]
3. The Filter
The Filter for mobile phones is a clever application that makes navigating the music on your mobile phone quick and easy. Once you have loaded the application onto your phone, simply pick an artist you want to listen to, hit the select icon and in seconds The Filter will create a great playlist for you.
Create instant playlists on your mobile phone
Enjoy smart music navigation
Free download for Nokia
Not installed, I mainly use the audio part of my N95 for its radio feature. The idea behind these playlists appeals though, I do something alike on my iPod.
[visit thefilter.com]
4. emoze
Receive your emails and Outlook data anywhere, anytime
Handle your schedule and meetings via your mobile device
Enjoy synchronized Personal Information Management (PIM)
Access information about your Contacts, anywhere, anytime
Data is pushed automatically to your mobile handset or PDA with no need to connect to a service or click send\receive
Military-grade secure, encrypted transmissions behind your firewall
Totally free accessibility with no costly packages, specific hardware or software platforms
While I was considering to add a Blackberry to my mobile gear for business purposes, I came across emoze. As it does what it says and does it very well, I see no need for a Blackberry anymore.
[visit emoze.com]
5. Nokia Sports Tracker
Nokia Sports Tracker is a GPS based activity tracker that runs on S60 smartphones. Information such as speed, distance and time are automatically stored to your training diary. To be able to use application for real, you need Nokia S60 3.0 or 3.1 phone with Bluetooth GPS device or Nokia S60 3.0 or 3.1 phone with integrated GPS.
Already reviewed when it was still a research object, this little app stays on my phone. It kept me from buying the Nike + iPod combi. Works like charm and gives broad information. Together with Google Earth a killer combi.
[visit Nokia Sports Tracker]
6. WWIGO
wwigo (pronounced ‘vigo’) stands for Webcam Wherever I Go. With wwigo, a camera phone can be used as a webcam with PC or Laptop using bluetooth as the transmission medium.
It consists of two software components:
mobile component that resides on phone and streams video to PC.
PC component that recieves video.
When at work (Window$) and in a Skype chat with video, WWIGO does a great job for me. Although the camera in combination with bluetooth does ask for some batterylife, the ability to freely move the camera around does have many advantages and brings some extra fun to the conversation.
[visit Motvik’s WWIGO]
7. Movino
Movino is a collection of open source applications for streaming and broadcasting live video from smartphones. The main applications are the following:
A client for Symbian Series 60 smartphones
A client for J2ME camera phones
A GUI application and a QuickTime component for OS X
A video server for Linux
A web interface based on the Drupal CMS
Totally sweet! Having “just” an old Apple 15″ Powerbook without the integrated webcam, Movino took my videochat possibilities to a next level, especially after Skype launched its video enabled Mac version some time ago.
[visit Movino]
8. Calcium
Calcium is a fast, easy to use calculator for your S60 phone
Doing basic calculations on your phone is now only a couple of clicks away.
So how fast is it? Try this simple example: start the standard calculator and do 2/3 x 7. It takes 13 clicks. Using Calcium it only takes 6!
One of those apps where simplicity is the keyword. Nothing special: it is just a calculator. It only does the job quicker!
[visit MTvoid’s Calcium]
9. LifeBlog
Lifeblog is a digital photo album tool designed with mobile phone photographers and bloggers in mind. Lifeblog phone and PC software automatically organizes your digital media between your mobile phone and PC so you can view, search, edit, and share your images and messages.
Lifeblog automatically builds an organic timeline as you take photos and videos and send and receive messages. Just open Lifeblog on your phone and scroll through your images, videos, and more. Save your best shots in the Favorites timeline for quick access.
Lifeblog is both phone and PC software. Clear up space on your phone by connecting to your PC and saving files on that larger hard drive. From there you can browse, edit, and blog through the Lifeblog PC interface. You may want to keep your favorites on your phone to show off when the mood strikes
Oh yeah, just another way to digitally share your life… Every now and then I scroll through the mobile version on my N95, just for fun’s sake.
[visit Nokia’s LifeBlog]
10. Shozu
With ShoZu, you can post your photos and videos to multiple sites with just one MMS and the best part – you only pay for that one upload! It’s easy, instant, and it saves you money.
Simply MMS or email your photos and videos to ShoZu and we’ll post them to your favorite web sites like Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, your blog and more.
Shozu started of as a battery draining application with a great expectations. It learned quickly and I think it still is one of the most appealing applications to many N95-users.
[visit the Shozu website]
11. Gizmo
Save money making Internet calls with your WiFi Nokia phone. It is easier than ever, simply download and install the GizmoVoIP plug-in and choose “Internet Call” when making calls. Your calls will be connected via the Internet, not the cellular network, so you save money on international calling, roaming fees and use less mobile minutes.
Have this installed on my mobile, but I guess I have not ever been able to convince any of my close friends to get rid of Skype… Anyhow, I did do some test-calls and must say that the quality good. Another plus for Gizmo: It has many additional services, like a landline-number for your Gizmo account. Yes, like Skype-in, only does Skype-in not (yet) provide this for Holland… Still, it costs tooo much.
[visit the GizmoProject]
12. Jaiku Mobile
> Live contact list - See what your friends are up to right in your phone’s contact list
> Browse Jaikus from your contacts - Browse the latest updates from your contacts, add comments
> Post Jaikus - Post new Jaikus and have them instantly show up on the Web and in your friends’ phones
> Share presence - Share your availability, location, and calendar publicly or with selected contacts only
I love Jaiku. I never got into Twitter and preferred Jaiku from the beginning. So when this application for S60 became available, I added it immediately. And I like it a lot. The only lack it has, IMHO, is the fact that it connects over anything except WIFI. That aside, it is a great app for staying up to date anywhere, as it even can act as your RSS reader.
[visit Jaiku Mobile]
13. Mystrands
> Browse and play your music by track, artist, album and playlist.
> Get recommendations for great music.
> Link to our extensive mobile web site for detailed information.
> Find out who’s playing your music now. Find out what other music they’re listening to. Add them as a friend and message them.
> Discover new music through your friends.
MyStrands is a great application that offers also quite some extras. I was quite amazed by the services they offer during parties in clubs, that asks for an interesting interaction.
[visit the MyStrands website]
14. Handy Taskman
> Find and start the desired application by typing the first letters of its name.
> Create shortcuts in the Favorites list to start applications, call or send SMS to the Contacts with just one click.
> Run Handy Taskman by pressing and holding Menu button (like the built-in Task manager).
> Get full information about running programs and free memory left on the phone (RAM, Phone memory and Memory card).
> Switch to, Close, Kill any application or Close them all in one click.
If I say that I hope that Nokia buys this application and adds it to all its devices, I think I make clear how much I appreciate this application. You have seen before in earlier posts and although this is not freeware, I would definitely recommend it.
[visit Handy Taskman @ Epoware]
15. RotateMe
RotateMe is a freeware application for symbian OS 3rd edition devices, which allow you to switch your phone screen from portrait to landscape and vice versa.
On Nokia N95: Auto rotation: when you turn your device, the screen automatically rotates.
I donated to Samir and beta-used different versions of RotateMe. The application does its purpose well and by releasing different always improving versions of the application, Samir has shown to be a worthy and listening S60 app developer.
[visit the RotateMe website]
16. Screenshot for Symbian
Screenshot for Symbian OS is a FREE program to take screenshot on your Symbian OS mobile phones (UIQ or S60). You can capture screenshot and save it to a file in JPEG, PNG, BMP or MBM format. The screenshot can be sent directly to a PC via Bluetooth or infrared and another mobile phone. Furthermore, you can customize the shortcut key, file name and delay of capturing. It supports continuous mode that allows you to capture screenshot every a few seconds.
Where would I be without Screenshot for Symbian? Every screenshot you see nt this sitehas been taken with this wonderful app. Anthony Pranata has done a wonderful job and keeping it freeware has only contributed to its quality.
[visit Screenshot for Symbian]
17. Emtube
> emTube is an application for Symbian S60 3rd edition phones that allows you to: Search and browse videos on YouTube.
> Download selected videos onto your phone.
> Stream FlashVideo files directly from YouTube.
> Play local FlashVideo files.
EmTube does totally improve the way to watch YouTube vids on your mobile… yet it still could do with some improvement. I personally look forward to the release of MobiTubia, where the user interface looks really appealing and integrates even further with S60!
[visit EmTube’s website]
18. Opera Mini
Opera Mini 4 enables you to take your full Web experience and digital lifestyle with you — everywhere you go. Whether you want to access your mail, RSS feeds or bank information, Opera Mini is a quick and secure way to get your data on the go. Opera Mini 4 also delivers several new features for quicker scrolling, navigation and page rendering.
Opera Mini has many advantages over the built-in S60 browser. Speed and navigation being the most important. I truly hope that Nokia learns from Opera Mini…
[visit the site of Opera Mini]
19. Flip Silent
A small software which makes you use your phone in a more natural way:
When you are in a meeting or dating, and a call is coming in, you can flipover your phone to make it go into the silent profile and hang up the phone call or mute the ringer — without touching anything on the phone, just flip it over, your phone will go into silence!
Did try the first version, think it is a great application. Will need to donate to get the current version, but will do so soonly. Everybody who creates applications like these (and who is a NokiaForum Champion) deserves much credit.
[visit Tong Ren’s Flip Silent page]
20. ShutUp
ShutUp is a very simple application: When the phone is ringing (alarm, call…), silence it simply by physically flipping the phone over.
ShutUp was announced already some time ago, has not been released yet and I think it has been bypassed in attention by above mentioned FlipSilent.
With the quality Samir has delivered with RotateMe, I still think he will deliver a great application and thought it only worthy to mention it here in this list.
[visit the (future) site of ShutUp]
21. Wavelog
Wavelog is a blogging client application developed for S60* phones. It allows posting of the content as text, image, audio or video, to a Web log (blog) directly from the mobile phone using any type of available network (mobile phone or Wi-Fi network). The application allows saving the work for later posting in the case there is no available network.
Will soon be reviewing this application, in the meantime you can check a review by All About Symbian. They say they are not impressed, I hope that I can bring another opinion.
[visit the website of Wavelog]
22. Dr. Jukka’s Inclinometer
Just install it, put your N95 in your cars dashboard and you are ready for an off road experience… Your Nokia N95’s built-in accelerometer will fuel this inclinometer with the information it needs to translate your car’s movements and tilting to your phone’s screen. Note that this is only for Nokia N95, and only available at the MOSH.
