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Hands On with the G1

I spent some time with the G1 over the weekend and am still a bit underwhelmed. Overall the OS seems very polished compared and compared to my experimental install on the Nokia N810 it’s night and day. Still my view is that Android is far more designed for the power user rather than the mainstream mobile consumer. The user experience will definitely take some getting used to and finding the right way to navigate through screens is something you have to learn rather than simply intuit. T-Mobile has only added myFavs to the OS leaving it to appear otherwise native which is definitely refreshing

The hardware is quite nice. I found the G1 much smaller than I expected actually from the initial photos. It was very comfortable in-hand and the keyboard did not seem too hard to get used to using. I spent less than 15 minutes with the device so this is really a very casual perspective. The screen was very bright and in general the system looks beautiful. There’s a slickness that’s hard to get a feel for without some hands on experience. The manner in which the screen slides out is very slick as well. The arm inside articulates around so the screen pseudo-rotates rather than simply sliding up. When it’s open there’s a very nice click as it settles into position.

I’ve heard one rather interesting detail as well which is that TMO will only have a small window of exclusivity with Android which is pretty disappointing considering how long they waited on 3G. My money’s definitely on other carrier or open Android devices over the G1. I’d expect to see quite a few new Android mobile devices around CES and in market around the same time if not right after.

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Feeling underwhelmed by the G1

I’m days behind on feeds and discussion, but I definitely saw some news on the Google G1 phone and find it pretty disappointing. I know it’s absolutely a first generation product and there are certainly nice features in the UI that I’ve seen, but what’s been left out is pretty poor.

Sure the Google phone is naturally connected to the G-Suite. I get it. I like the google apps… But, why can’t I sync the phone from my PC or from Exchange? No really why? Google contacts suck, period. It’s a sorely lacking piece of the Gmail puzzle and Google has yet to show any additional updates (SYNC TO MY DESKTOP??) or integration with Jaiku (social stream) or Grand Central which I find seriously disappointing. What’s the vision here?

No video playback by default? Are you kidding? I have to download a 3rd party application from the store to get this going … nice. I’ve had video playback and recording I might also mention on every NSeries device I’ve owned and that goes back years now. Was video recording left out because it was viewed as an acceptable decision if Apple had already done the same thing?

No 3.5mm audio jack? This is a consumer device right? It’s not designed for enterprise integration (no sync outside G) so why do we have such a limited media playback experience as well?

These things are all table stakes at this point.

The UI details are definitely cool. I love the window shade system for notifications, but it’s unclear what happens when you get a slew of messages at once. In the example video I saw today, you receive and email and then have a very simple reply option via any contact channel you share. You only see it working with a single message but it’s pretty uncommon to see one email at a time. The browser features look strong, but geeky. No way my wife or dad would figure out the longer press options without assistance.

I’ve yet to get any hands-on time and would like to as the platform remains very interesting regardless of these gen one issues. I know there are other devices in development and we’ll probably see most of this wiped away relatively quickly.

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Nokia Legends

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In the beginning of August, Nokia invited me along with Alec Saunders, Jim Courtney and Jason Harris to Toronto for a behind the scenes look at a new project called Nokia Legends which launches today.

From our briefing doc:

Nokia legends are engaging stories of future innovations and technologies, which may sound far-fetched today but will be reality in the future like urban legends. The technologies are the source of tomorrow’s legends – the unprecedented stories, events and opportunities that will become true when people get the new technologies in their hands.

 

What I like the most about this campaign is that it highlights Nokia’s tech leadership and future forward perspective on how technology is infused with our lives. This is not about a particular device or a service, but thinking that’s starting to find it’s way into various products and will certainly be something we’ll experience near term.

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Setting up a shot

The technology innovations on which the stories are based include: Traffic Works Research, Indoor Positioning, Connected Home, NFC, Multiscanner, Personalized Widgets, Mobile Journalism, and Sense your Location. Each is told in the first person by actor and writer Ron McLarty who was really great to watch in action. Ron is a skilled pro and was able to offer many different options for each story he shared.  You’ll only be able to see the final selects, but we were there from the start and can better appreciate the process. I’m fortunate to be involved in the creative process through my day job and while this was not my first time on-set, it was still a very unique experience.

