Smartphone Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

"Not sure how it is about you but for me, Outlook lacks one important field: private mobile phone numbers. Outlook has many fields for contact details, like Assistant phone number (very useful), Business Fax, Home Fax, Other Fax (three fax number fields? ), Pager (who is using a Pager today), Primary and Radio (what ever it is) and even Telex (though the last Telex was disconnected in the late 80s in the last century) but Outlook 2007 has just one filed for mobile numbers! I'm not going to say that all the previously mentioned fields don't make any sense anymore today but please - why just one Mobile field after Microsoft just recently introduced its new Outlook 2007, Exchange 2007 and Windows Mobile 6? Wouldn't it be the perfect timing to introduce new fields?"



Is Microsoft just copying and pasting their Outlook mobile WM5 template into their Outlook mobile WM6 template and adding a few extra functions to make it look fresh? Sometimes I wonder if Microsoft is real-world thinking about what is really needed for 2007. Here we have an article that feels that the fields in Outlook mobile are outdated and should contain fields that are more revelent for today. What do you think? Does Outlook mobile need an overhaul such as number of fields to fit today's real world contact management functions? What else would you add or subtract?

"For those Q fans in the audience, we've got some good news (especially if you haven't made the jump yet because that $200 price point is still a little high, or because you just can't bear the thought of switching to Verizon). Apparently Ron Garriques, Moto's Executive Vice President, Mobile Devices Business, told Bear Sterns that the Q's sales performance can be compared to the steep, successful initial launch of the RAZR, and that they not only hope to drop the price to $50 after carrier subsidy by the end of 2006, but they'll be launching a UMTS version when Verizon's exclusivity contract on the device ends (as we've been expecting)."



Speaking of the Q, it appears it will in fact be available to the rest of the world by the end of the year. I wanted to get one of these but in 6 months or more, I wonder if I will really care. By that time we will probably be getting pretty close to the next version of the Windows Mobile OS. I kind of doubt the Q will be upgradable but who knows. I'm still trying to figure out why Moto decided to go this route, making it only available with VZW.

"We have no immediate plans to run that service, What runs on our network are our services."

The above statement was issued by Jeffrey Nelson of Verizon Wireless and "that service" is the Sling Media's Windows Mobile based service that lets the users of Slingbox view their recorded TV shows on their mobile devices. Why doesn't Verizon want their customers to watch their favorite recorded shows, because Verizon offers it own video service. :roll: The one thing I could not understand from this Forbes article is, why Sling Media is seeking consent from the carriers? Am I missing something, shouldn't a customer who is paying $$$ for the high speed data networks be allowed to pick and choose their own services? Which means Sling Media should be free to offer whatever services it feels is right for its customers. Maybe I have not read the fine print on the terms and conditions for data network access. That said, the carriers are known for their walled gardens and Verizon probably leads the pack, when it comes to nixing technology and services that benefit its customers without benefiting its own pockets. When will this end? I would like to take a moment to talk to the carriers - please, the high speed data networks have plenty of bandwidth for your own services and your customers', by blocking your customer's wishes you are turning them away from your own services.

"Outlook is far from a perfect mail client, but it combines everything I use daily in one common location better than anything else I've tried, so I live with the shortcomings. One of the places Outlook really needs improvement is the bloated PST storage file where all that data collects. PSTCompactor helps shrink your PST file by as much as 38%, optimizing in areas where Microsoft hasn't managed to fix some glaring issues. Compress attachments, force compacting of data and permanently eliminate deleted messages and information. By keeping your PST file clean, mail data is less prone to corruption and failure. The home edition is limited to compacting 5 PST files. Compatible with Outlook 98, 2k, XP and 2003. [Windows 2k/XP $24.95]."

Since the vast majority of Pocket PC and Smartphone owners use Outlook, this utility might come in handy if you have a large PST file and want to shrink it down.

"I'm fed up with people complaining that Symbian has a monopoly in the Smartphone market. Many (if not most) of those who complain are Microsoft fangirls who refer to the monopoly as being unfair and abused while the minority who don't have a Windows powered brain compare the monopoly with Microsoft's monopoly on the desktop. While I hold the opinion that Symbian is by far the best platform for any Smartphone, I also believe that Symbian got to where it is in the market by being first, by being innovative and by being bold with the backing of willing companies. I also hold this opinion; Symbian does not have a monopoly in the Smartphone market and here I'll present some of the evidence behind my claim..."