This is more for the fun, but still a pretty neat application.
[visit the inclinometer page @ MOSH]
23. Qik
Qik is a little piece of software that enables you to stream videos directly from your phone to the Web. Use it to stream engaging videos to your friends in Facebook, Twitter, etc. or as your camcorder to capture entertaining and special moments.
Have not tried this yet, but came across the site and the mobile possibilities during Steve Jobs Keynote presentation… more people were trying to use Qik to broadcast the live event. This has sweet possibilities!
[visit Qik’s website]
24. Nokia’s Internet Radio
> Choose from a large variety of stations and shows, including news, sporting events and music.
> Explore the most popular stations and stay in touch with the mobile internet radio community.
> Browse for your favorite radio programs by genre, language, or country, or search by station name.
> Nokia Internet Radio service is supported by both packet data and WLAN connections.
If the FM stations are not enough for you… I have not installed this, simply because I do not have a dataplan that would allow this. And at home, well I have either a regular radio or Last.FM…
[visit Nokia’s Internet Radio page]
25. ExtGPS
Symarctic ExtGPS allows you to use your phone’s built-in GPS module externally on laptop via Bluetooth. It is mainly targeted for Nokia N95, E90, 6110 Navigator handsets, allowing you to use existing, more sophisticated GIS applications.
Next to FlipSilent high on my list of applications to test… Its purpose is simple, yet is does open up many possibilities. Definitely worth the mention.
[visit the downloadpage of ExtGPS]
In order to get you started, I have compiled a list of must have applications that should enlighten the use of your Nokia N95 and give you even more pleasure.
So here you go, in non-specific order (with my own experience/comments quoted):
1. Fring
fring™ is a free mobile VoIP application that enables free mobile internet calls and live chat (IM) to other ‘fringsters’ and PC-based services including Skype®, Google Talk™, ICQ, MSN® Messenger and Twitter, using free Wi-Fi or your 3G or GPRS internet data plan instead of costly mobile airtime minutes
Since September 3rd 2007, fring delivers Fixed-Mobile-Convergence (FMC), auto-connecting to Wi-Fi and 3G networks without manual user involvement. Furthermore
Have this installed on my N95 and it works like charm: Now I actually use Skype while walking through my house… sweet, especially taking into account that I do not own a regular phone.
[visit fring.com]
2. SlingPlayer Mobile
Offering a familiar SlingPlayer Mobile experience, this version lets users
Conveniently switch among video input devices ranging from basic cable, digital cable or satellite receiver, to DVR and DVD players
Fully control programming via full menus and intuitive icons
Watch TV in different viewing modes such as Full Screen and Audio Only, and adjust video screen size/ aspect ratio
Enjoy stereo audio and listen via Bluetooth headset where supported by mobile device
Stream from Slingbox with advanced connectivity such as 3G and beyond cellular connection (e.g. HSDPA) or WiFi where supported by mobile device
Not installed, here in Holland I have not seen much of SlingMedia. More important: I do not own a TV.
[visit slingbox.com]
3. The Filter
The Filter for mobile phones is a clever application that makes navigating the music on your mobile phone quick and easy. Once you have loaded the application onto your phone, simply pick an artist you want to listen to, hit the select icon and in seconds The Filter will create a great playlist for you.
Create instant playlists on your mobile phone
Enjoy smart music navigation
Free download for Nokia
Not installed, I mainly use the audio part of my N95 for its radio feature. The idea behind these playlists appeals though, I do something alike on my iPod.
[visit thefilter.com]
4. emoze
Receive your emails and Outlook data anywhere, anytime
Handle your schedule and meetings via your mobile device
Enjoy synchronized Personal Information Management (PIM)
Access information about your Contacts, anywhere, anytime
Data is pushed automatically to your mobile handset or PDA with no need to connect to a service or click send\receive
Military-grade secure, encrypted transmissions behind your firewall
Totally free accessibility with no costly packages, specific hardware or software platforms
While I was considering to add a Blackberry to my mobile gear for business purposes, I came across emoze. As it does what it says and does it very well, I see no need for a Blackberry anymore.
[visit emoze.com]
5. Nokia Sports Tracker
Nokia Sports Tracker is a GPS based activity tracker that runs on S60 smartphones. Information such as speed, distance and time are automatically stored to your training diary. To be able to use application for real, you need Nokia S60 3.0 or 3.1 phone with Bluetooth GPS device or Nokia S60 3.0 or 3.1 phone with integrated GPS.
Already reviewed when it was still a research object, this little app stays on my phone. It kept me from buying the Nike + iPod combi. Works like charm and gives broad information. Together with Google Earth a killer combi.
[visit Nokia Sports Tracker]
6. WWIGO
wwigo (pronounced ‘vigo’) stands for Webcam Wherever I Go. With wwigo, a camera phone can be used as a webcam with PC or Laptop using bluetooth as the transmission medium.
It consists of two software components:
mobile component that resides on phone and streams video to PC.
PC component that recieves video.
When at work (Window$) and in a Skype chat with video, WWIGO does a great job for me. Although the camera in combination with bluetooth does ask for some batterylife, the ability to freely move the camera around does have many advantages and brings some extra fun to the conversation.
[visit Motvik’s WWIGO]
7. Movino
Movino is a collection of open source applications for streaming and broadcasting live video from smartphones. The main applications are the following:
A client for Symbian Series 60 smartphones
A client for J2ME camera phones
A GUI application and a QuickTime component for OS X
A video server for Linux
A web interface based on the Drupal CMS
Totally sweet! Having “just” an old Apple 15″ Powerbook without the integrated webcam, Movino took my videochat possibilities to a next level, especially after Skype launched its video enabled Mac version some time ago.
[visit Movino]
8. Calcium
Calcium is a fast, easy to use calculator for your S60 phone
Doing basic calculations on your phone is now only a couple of clicks away.
So how fast is it? Try this simple example: start the standard calculator and do 2/3 x 7. It takes 13 clicks. Using Calcium it only takes 6!
One of those apps where simplicity is the keyword. Nothing special: it is just a calculator. It only does the job quicker!
[visit MTvoid’s Calcium]
9. LifeBlog
Lifeblog is a digital photo album tool designed with mobile phone photographers and bloggers in mind. Lifeblog phone and PC software automatically organizes your digital media between your mobile phone and PC so you can view, search, edit, and share your images and messages.
Lifeblog automatically builds an organic timeline as you take photos and videos and send and receive messages. Just open Lifeblog on your phone and scroll through your images, videos, and more. Save your best shots in the Favorites timeline for quick access.
Lifeblog is both phone and PC software. Clear up space on your phone by connecting to your PC and saving files on that larger hard drive. From there you can browse, edit, and blog through the Lifeblog PC interface. You may want to keep your favorites on your phone to show off when the mood strikes
Oh yeah, just another way to digitally share your life… Every now and then I scroll through the mobile version on my N95, just for fun’s sake.
[visit Nokia’s LifeBlog]
10. Shozu
With ShoZu, you can post your photos and videos to multiple sites with just one MMS and the best part – you only pay for that one upload! It’s easy, instant, and it saves you money.
Simply MMS or email your photos and videos to ShoZu and we’ll post them to your favorite web sites like Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, your blog and more.
Shozu started of as a battery draining application with a great expectations. It learned quickly and I think it still is one of the most appealing applications to many N95-users.
[visit the Shozu website]
11. Gizmo
Save money making Internet calls with your WiFi Nokia phone. It is easier than ever, simply download and install the GizmoVoIP plug-in and choose “Internet Call” when making calls. Your calls will be connected via the Internet, not the cellular network, so you save money on international calling, roaming fees and use less mobile minutes.
Have this installed on my mobile, but I guess I have not ever been able to convince any of my close friends to get rid of Skype… Anyhow, I did do some test-calls and must say that the quality good. Another plus for Gizmo: It has many additional services, like a landline-number for your Gizmo account. Yes, like Skype-in, only does Skype-in not (yet) provide this for Holland… Still, it costs tooo much.
[visit the GizmoProject]
12. Jaiku Mobile
> Live contact list - See what your friends are up to right in your phone’s contact list
> Browse Jaikus from your contacts - Browse the latest updates from your contacts, add comments
> Post Jaikus - Post new Jaikus and have them instantly show up on the Web and in your friends’ phones
> Share presence - Share your availability, location, and calendar publicly or with selected contacts only
I love Jaiku. I never got into Twitter and preferred Jaiku from the beginning. So when this application for S60 became available, I added it immediately. And I like it a lot. The only lack it has, IMHO, is the fact that it connects over anything except WIFI. That aside, it is a great app for staying up to date anywhere, as it even can act as your RSS reader.
[visit Jaiku Mobile]
13. Mystrands
> Browse and play your music by track, artist, album and playlist.
> Get recommendations for great music.
> Link to our extensive mobile web site for detailed information.
> Find out who’s playing your music now. Find out what other music they’re listening to. Add them as a friend and message them.
> Discover new music through your friends.
MyStrands is a great application that offers also quite some extras. I was quite amazed by the services they offer during parties in clubs, that asks for an interesting interaction.
[visit the MyStrands website]
14. Handy Taskman
> Find and start the desired application by typing the first letters of its name.
> Create shortcuts in the Favorites list to start applications, call or send SMS to the Contacts with just one click.
> Run Handy Taskman by pressing and holding Menu button (like the built-in Task manager).
> Get full information about running programs and free memory left on the phone (RAM, Phone memory and Memory card).
> Switch to, Close, Kill any application or Close them all in one click.
If I say that I hope that Nokia buys this application and adds it to all its devices, I think I make clear how much I appreciate this application. You have seen before in earlier posts and although this is not freeware, I would definitely recommend it.
[visit Handy Taskman @ Epoware]
15. RotateMe
RotateMe is a freeware application for symbian OS 3rd edition devices, which allow you to switch your phone screen from portrait to landscape and vice versa.
On Nokia N95: Auto rotation: when you turn your device, the screen automatically rotates.
I donated to Samir and beta-used different versions of RotateMe. The application does its purpose well and by releasing different always improving versions of the application, Samir has shown to be a worthy and listening S60 app developer.