I had a great time on this trip and enjoyed the time with my fellow bloggers, Nokia and Bob Helsinki the agency behind the creative idea.

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Thinking Apple’s iTunes Genius is not really that smart

I’m finding the iTunes Genius feature to be pretty disappointing … The sidebar function is simply a re-branded mini-store from previous versions offering a mix of things I own and offers the usual :30 sec sample limitation. The Genius playlist function could be a whole lot more interesting than it is, but only shows me music I have in my collection … why? This seems like a massively missed opportunity enable rich discovery yet only looks to your collection to create a genre-based playlist. I can already do that, though perhaps instead of taking one click on an active track might take a few more clicks and random shuffle.

If I were Zune or Nokia, I’d be all over this as discovery and the subsequent purchases could really differentiate. Zune has announced their plans to offer Channels which are genre “stations” that sync to your portable player just like the Zune cards of your friends. These are features that can really start to show the power of the subscription model. Add to this the ability to sync over the air and you’ve got a very dynamic portable experience. It’s unclear what Nokia’s intentions are around discovery, but Comes With Music should reveal itself shortly and offer a large catalog of opportunity to subscribers. The current music store offers over the air purchase and download and the CWM package will do the same. Too bad there’s been no announcement (or discussion) around the US market yet.

It’s impossible to know whether Apple’s move here is an intentional decision or something that’s really just a limit of per track DRM. Subscription music (rental or own) is infinitely more flexible and lets you easily experiment with new music while per track, only lets you sample in small bites paying as you go.

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Yahoo’s OneConnect arrives as an iPhone preview

CNET reports on the release of Yahoo OneConnect in preview form for the iPhone today. OneConnect is a social networking aggregator allowing you to maintain contact across networks from a single mobile application.

I’d seen this running in a much earlier state back in February on an N95 and I thought it looked very impressive. More recently I questioned whether things were still on track and it looks like they are definitely still rolling forward.

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Nokia extends Exchange Sync across the S60 Range

Nokia has just announced that the free Mail For Exchange (MFE) client is now available across the full range of S60 3rd Edition devices.  This brings enterprise sync to over 80 Million active handsets across 43 different models considerably enhancing the potential scale for enterprise communications.  Mail for Exchange runs over Microsoft’s Active Sync protocol and does not require any IT involvement or installation on the back-end.  If you can access your company’s Exchange server over webmail you’ll be ready to go in a few simple steps.

Setup has been simplified by way of a wizard-like process that asks for a few key bits (username, password , server and domain if required) and then you are good to go.  The last time I configured MFE I had to adjust settings for sync on each of the data areas which while not difficult just takes more time to actually get going.

Mail For Exchange has received a number of updates since I first used it a few years ago and in the current edition, it is quite powerful.  You’ll find that it easily syncs your email, contacts, calendar letting you respond to meeting requests, setting flags for follow-up and and changing your out of the office settings.

You’ll be able to find Mail for Exchange pre-installed onall devices moving forward or if you have a compatible handset, you can download either within your Downloads application or from the Nokia Software for Business site directly.

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DEMOfall Day 2

We are well into the second and final day of DEMO and my brain is swelling with information. There’s a great deal of excitement across a broad range of technologies whether hardware, software or service. Since the format of the event groups like companies into the same cluster you get a very interesting comparison perspective as things go. In six minutes, you have to capture the audience’s attention, explain your company and product and of course provide a demo of how it actually works.

For the most part presentations are very well done. Clearly a lot of attention is paid to the presentation process and I’ve been continually impressed with the amount of information people can effectively share in such a short amount of time. I’m still in absorbing what’s here and will do some follow-up posts on companies I found of particular interest.