While I don't agree 100% with all of TankerX's arguments, I do agree with him that Symbian doesn't have a monopoly. Symbian is just enjoying a rather healthy lead - and I don't know if it's due to being more innovative than others. What do you think?

I'm a sucker for trying out new technology, so of course as soon as I heard about the MSN Video Downloads site I jumped over and signed up for their basic service. It seemed like a cool service - it provides video content optimized for PMC/Pocket PCs (320 x 240, 500kbps) and Smartphones.I installed the MSN Music Client (which was odd because I already had it installed), and waited. And waited. I was expecting to see some sort of screen after the sign-in process that actually showed me what the hell I was supposed to do. Nope. I noticed that the client was running in my system tray, so I moused over and and saw that it was downloading some video content and would take....three hours? WHAT? 8O There's an option to see the download status, which takes you to a Web page that lists all the files that are downloading. That's a cool integration, but why was it cramming all this content down the pipe at me? I'm not into sports, so why was I getting hundreds of Fox Sports videos? I decided to leave it to see what it would do. For the next three hours, my Internet connection was sluggish as the MSN Videos came hurling down at my cable modem.When it was all said and done, inside the My Documents folder, I had 408 video files, totalling 4.15 GB in size. And because I use data mirroring software, my other laptop and server now had the same video files, so MSN Video was now taking up over 12 GB of space on my network! Gee, with all that content there must be something good, right? I'll never know - I tried playing six random files, and all six files gave me the same authentication error. I tried logging in with my Passport information, since that's the authentication that MSN Video Downloads uses, but no dice. You can see in the error window that it was trying to authenticate from admin.theplatform.com. It seems thePlatform is a DRM service, and MSN is using them for the DRM on these files. Keeping in mind that these files are all free once you log in, why would they have such hostile DRM? And what username and password was I supposed to use've since deleted all the files and cancelled my free subscription - it feels like a beta service that no one bothered to test with real people. If you've tried it out, what did you think? I hope you had a better experience than I did. ;-)

"Is there anything that can be done if a provider refuses to ship an AKU? eg The Orange C500?' Unfortunately not. Microsoft has ownership of the OS components not what goes on the device - the ODM / OEM / MO own the device. The advantage of this model is a competitively (and market) driven hardware inovation. The downside is long lead time to get software out to the consumer and no guarantees that fixes / builds will get on every handset. Although Microsoft can (and does) strongly encourage our MO's to take updates, the final decision lies in their hands. Its an area the MED team has been working on for the next version of Windows Mobile - to separate the upgrade mechanism for bits that Microsoft owns from the bits that the OEM owns. This should mean that Microsoft can offer things like Media Player 10 updates directly from the Microsoft site."

Originally this appeared on the Pocket PC Thoughts Site. The above snippet is a response to a question about the provider, Motorola for example, doesn't want to ship the AKU (Adaptation Kit Update which is like an Service Pack) for one of their phones, the MPx220 for example. Take a look at the rest of the blog as it is interesting. It does raise hopes up a little that one day we can upgrade parts of our own phones that we paid hundreds of dollars for!

"The mobile industry is stuck. But don't start printing out those resumes quite yet. A new romance may give the industry just the kick it needs, if we are to put faith in the words of the intriguing director and head of user experience at Nokia's Insight and Foresight unit, Marko Ahtisaari. In a talk he provocatively called "Phones as a Hackable Platform," the Helsinki-born technologist shared a dark and rarely uttered truth: "If we look at this industry and the speed of innovation, innovation has largely stopped." ..."What have we had? We've had mobile voice, which was the lead application and still is the lead application. Texting, person-to-person, one-to-one messaging. And, recently, the only dominant functionality that we've added is the camera. We need new innovation on this platform for it to grow." Ahtisaari understands that the most promising and compelling software innovations have always been born in the hands of playful users."