[visit the RotateMe website]
16. Screenshot for Symbian
Screenshot for Symbian OS is a FREE program to take screenshot on your Symbian OS mobile phones (UIQ or S60). You can capture screenshot and save it to a file in JPEG, PNG, BMP or MBM format. The screenshot can be sent directly to a PC via Bluetooth or infrared and another mobile phone. Furthermore, you can customize the shortcut key, file name and delay of capturing. It supports continuous mode that allows you to capture screenshot every a few seconds.
Where would I be without Screenshot for Symbian? Every screenshot you see nt this sitehas been taken with this wonderful app. Anthony Pranata has done a wonderful job and keeping it freeware has only contributed to its quality.
[visit Screenshot for Symbian]
17. Emtube
> emTube is an application for Symbian S60 3rd edition phones that allows you to: Search and browse videos on YouTube.
> Download selected videos onto your phone.
> Stream FlashVideo files directly from YouTube.
> Play local FlashVideo files.
EmTube does totally improve the way to watch YouTube vids on your mobile… yet it still could do with some improvement. I personally look forward to the release of MobiTubia, where the user interface looks really appealing and integrates even further with S60!
[visit EmTube’s website]
18. Opera Mini
Opera Mini 4 enables you to take your full Web experience and digital lifestyle with you — everywhere you go. Whether you want to access your mail, RSS feeds or bank information, Opera Mini is a quick and secure way to get your data on the go. Opera Mini 4 also delivers several new features for quicker scrolling, navigation and page rendering.
Opera Mini has many advantages over the built-in S60 browser. Speed and navigation being the most important. I truly hope that Nokia learns from Opera Mini…
[visit the site of Opera Mini]
19. Flip Silent
A small software which makes you use your phone in a more natural way:
When you are in a meeting or dating, and a call is coming in, you can flipover your phone to make it go into the silent profile and hang up the phone call or mute the ringer — without touching anything on the phone, just flip it over, your phone will go into silence!
Did try the first version, think it is a great application. Will need to donate to get the current version, but will do so soonly. Everybody who creates applications like these (and who is a NokiaForum Champion) deserves much credit.
[visit Tong Ren’s Flip Silent page]
20. ShutUp
ShutUp is a very simple application: When the phone is ringing (alarm, call…), silence it simply by physically flipping the phone over.
ShutUp was announced already some time ago, has not been released yet and I think it has been bypassed in attention by above mentioned FlipSilent.
With the quality Samir has delivered with RotateMe, I still think he will deliver a great application and thought it only worthy to mention it here in this list.
[visit the (future) site of ShutUp]
21. Wavelog
Wavelog is a blogging client application developed for S60* phones. It allows posting of the content as text, image, audio or video, to a Web log (blog) directly from the mobile phone using any type of available network (mobile phone or Wi-Fi network). The application allows saving the work for later posting in the case there is no available network.
Will soon be reviewing this application, in the meantime you can check a review by All About Symbian. They say they are not impressed, I hope that I can bring another opinion.
[visit the website of Wavelog]
22. Dr. Jukka’s Inclinometer
Just install it, put your N95 in your cars dashboard and you are ready for an off road experience… Your Nokia N95’s built-in accelerometer will fuel this inclinometer with the information it needs to translate your car’s movements and tilting to your phone’s screen. Note that this is only for Nokia N95, and only available at the MOSH.
This is more for the fun, but still a pretty neat application.
[visit the inclinometer page @ MOSH]
23. Qik
Qik is a little piece of software that enables you to stream videos directly from your phone to the Web. Use it to stream engaging videos to your friends in Facebook, Twitter, etc. or as your camcorder to capture entertaining and special moments.
Have not tried this yet, but came across the site and the mobile possibilities during Steve Jobs Keynote presentation… more people were trying to use Qik to broadcast the live event. This has sweet possibilities!
[visit Qik’s website]
24. Nokia’s Internet Radio
> Choose from a large variety of stations and shows, including news, sporting events and music.
> Explore the most popular stations and stay in touch with the mobile internet radio community.
> Browse for your favorite radio programs by genre, language, or country, or search by station name.
> Nokia Internet Radio service is supported by both packet data and WLAN connections.
If the FM stations are not enough for you… I have not installed this, simply because I do not have a dataplan that would allow this. And at home, well I have either a regular radio or Last.FM…
[visit Nokia’s Internet Radio page]
25. ExtGPS
Symarctic ExtGPS allows you to use your phone’s built-in GPS module externally on laptop via Bluetooth. It is mainly targeted for Nokia N95, E90, 6110 Navigator handsets, allowing you to use existing, more sophisticated GIS applications.
Next to FlipSilent high on my list of applications to test… Its purpose is simple, yet is does open up many possibilities. Definitely worth the mention.
[visit the downloadpage of ExtGPS]
Top 10 apps of Symbian Phone
Nokia’s E series and N Series phones are attractive options for mobile phone consumers. Nokia openly goes after other handset makers and telcos for crippling features and stripping out functionality such as fully enabled Bluetooth, Wi-Fi access and so on. Nokia and their use of the Symbian operating system create a fertile ground for mobile application developers.
We, the users, benefit by getting highly functional and useful applications that enhance our mobile phone experience. Below are some of the best applications for taking advantage of all your Nokia phone has to offer.
1) Gmail — Gmail for Mobile is a fantastic Java-based application for accessing your Google Mail account on your mobile phone. They’ve made a great effort to use numeric keypad shortcuts to easily manage your mail. Though it’s a little buggy, overall it’s a great Gmail extension for your mobile phone.
2) GooSync – Your Symbian S60 phone has a calendar application, but what if you use Google Calendar as your main calendar? There are a few open source options for syncing the two, but when it comes to easily doing two-way sync, GooSync is the way to go. GooSync gives users two options: a free account and a pay account, with the main differences being that the pay account allows you to sync up to 365 days in advance and syncs your Gmail contacts as well.
3) Qik — If you’re familiar with Justin.tv, you’ve seen life-casting. Now you can conduct live Net broadcasts directly from your Symbian phone using Qik, a tool that utilizes the Nokia handset’s camera and either the cellular data connection or a Wi-Fi data connection. Using it over an EDGE data connection will cause video lag, but Qik streaming over Wi-Fi is very cool. If I’m filming something on my Nokia phone on Qik, I can see comments that viewers leave on the Qik web site as they’re entered.
4) Jaiku — A presence application similar to Twitter, Jaiku differs with features that include threaded conversations and topic-based channels. Jaiku has embraced the Nokia S60 operating system and has launched a native application to enable you to view friend’s Jaikus and post your own. Also if a Jaiku friend has the S60 client installed, you can see when they were last on their phone and where in the world they’re currently located. It’s also possible to see other Jaiku contacts that are in close proximity to you on the Symbian Jaiku client.
5) Fring — A multi-protocol IM client that currently supports AIM, Skype, Yahoo, MSN, Google Talk and Twitter, and features a SIP client. Fring seamlessly uses your data connection to allow you to IM or call contacts if they are on Google Talk or Skype. Fring also recently launched a feature that allows you to send files over Wi-Fi and 3G connection to your contacts. Very cool.
6) Nokia Sports Tracker — Using the N95’s built-in GPS module, Nokia Sports Tracker is a beta application that allows runners, walkers and cyclists to track and keep statistics of their workouts. Users can see stats such as average speed, total distance, altitude, and so on. Also, you can export your workouts into a KML file and map your workout routes in Google Earth. In addition, Nokia created a Facebook application that allows you to compare your workout details with your social circle.
7) Handy TaskMan — Sometimes you want to peek under the hood of your Symbian phone. Perhaps you want to see how memory much is left, or you’d like to see detailed information on all the running applications. Handy Taskman is the utility that gives you all this information and more. Additionally, if you have an application or task that is you want to easily terminate, Handy Taskman will allow you to exit the application with the click of a button.
8) ShoZu — The Nokia NSeries phones are made to create digital content, including great-looking videos and photos. But how to easily get all these media items onto your favorite media-sharing web service? Whether you want to upload video to YouTube/Blip.tv or put photos up on Flickr/SmugMug, ShoZu is the application for you. ShoZu lets you tag, categorize, and upload your media to these popular service providers in the background, and allows you to send a text message or surf the web in the process.
9) Nokia Podcasting — How do you manage your podcast library? Most people use iTunes or a Juice receiver. But wouldn’t it be great to manage your podcasts directly on the device you’re using to listen to them? With the Nokia podcasting application you can add, delete and manage your podcast subscriptions. In fact, you can download directly to the Nokia Symbian mobile phone over either Wi-Fi or your phone’s data connection. The functionality is very convenient, especially if you like being able to manage your podcast subscriptions without having to interface with your computer.
10) Google Maps — As a mobile warrior, I’m constantly finding myself in need of a map. Google Maps is by far the best mapping application. And it recently released a native Symbian application, allowing it to not only mesh well with the Symbian look and feel but creating a fast, seamless mobile map experience. Google Maps also features My Location, which is a poor man’s GPS, using cell phone triangulation to show your approximate location on a map. This is exceptionally handy if you’re trying to draw easy directions on the go or find a pizza place within a few miles of your current location.
Page is extracted from: http://gigaom.com/2008/02/19/10-must-have-apps-to-pimp-out-your-symbian-phone/
visit site for more info
We, the users, benefit by getting highly functional and useful applications that enhance our mobile phone experience. Below are some of the best applications for taking advantage of all your Nokia phone has to offer.
1) Gmail — Gmail for Mobile is a fantastic Java-based application for accessing your Google Mail account on your mobile phone. They’ve made a great effort to use numeric keypad shortcuts to easily manage your mail. Though it’s a little buggy, overall it’s a great Gmail extension for your mobile phone.
2) GooSync – Your Symbian S60 phone has a calendar application, but what if you use Google Calendar as your main calendar? There are a few open source options for syncing the two, but when it comes to easily doing two-way sync, GooSync is the way to go. GooSync gives users two options: a free account and a pay account, with the main differences being that the pay account allows you to sync up to 365 days in advance and syncs your Gmail contacts as well.
3) Qik — If you’re familiar with Justin.tv, you’ve seen life-casting. Now you can conduct live Net broadcasts directly from your Symbian phone using Qik, a tool that utilizes the Nokia handset’s camera and either the cellular data connection or a Wi-Fi data connection. Using it over an EDGE data connection will cause video lag, but Qik streaming over Wi-Fi is very cool. If I’m filming something on my Nokia phone on Qik, I can see comments that viewers leave on the Qik web site as they’re entered.