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iPhone or iPod Touch

The most interesting thing about today’s Apple announcements are that the iPod can do “voice” with the new headphones. Pricing is particularly interesting at the 16GB range where the iPhone and iPod Touch are identically positioned at $299. The focus seems to be on voice memos for the iPod, but it’s going to take all of 5 minutes for someone like Truphone to get VOIP working given that it already runs on the iPod. The convenience of making a voice call is somewhat reduced without a built-in microphone, but the platform is certainly ready.

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Quick DEMO Report – Monday Highlight

plastic logic ereader

The morning has been great so far with quite a few companies strutting their stuff on stage. Every company has done a great job so and there’s a great deal of interesting material here, but the clear winner for most exciting technology is the Plastic Logic eReader. As you can see in this shot it’s seriously thin!!

plastic logic ereader

The product itself is not scheduled to arrive until Q2 2009 unfortunately, but that gives me some time to enjoy my Kindle which also uses the same e-ink tech. Plastic Logics’s real advantage though is that they are using plastic instead of glass so things are thinner and lighter. When the product arrives it will potentially (they would not confirm) both wired and wireless networking options in addition to a USB connection for transferring content over. The focus is on business documents over consumer things like books and the size is similar to a pad of paper. The key detail missing in the puzzle is where the real (not your own docs) will come from. They are showing magazines and newspapers (which look great on the big display) but in today’s market there’s no way to actually get those publications. I hope that the open standard (not sure what that is just yet) is adopted so we can be sure to have plenty to read.

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DEMOfall 2008!

DEMOfall - getting ready to start

I’m at DEMOfall in San Diego and we’re T-minus 10 minutes to start. As you can see I’ve ben lucky enough to get a nice close seat. The show should be great and I’ll be reporting as much as I can through the next two days. Stay tuned!

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ATT 3G in San Diego … MUCH faster than the hotel broadband

ATT 3G in San Diego ... Faster than the hotel broadband

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I was actually getting a much better connection in my room, though it was still less than 1MB down. Much better of course being quite relative.

Because we can is not a sufficient reason to charge for broadband. You need to provide something of substance and 1MB (if that!) is not acceptable when you are being asked to pay $15/day.

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Continental’s Mobile Boarding Pass

When I was confirming my seat earlier in the week with Continental I saw there was an option to get a mobile boarding pass and I decided it would be pretty cool to go paperless and signed up to receive my boarding pass on the phone. The way it works is that you get an email with a special link to your boarding pass which then must be displayed on your phone or PDA. I’d seen mobile check-in opportunities with American and Luftansa recently but nothing quite like this:

mobile boarding pass

What you are looking at is a poorly merged set of screenshots from the E71. I wiped out my frequent flier number and the trip confirmation code, but otherwise this is what you get. The QR code was scanned by the TSA at security with a handheld device and I made sure to mention to the next TSA team that my boarding pass was my phone since that had to pass through the larger scanners … No problem and I walked right through. At the gate, I think I was the first passenger to present a mobile boarding pass to the particular gate staffer as he had no idea where to put the phone to scan it in the table-top scanner. His colleague showed him you just place it on the base and a moment later I was checked-in and on the jetway.

I hope more airlines start offering this service because one less thing to deal with is a benefit when you are traveling. I always have my phone and it was very easy to simply show the screen instead of fumbling with a piece of paper.

One tip for Nokia users … I’ve had bad coverage in airports previously and was not going to take any chances with boarding and security process so I used the ever helpful but easy to miss “Save this Page” feature of the S60 browser. Once saved, I simply navigated to my bookmarks, went into the saved pages folder and chose my boarding pass.

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Thinking Kindle

kindle

Recently I’ve been traveling quite a bit and really thinkng about the Kindle.  I like that I can get magazines as well as books as I go which would make always having something to read a non-issue.  From the rumors I’ve been reading there does not appear to be a new device coming this year … aside from the EVDO-only access point (will not work outside the US) I can’t think of any true negatives.  Sure the form factor is a tad wonky and the screen is not backlit, but it basically works like a book and comes in a reasonably small form factor making carrying it in my briefcase a pretty simple addition.

