Yesterday in the race to become the standard for 4G wireless data network technology, there were three competing networks: Qualcomm’s UMB, WiMax led by Sprint, Samsung and Intel’s and LTE. backed by AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Vodafone and China Mobile. Today, Qualcomm announced that it was halting development on UMB, and throwing its support behind LTE. So let’s take a look at the scorecard:
LTE: AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Vodafone, China Mobile, Qualcomm
WiMax: Sprint, Samsung and Intel
Although most carriers are looking to squeeze the life out of their current technology and deploy their 4G technology of choice 2-5 years from now, Sprint actually launched Xohm, its WiMax 4G service in Baltimore last week. We’re looking forward to reports of how users in Baltimore find the new service.
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Carrier: AT&T (formerly Cingular)
Manufacturer: Samsung
Platform/OS: Windows Mobile 5
We can’t help the fact that mobile devices are often presented in retail environments with dummy mockups and fake printed screens. But, we can help the dialogue with a focus on the whole user experience and not merely a features and form factor breakdown.
The Blackjack is a conversation starter. It’s small, it’s capable and it’s good looking in a utilitarian kind of way. When people inevitably ask about it and I’m forced to explain my love/hate relationship with it.
For the good, the bad, the ugly, odd and puzzling keep reading after the bump. Continue Reading »
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1// Adobe is reporting that Flash Lite will now support video.
2// Wired has posted their interview with John Maeda, who spoke at the TED Conference in Monterey, CA this week. When probed on his favorite manmade designs, he offered this:
“I like stuff designed by dead people. The old designers. They always got it right because they didn’t have to grow up with computers. All of the people that made the spoon and the dishes and the vacuum cleaner didn’t have microprocessors and stuff. You could do a good design back then.
I think if you’re a young designer now, you’ve got the internet and you’ve got screens all over the place — it’s awful hard. Technology is just so powerful now. You can do so much with so little. You can shove it into the size of a quarter. For designers to design great objects where technology is concerned, that’s hard.”
Too true. (Thanks Nancy.)
3// Last weeks’ Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, yielded some interesting discussion, like the keynote on networked mobile gaming.
4// File under: alternate desktop metaphors. Check out “BumpTop,” a desktop UI paradigm that uses physical behavior to aid organization of files. Whether or not the desktop metaphor is appropriate to mobile UI, could this type of physics and motion apply to mobile touch screens using a finger tip or thumb as the stylus?
5// Opera Mini. At most it looks like a strike against the operator content foothold. At the least it may be a reason not to have to buy a smartphone. (Thanks Christian.)
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The best mobile news and discussions for the week ending 26 January, 2007.
User Experience
1// An interesting video Q & A session with Marissa Mayer, VP, Search Products & User Experience at Google shares her thoughts about Google as a “swiss army knife that is closed.” She suggests that all the tools are there, but they don’t throw it all at you at once. There’s a nugget of simplicity there that mobile “portals” could benefit from.
She also suggests that Google engineers, sales people and even lawywers are user focused. She pontificates on the dangers of overdoing Web 2.0 to the detriment of usability.
2// On the voice search front, Midomi has announced a music recognition service (alas not yet for mobile). Users can sing or hum a song and get results. Pretty impressive results, according to ZDNet. What the news sites failed to mention is how much more natural it will be to do a voice search on a voice-centric platform like mobile.
3// On the mobile voice search front, I have to suggest those of you heading to Barcelona in a couple weeks to make sure and check out Promptu’s voice search, nominated for 3GSM’s Global Mobile award.
Mobile news
4// In the clamor of the Apple Keynote, Nokia and Visa’s announcement of mobile Visa payments in the US snuck under the radar.
Mainstream media digs at the iPhone
5// Colbert is a voice of finger-wagging, syrupy, in your face, um, reason and he is on a roll this week. If you missed the episodes, here are a couple of clips featuring commentary on the Cingular and AT&T merger and he pans the iPhone release.
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I’ve tried to separate myself from my Apple fetishism, and slough off Jobs’ reality-distortion effect and really assess this mornings’ announcement from the perspective of it’s impact on mobile user experience. (Certainly, a true UI critique will occur once we can get a device in hand in *sigh* June.
At the end of his keynote this morning, Steve Jobs summed up Apple’s mobile strategy saying, “There’s an old Wayne Gretsky quote I love — ‘I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it’s been.’” Which felt apropos given the product they had just announced. But, is the Apple iPhone announcement truly a “revolution of the first order?”
My take is that this is not a revolution for mobile phones. No, it feels more like catching up in a major way in an industry that has been behind far too long. Features like push email are best practices (read: Blackberry), not revolutionary. Integrating mail, voicemail, sms, contacts, voice calls, photos, music and video is also not revolutionary, but Apple is able to realize it where others have not.
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We’re constantly anticipating ways consumers engage in mobile usage. One area I’m intrigued with is mobile gaming — why and when people play them. With a few exceptions, mobile gaming is limited to single player puzzle games and stripped-down versions of best selling PC/console games. So, if you’re a hardcore gamer (as opposed to a casual one) you’re likely not that enthralled by Bejeweled, Sudoku or Tower Bloxx. My brother, a long time World of Warcraft (WoW) addict, actually laughed at me when I showed him Civilization III for mobile (which I thought was a pretty cool port of the desktop version).
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Here’s the online version of the Economist future phone article.
Highlights:
- Use of the term “approximeeting”
- Motorola and Nokia’s pseudo-infinite storage of “…all music ever recorded…” & “…life recorders…”.
- Decoupling hardware (separate screen, earpiece, keypad, etc)
Here’s a link to the article at Economist.com
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In a video interview, Helio’s CEO describes mobile life beyond phone calls. He goes into the Helio strategy which focuses on a target market who is already thinking beyond voice. He doesn’t go that deep into specifics (what CEO ever does?) but it seems like MySpace will be the biggest content partner for Helio.
I think we’ll know the whole “beyond voice” idea has fully arrived when cellular commercials stop talking about minutes and networks.
(Also worth checking out… A CNET editor demonstrates the new Helio device.)
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