4) Jaiku — A presence application similar to Twitter, Jaiku differs with features that include threaded conversations and topic-based channels. Jaiku has embraced the Nokia S60 operating system and has launched a native application to enable you to view friend’s Jaikus and post your own. Also if a Jaiku friend has the S60 client installed, you can see when they were last on their phone and where in the world they’re currently located. It’s also possible to see other Jaiku contacts that are in close proximity to you on the Symbian Jaiku client.
5) Fring — A multi-protocol IM client that currently supports AIM, Skype, Yahoo, MSN, Google Talk and Twitter, and features a SIP client. Fring seamlessly uses your data connection to allow you to IM or call contacts if they are on Google Talk or Skype. Fring also recently launched a feature that allows you to send files over Wi-Fi and 3G connection to your contacts. Very cool.
6) Nokia Sports Tracker — Using the N95’s built-in GPS module, Nokia Sports Tracker is a beta application that allows runners, walkers and cyclists to track and keep statistics of their workouts. Users can see stats such as average speed, total distance, altitude, and so on. Also, you can export your workouts into a KML file and map your workout routes in Google Earth. In addition, Nokia created a Facebook application that allows you to compare your workout details with your social circle.
7) Handy TaskMan — Sometimes you want to peek under the hood of your Symbian phone. Perhaps you want to see how memory much is left, or you’d like to see detailed information on all the running applications. Handy Taskman is the utility that gives you all this information and more. Additionally, if you have an application or task that is you want to easily terminate, Handy Taskman will allow you to exit the application with the click of a button.
8) ShoZu — The Nokia NSeries phones are made to create digital content, including great-looking videos and photos. But how to easily get all these media items onto your favorite media-sharing web service? Whether you want to upload video to YouTube/Blip.tv or put photos up on Flickr/SmugMug, ShoZu is the application for you. ShoZu lets you tag, categorize, and upload your media to these popular service providers in the background, and allows you to send a text message or surf the web in the process.
9) Nokia Podcasting — How do you manage your podcast library? Most people use iTunes or a Juice receiver. But wouldn’t it be great to manage your podcasts directly on the device you’re using to listen to them? With the Nokia podcasting application you can add, delete and manage your podcast subscriptions. In fact, you can download directly to the Nokia Symbian mobile phone over either Wi-Fi or your phone’s data connection. The functionality is very convenient, especially if you like being able to manage your podcast subscriptions without having to interface with your computer.
10) Google Maps — As a mobile warrior, I’m constantly finding myself in need of a map. Google Maps is by far the best mapping application. And it recently released a native Symbian application, allowing it to not only mesh well with the Symbian look and feel but creating a fast, seamless mobile map experience. Google Maps also features My Location, which is a poor man’s GPS, using cell phone triangulation to show your approximate location on a map. This is exceptionally handy if you’re trying to draw easy directions on the go or find a pizza place within a few miles of your current location.
Page is extracted from: http://gigaom.com/2008/02/19/10-must-have-apps-to-pimp-out-your-symbian-phone/
visit site for more info
How nokia users drive innovation
Nokia researchers didn't quite know what to expect when, in March, 2007, they posted a mobile phone application called Sports Tracker on a company Web site that is open to the public. The program, still a work in progress, was designed to let runners and cyclists take advantage of the global positioning capability included in some Nokia models. Users can record workout data such as speed and distance, and can plot routes.
The response to Sports Tracker was overwhelming. Eventually more than 1 million people downloaded the program and used it for sports the developers never dreamed of, such as paragliding, hot-air ballooning, and motorcycle riding. More importantly, the users avidly provided criticism that Nokia (NOK) then used to make improvements. Based on reader feedback, for example, developers added the capability to create online groups where users can share favorite routes and even photos they took along the way. "People were misusing the application in creative ways," says Jussi Kaasinen, a member of the team at Nokia Research Center in Helsinki that developed Sports Tracker.
You've heard of user-generated content? Sports Tracker is an example of how Nokia has begun experimenting with user-generated innovation. That's the premise behind Nokia Beta Labs, a Web site where the Finnish handset maker lets users test the latest smartphone software. Instead of people recording silly Web cam videos for YouTube or inventing frivolous advocacy groups on Facebook, they can help make the mobile Internet more useful.
What Do Urban Populations Want?
For Nokia, which is obsessive about consumer research, the site is an alternative to the focus groups and surveys that are usually used to gauge consumer reaction to a new product. But, though the cost of managing the site is negligible, saving money is not the main motivation. "It's not the cost we're looking at, it's how we are making the application better for the consumer," says Jari Pasanen, whose title is Nokia vice-president for innovation acceleration.
Beta Labs is part of a broader push by Nokia to harness customers and partners in the service of innovation. At Nokia.com the company allows users to share and rate applications they have created such as screen-savers or games. And over the past year, Nokia designers have traveled to the developing world to ask users to sketch their own dream cell phones. By yearend, more than half the world's population is expected to live in urban areas, so to exploit this mega-trend Nokia's researchers visited shantytowns in Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, and Accra in Ghana. (See slide show (BusinessWeek.com, 4/30/08.)
One person's design included a sensor to test water quality—a potentially useful application in some emerging markets—while another person wanted a handset that flashed the word "Peace" to help defuse conflicts. "Our fear was people would come up with ideas that already existed, like a phone with a camera. But people's suggestions were much more creative," says London-based Younghee Jung, a Nokia senior design manager.
Prime Destination for Tech Buyers
That's the kind of insight that engineers stuck in a Finnish lab usually can't get. But since Nokia launched the Beta Labs Web site last year, with Sports Tracker as the debut application, it has tested some 20 not-quite-ready-for-prime-time programs directly with users. Other applications have included the latest version of a program that allows users to download maps onto their handsets, and a program that lets people get access to data on their handsets remotely via a PC Web browser.
The Beta Labs site has become a prime destination for the so-called lead users—tech-savvy buyers of high-end, N-Series phones which Nokia executives prefer to call multimedia computers.
This page is extracted from: http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/apr2008/gb20080430_764271.htm
visit the site for more information
The response to Sports Tracker was overwhelming. Eventually more than 1 million people downloaded the program and used it for sports the developers never dreamed of, such as paragliding, hot-air ballooning, and motorcycle riding. More importantly, the users avidly provided criticism that Nokia (NOK) then used to make improvements. Based on reader feedback, for example, developers added the capability to create online groups where users can share favorite routes and even photos they took along the way. "People were misusing the application in creative ways," says Jussi Kaasinen, a member of the team at Nokia Research Center in Helsinki that developed Sports Tracker.
You've heard of user-generated content? Sports Tracker is an example of how Nokia has begun experimenting with user-generated innovation. That's the premise behind Nokia Beta Labs, a Web site where the Finnish handset maker lets users test the latest smartphone software. Instead of people recording silly Web cam videos for YouTube or inventing frivolous advocacy groups on Facebook, they can help make the mobile Internet more useful.
What Do Urban Populations Want?
For Nokia, which is obsessive about consumer research, the site is an alternative to the focus groups and surveys that are usually used to gauge consumer reaction to a new product. But, though the cost of managing the site is negligible, saving money is not the main motivation. "It's not the cost we're looking at, it's how we are making the application better for the consumer," says Jari Pasanen, whose title is Nokia vice-president for innovation acceleration.
Beta Labs is part of a broader push by Nokia to harness customers and partners in the service of innovation. At Nokia.com the company allows users to share and rate applications they have created such as screen-savers or games. And over the past year, Nokia designers have traveled to the developing world to ask users to sketch their own dream cell phones. By yearend, more than half the world's population is expected to live in urban areas, so to exploit this mega-trend Nokia's researchers visited shantytowns in Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, and Accra in Ghana. (See slide show (BusinessWeek.com, 4/30/08.)
One person's design included a sensor to test water quality—a potentially useful application in some emerging markets—while another person wanted a handset that flashed the word "Peace" to help defuse conflicts. "Our fear was people would come up with ideas that already existed, like a phone with a camera. But people's suggestions were much more creative," says London-based Younghee Jung, a Nokia senior design manager.
Prime Destination for Tech Buyers
That's the kind of insight that engineers stuck in a Finnish lab usually can't get. But since Nokia launched the Beta Labs Web site last year, with Sports Tracker as the debut application, it has tested some 20 not-quite-ready-for-prime-time programs directly with users. Other applications have included the latest version of a program that allows users to download maps onto their handsets, and a program that lets people get access to data on their handsets remotely via a PC Web browser.
The Beta Labs site has become a prime destination for the so-called lead users—tech-savvy buyers of high-end, N-Series phones which Nokia executives prefer to call multimedia computers.
This page is extracted from: http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/apr2008/gb20080430_764271.htm
visit the site for more information
BlackBerry vs. iPhone
1: Wherein Neither ‘RIM’ Nor ‘BlackBerry’ Are Even Mentioned, but Rather the Stage Is Set for Showing Why They Might Be Seriously Screwed
Along the lines of can’t-really-be-answered-but-gosh-they’re-fun-to-ponder questions like, say, “Who’d win in a fight, Batman or Spider-Man?” or “Star Destroyer vs. U.S.S. Enterprise?”,1 here’s one regarding the iPhone: What historical Mac is a current iPhone most analogous to, spec-wise? I.e, complete this sentence: “An iPhone is like having a tiny ____ in your pocket?”
Now of course the comparison can’t be precise. Different software, different use cases, different purposes. But there’s no denying that an iPhone is a computer. And unless you’re really young, it’s faster — a lot faster — than the computers you owned not so long ago. So, seriously, stop here for a moment and think about it.
My first answer, pulled simply from recollection of how fast machines felt to use, was the original iMac. But that machine — announced 10 years ago this week — had a 233 MHz G3 and, by default, a paltry 32 MB of RAM. Apple has never officially released the CPU specs of the iPhone, but Craig Hockenberry poked around with undocumented system APIs which indicated the iPhone’s CPU runs at 400 MHz with a bus speed of 100 MHz, and that there’s 128 MB of RAM.
As we all recall from the PowerPC era, MHz is not a precise metric for comparing the performance of CPUs across different architectures; I wouldn’t be surprised in the least to find out that a 400 MHz PowerPC G3 is a faster chip than the 400 MHz ARMwhatever that’s in the iPhone, if only because of the power constraints. But, still, it’s something.