I have a trip to San Diego for DEMOfall leaving this weekend, and while the Kindle won’t be able to make it for tomorrow or Saturday, I could have it shipped to my hotel for the return trip …

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Are they watching?

Sometimes things happen online that are simply too close to who you are not to believe that your data is being collected, collated and used for marketing (or observation) purposes.  

For my recent  trip to Dubai, I spent quite a bit of time researching things via google and even spent some time on the local google site for Saudi Arabia (possible client there).  My ticket was purchased only a few days prior to my departure and when I arrived at the airport I was pre-flagged for security with the triple-S.  The guy at the Emirates check-in counter said it was a DHS thing which means either they simply chose me randomly (and not either of my other colleagues) or they are checking with the big G.

About 10 minutes ago, I clicked a webclip link from within GMail through to the IHT and see an ad for Emirates Air and the Airbus A380 – the very plane and airline I flew home.  What an interesting coincidence…  I’m not feeling too paranoid or anything, but that’s seems more than just random selection to me.

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Chrome – It’s new and shiny

Google Chrome

I was very excited for the Chrome release today.  Spending as much time in the browser as we all do now the experience and performance are critical parts of the online experience.  While it’s a very early release, I definitely like what I see so far and look forward to tracking the progress forward as things evolve.  

I’m finding that the speed is decent.  Not hyper fast like they were promoting but then I am not running some javascript test page, I’m using a bunch of tabs and windows like I always do.  What Chrome does though which is generally get out of your way and let you experience the page or application a site is offering.  It’s very simple to create single window views like Fluid does on the Mac.  I’ve got that configured for gmail, google reader, wordpress and my office webmail … so far so good.  

Right now Chrome only works on a PC unless you compile it yourself.  My work machine, a Lenovo X61 is not having any issues with Chrome and I actually find it to be a very pleasant browser.  There are some subtle things about the UI that i really like and of course a few I would like to see changed.  

On the positive side, the window is about as full as it can be all the time which is awesome on my small screen and even better when connected to a larger monitor.  There’s no status bar on the bottom of the window, but when you hover over something that can be clicked on, you can see where it will go just like you know you can.  There are some slick overlays for downloads and completed downloads stick to the bottom of the window to remind you they are ready to be acted upon.  When things crash or go bad, only that tab seems to be effected and Chrome is able to save the state of things quite gracefully.  In my limited testing this afternoon, I’d say it does a much better job that Firefox 3 currently.  Not bad for a .2 release.

As you might expect with an early release, there are some bad things.  The one that’s making me nutty is that there is no way to email a page / link without using a bookmarklet.  I’ve got one for Gmail, but it makes sending a page or link to work collegues in Outlook take a few steps more than I’d like becuase I have to copy and paste twice to get both the link and title or content from the tab.  I’ve also noticed that there’s no way to get certain links working on Facebook which is a huge miss.  I was unable to “become a fan” or comment on someone’s status today and both links looked like they would work, but failed to do anything.  Back to Firefox … 

In general though Chrome is very smooth, very stable and really well done.  I’m looking forward to the fixes further optimizations and hopefully some plugins.  Of course I’d also like to install this on my Mac!

While they’ve only teased at this point, I would expect Chrome to be the browser in Android when it launches later this year.  We’ve already seen the power of webkit in mobile devices – first in the S60 browser and then of course with the iPhone.  Webkit has become the engine to beat (sorry Opera) in higher end mobile browsing.  My guess is that it will sync via some Google service and I hope that multiple computers will also sync eventually as well…. Google killed the Firefox sync extension recently and it seems quite clear now that those bits are being focused on their own developments.  It’s great that Chrome is open source and I hope Nokia is watching closely to see how they can improve their own S60 webkit browser as it’s clearly stagnated a bit since Apple came along with Mobile Safari.