Small Fish, Big Pond

My Phone uses WM6.5 and sometimes it feels like I’m the only one defending it; many people attack it because the interface isn’t “iPhonesie” enough for them. In other words they don’t have the eye hand coordination to hit buttons smaller than 2in square.

Plus I like that Windows Mobile is actually more open than iPhone OS or Android to tinkering and changing. Not only does it make the phone customizable to my tastes but it means that any programmer can go in there and make the Os do what they want to. Ironic since I know so many Open Source gurus that lament my choice of Windows 7 on my desktop saying Linux is the way to go. But they have iPhones…

Anyway BGR has new rumors on the specs Windows Mobile 7 will have when it’s revealed in a couple weeks. And it’s all bad news.

- The traditional Home Screen will get a whole new look and will not support custom interfaces like Sense and TouchFLO
- No Flash support as time constraints prevented its inclusion
- Applications will be installed through the Windows Mobile Marketplace only, manual installation from a storage card will not be allowed
- Say no to multitasking and yes to push notifications which may be provided by a Microsoft hosted push notifications environment
- No .NET Compact Framework backwards compatibility so all those old apps will not work, but a portion of the data and business logic .NET CF may be ported at some point
- Browser is based upon desktop IE7 codebase, but with some IE8 functionality and is currently faster / better than the iPhone 3G
- No more active sync or Windows Mobile Device center. Zune software will handle all syncing

Basically they’re going to make WinMo suck as hard as iPhone. I’m frankly sick of the world striving to emulate the iPhone and focusing on all the worst aspects of the iPhone to adopt. First it was taking away the stylus, now where locking down the device and not allowing third party companies to improve upon the design.

I REALLY hope that either this is all bunk. Or the rumors that the phone OS is splitting into a Business and Consumer version; and that this is the consumer version and the Business version will retain the openness of the current OS.

I’ve been avoiding posting about the “Google” phone the tech world is raving about because I think its bad form to suppose too much about things that technically don’t exist yet. However more info is coming out about the supposed sales of the phone and guess what? It’s just another android phone.

When Google gave away free “Super Phones” to many of their staff the rumor mill went into high gear*. In usually fashion for new Google or Apple rumors or leaks some blogs began posting how we were on the brink of a revolution where the world of phone sales as we knew it was about to be turned on it’s head!!

You see the Google phone was rumored by these blogs and user coments (based on nothing other than their own speculation) that it would be sold at cost to the public without a carrier plan. Thus one phone would run on all networks, you could choose your own carrier and not worry about being locked into a 2 year contract. The price of the unlocked phone would still be competitive with subsidized phones and Google would lose money but would make up for it by having more people online at their sites getting ad revenue and traffic to the Google domain. It was supposed to be the beginning of many people’s dream of full access and integration into the cloud with the new Google phone as the access point.

However like most of these revolutionary rumors it bypasses a lot of basic realities of how non-techies see the world and big business do business among themselves. First off a phone needs a lot of extra crap on it to run on all phone networks crap that costs money and increases the price of the phone. Google would effectively be competing with the networks that were expected to provide service for the phone alienating the very people they’ll be relying on for the phone. And Google was competing with it own android phones already out there but not on a network.

Gizmodo today released a leaked sales page that outlines the reality of how the phone is going to be sold. Simply put, it’s being sold like any other phone by HTC; you can either pay a huge upfront price for the phone unlocked and unsubsidized then choose your carrier and plan. Or buy it on contract for a much reduced, subsidized price; but without the 2 year contract.

The good news is that it’s still a great phone and not just an experimental phone for Google employees. The market could use more good phones and more good ideas.

It’s just not going to be telecommunications revolution most people were misguidedly dreaming of.

* Case in point: Now that the revolutionize the business of smart-phones has been overturned TechCrunch is now rumoring that the phone has automatic backup software based off the sentence, “Charge your phone while streaming music and backing up your data”
Notice that that one line says nothing about automatic anything and that any phone that backs itself up can do so while in a dock to the computer.
This is a prime case of letting speculation get ahead of itself. The phone may automatically back itself up or it may not even come with integrated backup software, but because of a major tech blog’s speculation much of the tech community will assume that it now has automatic backup.

They’re also trying to keep the revolution line open with another article saying that the unlocked Nexus will work on any network. Again this is speculation based of an already sketchy leaked document. The document mentions working with T-mobile, so the hardware will only work with T-Mobile and AT&T but likely not AT&T’s high speed HSDPA network which runs on a different technology from T-Mobiles 3G network. That would relegate the google phone which relies highly on internet access for cloud based services to dial up speeds.

Like I’ve said again and again, don’t let rumors outpace common sense. Right now all we likely have is a nice new HTC Android phone for T-Mobile.

Via Boy genius Report.

About time the US got on this bandwagon. QR codes are 2 dimensional barcodes that can hold information, usually a URL but it can be just text. Check my last.fm profile for a customer made code I posted.

Japan has been all over these for most of the last decade. So lets say you grab a free magazine or flyer from a music shop. Inside are articles and the inevitable ads featuring artists with new releases. You see an ad of a band you like that says they just released a new CD and will be touring to support it soon. In the corner is a QR code so you take a picture with your smartphone and it opens your browser to a custom site formatted for the phone with additional information and links to buy the CD and/or tickets to the concerts. Plus you can add in special coupons and benefits if you come into a site from a certain QR cord. i.e. you see a code that says, “Go here to receive an additional 10% off!”

Google is using this mostly to integrate their searches into use in the everyday world but anybody can jump on the bandwagon. And you know that if google backs it it’s likely to start picking up momentum.

BOOOOOOO!
YOU SUCK!
GET OFF THE STAGE!
FREEBIRD!!!!!

The new Windows Mobile App store is going to have the ability to remote kill applications that get approved and later rejected.

Every other mobile phone app store has the same ability, and from a company perspective I can see why you’d want the ability to remote kill something that should be there to avoid bad press and litigation. But it still sucks that they want to reach their grubby paws into our phones.

Even though Microsoft has the reputation of the Evil Empire/Big Brother company that controls your lives they’re really not. Microsoft is far more open and free to do as you please with your equipment than Apple, especially in the mobile phone market. For so long Windows Mobile has been dependant on outside programmers to write apps in their free time to make full use of the OS and to add or improve features and programs. Without an official application store WM app development has been a no-mans land where apps are built by individuals on their own time with no distribution method other than their own website and word of mouth; similar to the open source world of Linux.

Obviously there are some major questions about how heavy handed windows will be in their marketplace. Some of my favorite apps are for profit programs that replace all the core PIM functionality of the phone with more complex feature rich versions. That may be a no-go in the WM app store if it’s as locked down as the Apple app store.

The good thing is that not only will people find a way to disable this, but we don’t even need to disable it. WM still allows installation of programs without an app store without the need to hack or jailbreak the phone; it’s the way the WM “Market” has run for the last decade.

But for the apps that we do get through the store, it will suck that Microsoft can take those back.