So, my answer to the question: the original “Pismo” G3 PowerBook. The numbers match up pretty closely: 400 MHz CPU, 100 MHz bus speed, 64 MB of RAM. (The higher-end Pismo had a 500 MHz CPU and 128 MB of RAM.) Even storage sizes are similar: hard drive options for the Pismo were 6, 12, or 18 GB. Another possible answer: the original blue-and-white Power Mac G3 — again, 400 MHz CPU, 100 MHz bus speed, 64-128 MB of RAM, and 6-12 GB hard drives. Think about that — in just nine years, the specs that then described Apple’s top-of-the-line desktop computer now describe their phone.
One thing that makes this comparison hard is that there’s not much software in common. You can’t use most of the real-world tasks commonly used for ballpark benchmarking, like, say, Photoshop image processing or ripping MP3s from AIFFs, because the iPhone doesn’t do them. But there is one processor intensive task we can compare: web page rendering. In the early days of the web, it took a while for even moderately large web pages to render in a browser, even when you were loading them from HTML files right on your hard drive. If you were to plop yourself down in front of one of these vintage 1999-2000 Macs for an afternoon of web browsing, even with a decent Ethernet connection to the Internet you’d find the experience pretty damn slow by current standards.
For all the incessant chatter about the demand for and purported certainty of 3G wireless networking in the next generation of iPhone hardware, the truth is that current iPhones are held back, web-surfing-wise, by more than just the speed of EDGE (which admittedly, is indeed pretty slow). Recall this video pitting a 3G Nokia E61i against an iPhone on EDGE — total rendering time was more or less the same, and in a few cases, the iPhone came out ahead.
You can see that browsing speed — which is what matters — depends on more than just networking speed simply by comparing how long it takes to render a web page on the iPhone using Wi-Fi: a lot longer than it takes to load the same page using Safari on a Mac. For example, it takes about two or three seconds for Safari to load the Daring Fireball home page on my new MacBook Pro. Using the same Wi-Fi network, it takes my iPhone about 15 seconds. (Using EDGE, it takes about 60 seconds to completely load, although you can start reading much sooner than that.) Point being that even if 3G wireless networking were as fast as Wi-Fi — which it’s not — browsing on an iPhone would still be pretty slow compared to browsing on a modern desktop or laptop. If you frequently use Wi-Fi on your iPhone, a faster processor in the next-generation hardware would make a bigger difference to the overall experience than faster phone-carrier networking.
And so here’s the point I’m driving at. If a 2007 iPhone is loosely equivalent in terms of computing power to a 2000 PowerBook or 1999 Power Mac, that puts the spread at around seven or eight years. Extrapolate forward, and it’s therefore not at all unreasonable to think that a 2014 iPhone will pack the computing power of today’s MacBook Pro. Or, nearer term, that an iPhone introduced two years from now might pack the punch of a 2003 Aluminum PowerBook G4 — quite a difference from the Pismo.
Even if your estimate of the iPhone’s equivalent-horsepower Mac is further back in time than mine, there’s no denying that Moore’s Law applies to handhelds, too. Eventually there will be a computer that fits in your pocket that is more powerful than today’s Mac Pros. But the path from here to there is riddled with difficult engineering problems — heat dissipation, battery life, and OS integration chief among them.
There is marketing. There most certainly is design. But at the core of this market — by which I mean the market for handheld multitasking web-surfing networked-everywhere “phones” which are really computers — is engineering.
Apple is the best handheld computer engineering company in the world today, hands down. They’re also the best handheld computer user experience design company. And they’re not sharing.
2: Why RIM Is Screwed
When the iPhone was announced, I saw Apple as staking out ground far afield from the territory RIM occupies with the BlackBerry. Last year, I didn’t see Apple implementing Exchange support in the iPhone OS, and clearly that was, well, completely wrong. The “enterprise” features Apple has announced for the imminent 2.0 release of the iPhone OS — remote wipe, push email, automatic calendar and contact synching — pretty much encompass every single feature that’s been held up as a reason the iPhone wouldn’t sell to enterprise users.
It remains to be seen how well these new iPhone features will actually work, but if the answer is “as well as promised”, and if the iPhone’s Mail app is improved in ways targeting people who receive a high number of messages, it’s hard to see a single software advantage in the BlackBerry’s favor. Which leaves hardware, which leaves the keyboard.
Two Sundays ago, the New York Times ran a lengthy business-section piece by Brad Stone, titled “BlackBerry’s Quest: Fend Off the iPhone”. Regarding the upcoming BlackBerry 9000, the focus turned to the keyboard:
Photographs of the device, leaked to gadget news sites, also indicate that the new BlackBerry will have elegant curves suggestive of the iPhone. It will also have a physical keyboard like previous R.I.M. devices, as opposed to the glass touch screen found on the iPhone.
There’s a reason that R.I.M. is averse to the iPhone’s glass pad. “I couldn’t type on it and I still can’t type on it, and a lot of my friends can’t type on it,” says Mike Lazaridis, R.I.M.’s co-chief executive and technological visionary. “It’s hard to type on a piece of glass.”
Mr. Lazaridis thinks that e-mail-dependent BlackBerry owners demand the reliability and tactile feedback of a keyboard. But, despite his critique of the iPhone, he does not dismiss the possibility that R.I.M. may itself one day sell a touch-screen phone, aimed specifically at consumers without the e-mail demands of BlackBerry’s core users.
Translation: “We’ll emphasize the physical keyboard as a differentiating factor as long as it seems to work, at which point we’ll try a touch-screen keyboard too.”
The only other angle RIM seems to be hanging its hat on is “security”:
RIM is also betting on security, which hinges on the fact that its handsets and e-mail systems are relatively impervious to hackers. Mr. Lazaridis predicts that corporations will not give iPhones to their workers because they have already proved vulnerable to hackers eager to pry iPhones off AT&T’s system and make them work on other wireless networks. “It’s not that simple for an I.T. manager to give up security,” he said.
The idea that iPhone carrier unlocking is a “security problem” is a conflation between what an attacker can do to your phone, against your will and/or unbeknownst to you, versus what a phone’s owner can do to their own phone. It’s not like these “hackers” are attacking happy AT&T-subscribed iPhone owners and switching them over to T-Mobile against their will.
To understand why Apple is making a concerted effort to appeal to BlackBerry users, consider an analogy to the board game Risk. RIM has a large army (read: users), but they’re all massed together in one spot on the map. They care about email, they care about exactly the sort of enterprise features Apple has announced for the iPhone, and they are known to be willing to pay several hundred dollars for a handset. A lucrative target that can be attacked all at once. And the BlackBerry is weakest where the iPhone is strongest: web browsing, music, and video.
Compare and contrast with, say, a software platform like Windows Mobile, or a hardware maker like Nokia — their users are spread across a wide variety of phones and platforms. It was far easier to turn the iPhone into something almost every BlackBerry customer might at least consider than it would have been to make a lineup of iPhones that appeal to every Nokia customer.
RIM doesn’t really have any lock-in other than user habits. The BlackBerry gimmick is that it works with the email system your company bought from Microsoft. Replace a BlackBerry with an iPhone (2.0) and the messages, contacts, and calendar events that sync over the network will be the same as the ones on the BlackBerry you just tossed into a desk drawer.
In broad terms, BlackBerrys are optimized first for email; the iPhone for the web. What’s more important, an email client or a web browser? For most people, and perhaps even most current BlackBerry users, the answer is clearly the web. Many people in fact read their email entirely through the web. Unless you’re Richard Stallman, you probably don’t read the web through your email client.
The iPhone would be a credible, useful device with just two apps: Phone and Safari. But it doesn’t just have those two apps. It has a slew, and they’re all better on the iPhone than the BlackBerry and the difference with regard to anything other than email is only going to get more stark once the iTunes App Store opens its doors. If nothing else, consider games, games, and games. As I wrote when the iPhone’s upcoming enterprise features were announced, the iPhone can do more BlackBerry-ish things than the BlackBerry can do iPhone-ish things.
Apple doesn’t wait for someone else to knock one of their hit products off its throne or slowly run it into the ground (cf. the Motorola Razr) — they do it themselves. For six years pundits have been declaring that competitors would “soon” catch up to the iPod, but the iPod has never been a static target — over the same six years Apple has released significant new iPods every year.
There are no signs that RIM has the engineering chops on either side of the ball — hardware or software — to compete with where the iPhone is now, let alone where it’s going to be. We know that Apple has an OS that can scale to take advantage of faster (and multi-core) processors, because OS X is doing that already. If a two-years-away 2010 iPhone might be like having a 2003 PowerBook G4 in your pocket, for RIM’s sake a 2010 BlackBerry had better be something more than a BlackBerry with a brighter screen.
This page is extracted from: http://daringfireball.net/2008/05/blackberry_vs_iphone
visit the site for more information
Along the lines of can’t-really-be-answered-but-gosh-they’re-fun-to-ponder questions like, say, “Who’d win in a fight, Batman or Spider-Man?” or “Star Destroyer vs. U.S.S. Enterprise?”,1 here’s one regarding the iPhone: What historical Mac is a current iPhone most analogous to, spec-wise? I.e, complete this sentence: “An iPhone is like having a tiny ____ in your pocket?”
Now of course the comparison can’t be precise. Different software, different use cases, different purposes. But there’s no denying that an iPhone is a computer. And unless you’re really young, it’s faster — a lot faster — than the computers you owned not so long ago. So, seriously, stop here for a moment and think about it.
My first answer, pulled simply from recollection of how fast machines felt to use, was the original iMac. But that machine — announced 10 years ago this week — had a 233 MHz G3 and, by default, a paltry 32 MB of RAM. Apple has never officially released the CPU specs of the iPhone, but Craig Hockenberry poked around with undocumented system APIs which indicated the iPhone’s CPU runs at 400 MHz with a bus speed of 100 MHz, and that there’s 128 MB of RAM.
As we all recall from the PowerPC era, MHz is not a precise metric for comparing the performance of CPUs across different architectures; I wouldn’t be surprised in the least to find out that a 400 MHz PowerPC G3 is a faster chip than the 400 MHz ARMwhatever that’s in the iPhone, if only because of the power constraints. But, still, it’s something.
So, my answer to the question: the original “Pismo” G3 PowerBook. The numbers match up pretty closely: 400 MHz CPU, 100 MHz bus speed, 64 MB of RAM. (The higher-end Pismo had a 500 MHz CPU and 128 MB of RAM.) Even storage sizes are similar: hard drive options for the Pismo were 6, 12, or 18 GB. Another possible answer: the original blue-and-white Power Mac G3 — again, 400 MHz CPU, 100 MHz bus speed, 64-128 MB of RAM, and 6-12 GB hard drives. Think about that — in just nine years, the specs that then described Apple’s top-of-the-line desktop computer now describe their phone.