I'm not sure that I totally agree with Marko. While we haven't seen much in the way of enhancements recently, we are heading down a new slipper slope called VoIP that could potentially change your phone for ever. What are your thoughts? What would you like to see added to your mobile phone?

I spent a fair amount of time over the last couple weeks testing some pretty cool applications for the Handango Champion Awards, and it was a lot of fun. With everything said and done, I feel that, although these are great applications, there are some key features that they all should have to make the end users experience much more pleasing.

• Smart Filter/Search - If your application has a large list of items, the application should support a smart filter feature in the same manner as your phones Contact filter. At the very least you should support page up and down along with scrolling. Although a smart filter is preferred.
  
  
• 100% Clean Uninstall - When the application is removed, all files and folders should be removed. This includes the empty application folder. Also, if there are any settings or data files created by the application, the user should be prompted to keep or remove these.
  
  
• Sounds & Music - If your application talks, sings, beeps, or chirps, please check the active profile settings before making any noise. If the profile is silent, then the application should also be silent.
  
  
• Registration Codes - If your registration code is all numeric, then please set the input type to numeric and not mixed. The best solution I saw for this was when applications prompted you on your desktop during the install for the registration code.

Do these sound reasonable? I'm sure there are more features, but I feel these changes would offer a more pleasant user experience.

According to Samsung's website, the update will be made available at Verizon Wireless stores in early 2004. It is my guess that early 2004 translates into soon. :wink:

"As a technology writer, I'm continually exposed to the latest gadgets. My main phones over the recent past have been smartphones and connected handhelds, from the O2 XDA through to the latest Treo 600 and SPV E200. However, I recently decided to investigate what was going on back in the 'normal' world of communication, and got myself a mobile phone - nothing more, nothing less. Although it's by no means dumb, it's not smart either, and this set me thinking about how the two categories could learn from each other.

Mobile phones are drawing closer to smartphones, it has to be said. The latest handsets are loaded with high-resolution colour screens, proper audio capabilities, PIM suites, full e-mail support, add-on applications via Java, full connectivity through Bluetooth and media capabilities through cameras. In fact, the line is pretty blurred..."

Have any of you ever made the switch back to a "dumb" phone for a while to see what it was like? When I switched back to using my T68i for a couple of weeks, my expectations for it immediately shifted down several notches - it was to be used for phone calls, and Bluetooth GPRS calls, nothing more. The phone is capable of more than that of course, but I treat it like the dumb phone that it is. ;-)

I often use interactive, structured workshops (brown paper, Post It notes and so on) when working with clients in software development projects. That way I can pull out more smart ideas and creativity from them that eventually end up in system software somewhere! There is one question that I most often ask when kicking off a new workshop session: "Do You Have a Stopper?"A Stopper is an issue, question, unclarity, or whatever that keeps you from being able to efficiently participate in the discussions. Stoppers can range from very fundamental issues such as: "Is this project really nescessary?", to more detailed issues such as: "I definately don't like the color theme of the new client software!", to organizational aspects such as: "Why is John Doe in the steering committee and not Susan Smith?", and so on. The project benefits from enabling the participants to articulate any Stopper they might have since issues can then be prioritized and dealt with, and the workshop becomes much more efficient since most emotionally stressful issues are already on the board. So my question is: Any Smartphone Stoppers out there? I have a few Smartphone stoppers of my own:1. I wish Microsoft would have branded "Windows Powered Smartphones" much more cleary and consumer oriented. I dread the day when I know the correct answer on the "What is that"-question is "It is a Windows Powered Smartphone running Windows Mobile� 2003 software for Smartphone".2. Why doesn't Microsoft and device makers try to grab the easy win of associating Smartphones with 3G? Imagine if Microsoft, a device maker and a big carrier could have ensured that first mobile phones on the new generation network were running Microsoft software! New generation network, new generation phones!3. Why does competing phones seem to run snappier when Microsoft should have the software advantage over device makers?4. Why does it take so long for Smartphones to reach the shores of North America?Do you have some more constructive Stoppers that you would like to get off your chest, in order to better participate moving forward? Maybe we can even get an official response to some of the Stoppers!

Survey time! I'm curious about what sorts of hardware features people are looking for in their next mobile phone purchase. If I left something out, please add it as a comment. Why are these features important to you?