One thing that makes this comparison hard is that there’s not much software in common. You can’t use most of the real-world tasks commonly used for ballpark benchmarking, like, say, Photoshop image processing or ripping MP3s from AIFFs, because the iPhone doesn’t do them. But there is one processor intensive task we can compare: web page rendering. In the early days of the web, it took a while for even moderately large web pages to render in a browser, even when you were loading them from HTML files right on your hard drive. If you were to plop yourself down in front of one of these vintage 1999-2000 Macs for an afternoon of web browsing, even with a decent Ethernet connection to the Internet you’d find the experience pretty damn slow by current standards.
For all the incessant chatter about the demand for and purported certainty of 3G wireless networking in the next generation of iPhone hardware, the truth is that current iPhones are held back, web-surfing-wise, by more than just the speed of EDGE (which admittedly, is indeed pretty slow). Recall this video pitting a 3G Nokia E61i against an iPhone on EDGE — total rendering time was more or less the same, and in a few cases, the iPhone came out ahead.
You can see that browsing speed — which is what matters — depends on more than just networking speed simply by comparing how long it takes to render a web page on the iPhone using Wi-Fi: a lot longer than it takes to load the same page using Safari on a Mac. For example, it takes about two or three seconds for Safari to load the Daring Fireball home page on my new MacBook Pro. Using the same Wi-Fi network, it takes my iPhone about 15 seconds. (Using EDGE, it takes about 60 seconds to completely load, although you can start reading much sooner than that.) Point being that even if 3G wireless networking were as fast as Wi-Fi — which it’s not — browsing on an iPhone would still be pretty slow compared to browsing on a modern desktop or laptop. If you frequently use Wi-Fi on your iPhone, a faster processor in the next-generation hardware would make a bigger difference to the overall experience than faster phone-carrier networking.
And so here’s the point I’m driving at. If a 2007 iPhone is loosely equivalent in terms of computing power to a 2000 PowerBook or 1999 Power Mac, that puts the spread at around seven or eight years. Extrapolate forward, and it’s therefore not at all unreasonable to think that a 2014 iPhone will pack the computing power of today’s MacBook Pro. Or, nearer term, that an iPhone introduced two years from now might pack the punch of a 2003 Aluminum PowerBook G4 — quite a difference from the Pismo.
Even if your estimate of the iPhone’s equivalent-horsepower Mac is further back in time than mine, there’s no denying that Moore’s Law applies to handhelds, too. Eventually there will be a computer that fits in your pocket that is more powerful than today’s Mac Pros. But the path from here to there is riddled with difficult engineering problems — heat dissipation, battery life, and OS integration chief among them.
There is marketing. There most certainly is design. But at the core of this market — by which I mean the market for handheld multitasking web-surfing networked-everywhere “phones” which are really computers — is engineering.
Apple is the best handheld computer engineering company in the world today, hands down. They’re also the best handheld computer user experience design company. And they’re not sharing.
2: Why RIM Is Screwed
When the iPhone was announced, I saw Apple as staking out ground far afield from the territory RIM occupies with the BlackBerry. Last year, I didn’t see Apple implementing Exchange support in the iPhone OS, and clearly that was, well, completely wrong. The “enterprise” features Apple has announced for the imminent 2.0 release of the iPhone OS — remote wipe, push email, automatic calendar and contact synching — pretty much encompass every single feature that’s been held up as a reason the iPhone wouldn’t sell to enterprise users.
It remains to be seen how well these new iPhone features will actually work, but if the answer is “as well as promised”, and if the iPhone’s Mail app is improved in ways targeting people who receive a high number of messages, it’s hard to see a single software advantage in the BlackBerry’s favor. Which leaves hardware, which leaves the keyboard.
Two Sundays ago, the New York Times ran a lengthy business-section piece by Brad Stone, titled “BlackBerry’s Quest: Fend Off the iPhone”. Regarding the upcoming BlackBerry 9000, the focus turned to the keyboard:
Photographs of the device, leaked to gadget news sites, also indicate that the new BlackBerry will have elegant curves suggestive of the iPhone. It will also have a physical keyboard like previous R.I.M. devices, as opposed to the glass touch screen found on the iPhone.
There’s a reason that R.I.M. is averse to the iPhone’s glass pad. “I couldn’t type on it and I still can’t type on it, and a lot of my friends can’t type on it,” says Mike Lazaridis, R.I.M.’s co-chief executive and technological visionary. “It’s hard to type on a piece of glass.”
Mr. Lazaridis thinks that e-mail-dependent BlackBerry owners demand the reliability and tactile feedback of a keyboard. But, despite his critique of the iPhone, he does not dismiss the possibility that R.I.M. may itself one day sell a touch-screen phone, aimed specifically at consumers without the e-mail demands of BlackBerry’s core users.
Translation: “We’ll emphasize the physical keyboard as a differentiating factor as long as it seems to work, at which point we’ll try a touch-screen keyboard too.”
The only other angle RIM seems to be hanging its hat on is “security”:
RIM is also betting on security, which hinges on the fact that its handsets and e-mail systems are relatively impervious to hackers. Mr. Lazaridis predicts that corporations will not give iPhones to their workers because they have already proved vulnerable to hackers eager to pry iPhones off AT&T’s system and make them work on other wireless networks. “It’s not that simple for an I.T. manager to give up security,” he said.
The idea that iPhone carrier unlocking is a “security problem” is a conflation between what an attacker can do to your phone, against your will and/or unbeknownst to you, versus what a phone’s owner can do to their own phone. It’s not like these “hackers” are attacking happy AT&T-subscribed iPhone owners and switching them over to T-Mobile against their will.
To understand why Apple is making a concerted effort to appeal to BlackBerry users, consider an analogy to the board game Risk. RIM has a large army (read: users), but they’re all massed together in one spot on the map. They care about email, they care about exactly the sort of enterprise features Apple has announced for the iPhone, and they are known to be willing to pay several hundred dollars for a handset. A lucrative target that can be attacked all at once. And the BlackBerry is weakest where the iPhone is strongest: web browsing, music, and video.
Compare and contrast with, say, a software platform like Windows Mobile, or a hardware maker like Nokia — their users are spread across a wide variety of phones and platforms. It was far easier to turn the iPhone into something almost every BlackBerry customer might at least consider than it would have been to make a lineup of iPhones that appeal to every Nokia customer.
RIM doesn’t really have any lock-in other than user habits. The BlackBerry gimmick is that it works with the email system your company bought from Microsoft. Replace a BlackBerry with an iPhone (2.0) and the messages, contacts, and calendar events that sync over the network will be the same as the ones on the BlackBerry you just tossed into a desk drawer.
In broad terms, BlackBerrys are optimized first for email; the iPhone for the web. What’s more important, an email client or a web browser? For most people, and perhaps even most current BlackBerry users, the answer is clearly the web. Many people in fact read their email entirely through the web. Unless you’re Richard Stallman, you probably don’t read the web through your email client.
The iPhone would be a credible, useful device with just two apps: Phone and Safari. But it doesn’t just have those two apps. It has a slew, and they’re all better on the iPhone than the BlackBerry and the difference with regard to anything other than email is only going to get more stark once the iTunes App Store opens its doors. If nothing else, consider games, games, and games. As I wrote when the iPhone’s upcoming enterprise features were announced, the iPhone can do more BlackBerry-ish things than the BlackBerry can do iPhone-ish things.
Apple doesn’t wait for someone else to knock one of their hit products off its throne or slowly run it into the ground (cf. the Motorola Razr) — they do it themselves. For six years pundits have been declaring that competitors would “soon” catch up to the iPod, but the iPod has never been a static target — over the same six years Apple has released significant new iPods every year.
There are no signs that RIM has the engineering chops on either side of the ball — hardware or software — to compete with where the iPhone is now, let alone where it’s going to be. We know that Apple has an OS that can scale to take advantage of faster (and multi-core) processors, because OS X is doing that already. If a two-years-away 2010 iPhone might be like having a 2003 PowerBook G4 in your pocket, for RIM’s sake a 2010 BlackBerry had better be something more than a BlackBerry with a brighter screen.
This page is extracted from: http://daringfireball.net/2008/05/blackberry_vs_iphone
visit the site for more information
BlackBerry vs. iPhone
1: Wherein Neither ‘RIM’ Nor ‘BlackBerry’ Are Even Mentioned, but Rather the Stage Is Set for Showing Why They Might Be Seriously Screwed
Along the lines of can’t-really-be-answered-but-gosh-they’re-fun-to-ponder questions like, say, “Who’d win in a fight, Batman or Spider-Man?” or “Star Destroyer vs. U.S.S. Enterprise?”,1 here’s one regarding the iPhone: What historical Mac is a current iPhone most analogous to, spec-wise? I.e, complete this sentence: “An iPhone is like having a tiny ____ in your pocket?”
Now of course the comparison can’t be precise. Different software, different use cases, different purposes. But there’s no denying that an iPhone is a computer. And unless you’re really young, it’s faster — a lot faster — than the computers you owned not so long ago. So, seriously, stop here for a moment and think about it.
My first answer, pulled simply from recollection of how fast machines felt to use, was the original iMac. But that machine — announced 10 years ago this week — had a 233 MHz G3 and, by default, a paltry 32 MB of RAM. Apple has never officially released the CPU specs of the iPhone, but Craig Hockenberry poked around with undocumented system APIs which indicated the iPhone’s CPU runs at 400 MHz with a bus speed of 100 MHz, and that there’s 128 MB of RAM.
As we all recall from the PowerPC era, MHz is not a precise metric for comparing the performance of CPUs across different architectures; I wouldn’t be surprised in the least to find out that a 400 MHz PowerPC G3 is a faster chip than the 400 MHz ARMwhatever that’s in the iPhone, if only because of the power constraints. But, still, it’s something.
So, my answer to the question: the original “Pismo” G3 PowerBook. The numbers match up pretty closely: 400 MHz CPU, 100 MHz bus speed, 64 MB of RAM. (The higher-end Pismo had a 500 MHz CPU and 128 MB of RAM.) Even storage sizes are similar: hard drive options for the Pismo were 6, 12, or 18 GB. Another possible answer: the original blue-and-white Power Mac G3 — again, 400 MHz CPU, 100 MHz bus speed, 64-128 MB of RAM, and 6-12 GB hard drives. Think about that — in just nine years, the specs that then described Apple’s top-of-the-line desktop computer now describe their phone.
One thing that makes this comparison hard is that there’s not much software in common. You can’t use most of the real-world tasks commonly used for ballpark benchmarking, like, say, Photoshop image processing or ripping MP3s from AIFFs, because the iPhone doesn’t do them. But there is one processor intensive task we can compare: web page rendering. In the early days of the web, it took a while for even moderately large web pages to render in a browser, even when you were loading them from HTML files right on your hard drive. If you were to plop yourself down in front of one of these vintage 1999-2000 Macs for an afternoon of web browsing, even with a decent Ethernet connection to the Internet you’d find the experience pretty damn slow by current standards.
For all the incessant chatter about the demand for and purported certainty of 3G wireless networking in the next generation of iPhone hardware, the truth is that current iPhones are held back, web-surfing-wise, by more than just the speed of EDGE (which admittedly, is indeed pretty slow). Recall this video pitting a 3G Nokia E61i against an iPhone on EDGE — total rendering time was more or less the same, and in a few cases, the iPhone came out ahead.
You can see that browsing speed — which is what matters — depends on more than just networking speed simply by comparing how long it takes to render a web page on the iPhone using Wi-Fi: a lot longer than it takes to load the same page using Safari on a Mac. For example, it takes about two or three seconds for Safari to load the Daring Fireball home page on my new MacBook Pro. Using the same Wi-Fi network, it takes my iPhone about 15 seconds. (Using EDGE, it takes about 60 seconds to completely load, although you can start reading much sooner than that.) Point being that even if 3G wireless networking were as fast as Wi-Fi — which it’s not — browsing on an iPhone would still be pretty slow compared to browsing on a modern desktop or laptop. If you frequently use Wi-Fi on your iPhone, a faster processor in the next-generation hardware would make a bigger difference to the overall experience than faster phone-carrier networking.
And so here’s the point I’m driving at. If a 2007 iPhone is loosely equivalent in terms of computing power to a 2000 PowerBook or 1999 Power Mac, that puts the spread at around seven or eight years. Extrapolate forward, and it’s therefore not at all unreasonable to think that a 2014 iPhone will pack the computing power of today’s MacBook Pro. Or, nearer term, that an iPhone introduced two years from now might pack the punch of a 2003 Aluminum PowerBook G4 — quite a difference from the Pismo.
Even if your estimate of the iPhone’s equivalent-horsepower Mac is further back in time than mine, there’s no denying that Moore’s Law applies to handhelds, too. Eventually there will be a computer that fits in your pocket that is more powerful than today’s Mac Pros. But the path from here to there is riddled with difficult engineering problems — heat dissipation, battery life, and OS integration chief among them.
There is marketing. There most certainly is design. But at the core of this market — by which I mean the market for handheld multitasking web-surfing networked-everywhere “phones” which are really computers — is engineering.
Apple is the best handheld computer engineering company in the world today, hands down. They’re also the best handheld computer user experience design company. And they’re not sharing.
2: Why RIM Is Screwed
When the iPhone was announced, I saw Apple as staking out ground far afield from the territory RIM occupies with the BlackBerry. Last year, I didn’t see Apple implementing Exchange support in the iPhone OS, and clearly that was, well, completely wrong. The “enterprise” features Apple has announced for the imminent 2.0 release of the iPhone OS — remote wipe, push email, automatic calendar and contact synching — pretty much encompass every single feature that’s been held up as a reason the iPhone wouldn’t sell to enterprise users.
It remains to be seen how well these new iPhone features will actually work, but if the answer is “as well as promised”, and if the iPhone’s Mail app is improved in ways targeting people who receive a high number of messages, it’s hard to see a single software advantage in the BlackBerry’s favor. Which leaves hardware, which leaves the keyboard.
Two Sundays ago, the New York Times ran a lengthy business-section piece by Brad Stone, titled “BlackBerry’s Quest: Fend Off the iPhone”. Regarding the upcoming BlackBerry 9000, the focus turned to the keyboard:
Photographs of the device, leaked to gadget news sites, also indicate that the new BlackBerry will have elegant curves suggestive of the iPhone. It will also have a physical keyboard like previous R.I.M. devices, as opposed to the glass touch screen found on the iPhone.
There’s a reason that R.I.M. is averse to the iPhone’s glass pad. “I couldn’t type on it and I still can’t type on it, and a lot of my friends can’t type on it,” says Mike Lazaridis, R.I.M.’s co-chief executive and technological visionary. “It’s hard to type on a piece of glass.”
Mr. Lazaridis thinks that e-mail-dependent BlackBerry owners demand the reliability and tactile feedback of a keyboard. But, despite his critique of the iPhone, he does not dismiss the possibility that R.I.M. may itself one day sell a touch-screen phone, aimed specifically at consumers without the e-mail demands of BlackBerry’s core users.
Translation: “We’ll emphasize the physical keyboard as a differentiating factor as long as it seems to work, at which point we’ll try a touch-screen keyboard too.”
The only other angle RIM seems to be hanging its hat on is “security”:
RIM is also betting on security, which hinges on the fact that its handsets and e-mail systems are relatively impervious to hackers. Mr. Lazaridis predicts that corporations will not give iPhones to their workers because they have already proved vulnerable to hackers eager to pry iPhones off AT&T’s system and make them work on other wireless networks. “It’s not that simple for an I.T. manager to give up security,” he said.
The idea that iPhone carrier unlocking is a “security problem” is a conflation between what an attacker can do to your phone, against your will and/or unbeknownst to you, versus what a phone’s owner can do to their own phone. It’s not like these “hackers” are attacking happy AT&T-subscribed iPhone owners and switching them over to T-Mobile against their will.
To understand why Apple is making a concerted effort to appeal to BlackBerry users, consider an analogy to the board game Risk. RIM has a large army (read: users), but they’re all massed together in one spot on the map. They care about email, they care about exactly the sort of enterprise features Apple has announced for the iPhone, and they are known to be willing to pay several hundred dollars for a handset. A lucrative target that can be attacked all at once. And the BlackBerry is weakest where the iPhone is strongest: web browsing, music, and video.
Compare and contrast with, say, a software platform like Windows Mobile, or a hardware maker like Nokia — their users are spread across a wide variety of phones and platforms. It was far easier to turn the iPhone into something almost every BlackBerry customer might at least consider than it would have been to make a lineup of iPhones that appeal to every Nokia customer.
RIM doesn’t really have any lock-in other than user habits. The BlackBerry gimmick is that it works with the email system your company bought from Microsoft. Replace a BlackBerry with an iPhone (2.0) and the messages, contacts, and calendar events that sync over the network will be the same as the ones on the BlackBerry you just tossed into a desk drawer.
In broad terms, BlackBerrys are optimized first for email; the iPhone for the web. What’s more important, an email client or a web browser? For most people, and perhaps even most current BlackBerry users, the answer is clearly the web. Many people in fact read their email entirely through the web. Unless you’re Richard Stallman, you probably don’t read the web through your email client.
The iPhone would be a credible, useful device with just two apps: Phone and Safari. But it doesn’t just have those two apps. It has a slew, and they’re all better on the iPhone than the BlackBerry and the difference with regard to anything other than email is only going to get more stark once the iTunes App Store opens its doors. If nothing else, consider games, games, and games. As I wrote when the iPhone’s upcoming enterprise features were announced, the iPhone can do more BlackBerry-ish things than the BlackBerry can do iPhone-ish things.
Apple doesn’t wait for someone else to knock one of their hit products off its throne or slowly run it into the ground (cf. the Motorola Razr) — they do it themselves. For six years pundits have been declaring that competitors would “soon” catch up to the iPod, but the iPod has never been a static target — over the same six years Apple has released significant new iPods every year.
There are no signs that RIM has the engineering chops on either side of the ball — hardware or software — to compete with where the iPhone is now, let alone where it’s going to be. We know that Apple has an OS that can scale to take advantage of faster (and multi-core) processors, because OS X is doing that already. If a two-years-away 2010 iPhone might be like having a 2003 PowerBook G4 in your pocket, for RIM’s sake a 2010 BlackBerry had better be something more than a BlackBerry with a brighter screen.
Along the lines of can’t-really-be-answered-but-gosh-they’re-fun-to-ponder questions like, say, “Who’d win in a fight, Batman or Spider-Man?” or “Star Destroyer vs. U.S.S. Enterprise?”,1 here’s one regarding the iPhone: What historical Mac is a current iPhone most analogous to, spec-wise? I.e, complete this sentence: “An iPhone is like having a tiny ____ in your pocket?”
Now of course the comparison can’t be precise. Different software, different use cases, different purposes. But there’s no denying that an iPhone is a computer. And unless you’re really young, it’s faster — a lot faster — than the computers you owned not so long ago. So, seriously, stop here for a moment and think about it.
My first answer, pulled simply from recollection of how fast machines felt to use, was the original iMac. But that machine — announced 10 years ago this week — had a 233 MHz G3 and, by default, a paltry 32 MB of RAM. Apple has never officially released the CPU specs of the iPhone, but Craig Hockenberry poked around with undocumented system APIs which indicated the iPhone’s CPU runs at 400 MHz with a bus speed of 100 MHz, and that there’s 128 MB of RAM.
As we all recall from the PowerPC era, MHz is not a precise metric for comparing the performance of CPUs across different architectures; I wouldn’t be surprised in the least to find out that a 400 MHz PowerPC G3 is a faster chip than the 400 MHz ARMwhatever that’s in the iPhone, if only because of the power constraints. But, still, it’s something.
So, my answer to the question: the original “Pismo” G3 PowerBook. The numbers match up pretty closely: 400 MHz CPU, 100 MHz bus speed, 64 MB of RAM. (The higher-end Pismo had a 500 MHz CPU and 128 MB of RAM.) Even storage sizes are similar: hard drive options for the Pismo were 6, 12, or 18 GB. Another possible answer: the original blue-and-white Power Mac G3 — again, 400 MHz CPU, 100 MHz bus speed, 64-128 MB of RAM, and 6-12 GB hard drives. Think about that — in just nine years, the specs that then described Apple’s top-of-the-line desktop computer now describe their phone.
One thing that makes this comparison hard is that there’s not much software in common. You can’t use most of the real-world tasks commonly used for ballpark benchmarking, like, say, Photoshop image processing or ripping MP3s from AIFFs, because the iPhone doesn’t do them. But there is one processor intensive task we can compare: web page rendering. In the early days of the web, it took a while for even moderately large web pages to render in a browser, even when you were loading them from HTML files right on your hard drive. If you were to plop yourself down in front of one of these vintage 1999-2000 Macs for an afternoon of web browsing, even with a decent Ethernet connection to the Internet you’d find the experience pretty damn slow by current standards.
For all the incessant chatter about the demand for and purported certainty of 3G wireless networking in the next generation of iPhone hardware, the truth is that current iPhones are held back, web-surfing-wise, by more than just the speed of EDGE (which admittedly, is indeed pretty slow). Recall this video pitting a 3G Nokia E61i against an iPhone on EDGE — total rendering time was more or less the same, and in a few cases, the iPhone came out ahead.
You can see that browsing speed — which is what matters — depends on more than just networking speed simply by comparing how long it takes to render a web page on the iPhone using Wi-Fi: a lot longer than it takes to load the same page using Safari on a Mac. For example, it takes about two or three seconds for Safari to load the Daring Fireball home page on my new MacBook Pro. Using the same Wi-Fi network, it takes my iPhone about 15 seconds. (Using EDGE, it takes about 60 seconds to completely load, although you can start reading much sooner than that.) Point being that even if 3G wireless networking were as fast as Wi-Fi — which it’s not — browsing on an iPhone would still be pretty slow compared to browsing on a modern desktop or laptop. If you frequently use Wi-Fi on your iPhone, a faster processor in the next-generation hardware would make a bigger difference to the overall experience than faster phone-carrier networking.
And so here’s the point I’m driving at. If a 2007 iPhone is loosely equivalent in terms of computing power to a 2000 PowerBook or 1999 Power Mac, that puts the spread at around seven or eight years. Extrapolate forward, and it’s therefore not at all unreasonable to think that a 2014 iPhone will pack the computing power of today’s MacBook Pro. Or, nearer term, that an iPhone introduced two years from now might pack the punch of a 2003 Aluminum PowerBook G4 — quite a difference from the Pismo.
Even if your estimate of the iPhone’s equivalent-horsepower Mac is further back in time than mine, there’s no denying that Moore’s Law applies to handhelds, too. Eventually there will be a computer that fits in your pocket that is more powerful than today’s Mac Pros. But the path from here to there is riddled with difficult engineering problems — heat dissipation, battery life, and OS integration chief among them.
There is marketing. There most certainly is design. But at the core of this market — by which I mean the market for handheld multitasking web-surfing networked-everywhere “phones” which are really computers — is engineering.
Apple is the best handheld computer engineering company in the world today, hands down. They’re also the best handheld computer user experience design company. And they’re not sharing.
2: Why RIM Is Screwed
When the iPhone was announced, I saw Apple as staking out ground far afield from the territory RIM occupies with the BlackBerry. Last year, I didn’t see Apple implementing Exchange support in the iPhone OS, and clearly that was, well, completely wrong. The “enterprise” features Apple has announced for the imminent 2.0 release of the iPhone OS — remote wipe, push email, automatic calendar and contact synching — pretty much encompass every single feature that’s been held up as a reason the iPhone wouldn’t sell to enterprise users.
It remains to be seen how well these new iPhone features will actually work, but if the answer is “as well as promised”, and if the iPhone’s Mail app is improved in ways targeting people who receive a high number of messages, it’s hard to see a single software advantage in the BlackBerry’s favor. Which leaves hardware, which leaves the keyboard.
Two Sundays ago, the New York Times ran a lengthy business-section piece by Brad Stone, titled “BlackBerry’s Quest: Fend Off the iPhone”. Regarding the upcoming BlackBerry 9000, the focus turned to the keyboard:
Photographs of the device, leaked to gadget news sites, also indicate that the new BlackBerry will have elegant curves suggestive of the iPhone. It will also have a physical keyboard like previous R.I.M. devices, as opposed to the glass touch screen found on the iPhone.
There’s a reason that R.I.M. is averse to the iPhone’s glass pad. “I couldn’t type on it and I still can’t type on it, and a lot of my friends can’t type on it,” says Mike Lazaridis, R.I.M.’s co-chief executive and technological visionary. “It’s hard to type on a piece of glass.”
Mr. Lazaridis thinks that e-mail-dependent BlackBerry owners demand the reliability and tactile feedback of a keyboard. But, despite his critique of the iPhone, he does not dismiss the possibility that R.I.M. may itself one day sell a touch-screen phone, aimed specifically at consumers without the e-mail demands of BlackBerry’s core users.
Translation: “We’ll emphasize the physical keyboard as a differentiating factor as long as it seems to work, at which point we’ll try a touch-screen keyboard too.”
The only other angle RIM seems to be hanging its hat on is “security”:
RIM is also betting on security, which hinges on the fact that its handsets and e-mail systems are relatively impervious to hackers. Mr. Lazaridis predicts that corporations will not give iPhones to their workers because they have already proved vulnerable to hackers eager to pry iPhones off AT&T’s system and make them work on other wireless networks. “It’s not that simple for an I.T. manager to give up security,” he said.
The idea that iPhone carrier unlocking is a “security problem” is a conflation between what an attacker can do to your phone, against your will and/or unbeknownst to you, versus what a phone’s owner can do to their own phone. It’s not like these “hackers” are attacking happy AT&T-subscribed iPhone owners and switching them over to T-Mobile against their will.
To understand why Apple is making a concerted effort to appeal to BlackBerry users, consider an analogy to the board game Risk. RIM has a large army (read: users), but they’re all massed together in one spot on the map. They care about email, they care about exactly the sort of enterprise features Apple has announced for the iPhone, and they are known to be willing to pay several hundred dollars for a handset. A lucrative target that can be attacked all at once. And the BlackBerry is weakest where the iPhone is strongest: web browsing, music, and video.
Compare and contrast with, say, a software platform like Windows Mobile, or a hardware maker like Nokia — their users are spread across a wide variety of phones and platforms. It was far easier to turn the iPhone into something almost every BlackBerry customer might at least consider than it would have been to make a lineup of iPhones that appeal to every Nokia customer.
RIM doesn’t really have any lock-in other than user habits. The BlackBerry gimmick is that it works with the email system your company bought from Microsoft. Replace a BlackBerry with an iPhone (2.0) and the messages, contacts, and calendar events that sync over the network will be the same as the ones on the BlackBerry you just tossed into a desk drawer.
In broad terms, BlackBerrys are optimized first for email; the iPhone for the web. What’s more important, an email client or a web browser? For most people, and perhaps even most current BlackBerry users, the answer is clearly the web. Many people in fact read their email entirely through the web. Unless you’re Richard Stallman, you probably don’t read the web through your email client.
The iPhone would be a credible, useful device with just two apps: Phone and Safari. But it doesn’t just have those two apps. It has a slew, and they’re all better on the iPhone than the BlackBerry and the difference with regard to anything other than email is only going to get more stark once the iTunes App Store opens its doors. If nothing else, consider games, games, and games. As I wrote when the iPhone’s upcoming enterprise features were announced, the iPhone can do more BlackBerry-ish things than the BlackBerry can do iPhone-ish things.
Apple doesn’t wait for someone else to knock one of their hit products off its throne or slowly run it into the ground (cf. the Motorola Razr) — they do it themselves. For six years pundits have been declaring that competitors would “soon” catch up to the iPod, but the iPod has never been a static target — over the same six years Apple has released significant new iPods every year.
There are no signs that RIM has the engineering chops on either side of the ball — hardware or software — to compete with where the iPhone is now, let alone where it’s going to be. We know that Apple has an OS that can scale to take advantage of faster (and multi-core) processors, because OS X is doing that already. If a two-years-away 2010 iPhone might be like having a 2003 PowerBook G4 in your pocket, for RIM’s sake a 2010 BlackBerry had better be something more than a BlackBerry with a brighter screen.
Brand new Google Reader for iPhone
Mobile web browsers have come a long way since we first introduced an XHTML version of Reader back in 2006. For example, iPhone and iPod Touch owners know how powerful having a full-featured browser is. We on the Reader team are heavy mobile Safari users. Sometimes we use it to kill time, other times for answering important questions that come up during brunch: What is Tyrol's first name? How is maple butter made? How do you sweeten rhubarb for sangria? What is John Gruber saying now? For questions like the last one, we of course use Reader to keep up with our subscriptions.
To make our (and your) Reader iPhone experience better, we wanted to really take advantage of the iPhone's capabilities. Today we're releasing a new beta version of Reader designed for the iPhone and other mobile phones with advanced browsers. You can use it by visiting http://www.google.com/reader/i/ on your phone.
This new version is designed to offer many of the same features as the desktop, while making it quick and easy to act on items. If you've used list view, then it should be familiar to you. Scan the titles for an item that interests you, tap and it expands in place. Starring, sharing, and keeping unread are done in place, so you never have to leave the list view or refresh the page. We think it's a very fast way to power through your reading list.
Since it's still in beta, we're not going to automatically send you to it, so bookmark the site so that you don't forget the address (http://www.google.com/reader/i/). We love getting feedback from users, so let us know what you think in our discussion group or the other channels.
This post is extracted from:http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2008/05/brand-new-google-reader-for iphone.html
visit the site for more information
To make our (and your) Reader iPhone experience better, we wanted to really take advantage of the iPhone's capabilities. Today we're releasing a new beta version of Reader designed for the iPhone and other mobile phones with advanced browsers. You can use it by visiting http://www.google.com/reader/i/ on your phone.
This new version is designed to offer many of the same features as the desktop, while making it quick and easy to act on items. If you've used list view, then it should be familiar to you. Scan the titles for an item that interests you, tap and it expands in place. Starring, sharing, and keeping unread are done in place, so you never have to leave the list view or refresh the page. We think it's a very fast way to power through your reading list.
Since it's still in beta, we're not going to automatically send you to it, so bookmark the site so that you don't forget the address (http://www.google.com/reader/i/). We love getting feedback from users, so let us know what you think in our discussion group or the other channels.
This post is extracted from:http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2008/05/brand-new-google-reader-for iphone.html
visit the site for more information
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