What we can learn from Android – looking at YOU Nokia!

I’ve been playing with the Android G1 phone for about 24 hours and while I’ll have some thoughts to share on it in general soon, there’s one striking thing I thought was worth mentioning right away. The Android G1 has without a doubt the most straight forward and simple initial user experience of any device I’ve used.

When the G1 powers up you are prompted to either create or login to your Google Account. Signing in with my creds then began the sync process which brought my Contacts and Calendar down, and also configured my email and IM accounts for use. WOW! One account with so many benefits. I’ve been told it should have also signed me in through the web services so the mobile google services I use would also be connected though that did not happen for me. Perhaps due to my trying to use things before the sync had completed…

Apple still has a very desktop centric view of the iPhone and the reliance of iTunes is a core strength. The sync works very well though configuration requires a bit of effort /tweaking through iTunes. This bit of effort is actually a lot more than the G1 requires as you’ve been long since configured your Google stuff … assuming of course you use Google services and that’s really who the device is targeted.

On the Nokia side, you don’t actually benefit from any PC side configuration though some things can sync through the PC or Ovi Suites. No accounts are configured unless you choose to sync to an exchange account through PC Suite. Without getting into the complexities there, I would not advise fully syncing to your exchange server in PC Suite. I only sync the Notes there as that apparently was not important enough to be considered a part of Mail For Exchange. I digress …

Nokia handsets are largely PC independent, meaning you can and in most cases need to do it all on the handset. As Nokia looks to rely on services for growth and revenue, enhancing the consumer experience needs to become a core strength. Take a look at what’s currently connected to my Nokia Account:

Nokia Account Configuration

There are 9 things listed including applications, web services, and communication preferences. Instead of enabling the experience however, I have to actually log in to each bit separately when I use them. My browser does not even necessarily remember me even though it’s configured to save login details. This sucks. I know the Nokia Account system is new, but there’s such a massive opportunity for change here. Looking at the experience on the G1, there is so much to borrow from. I hope we see changes like this in the N97 and other devices this year, but the S60 system does not feel as smooth as some of the newer systems like Android.

Why can’t I just upload to Ovi out of the box without having to change anything after logging in on first power up? My email could be configured automatically as well if Nokia Email connected to the Nokia Account system and I can’t see why it won’t either. IM, Maps, Ovi.mobi etc etc. All this stuff could just work because you’ve already logged in!

I saw no mention of how things work on the Palm Pre, but given their desire to link external accounts to the core applications it would make a lot of sense to enable people to quickly authorize on the web and pass that through something like a Palm account.

Google has really pushed things forward with their account configuration and it’s something everyone developing mobile devices and services can learn from. Using anything else after having this experience will just highlight the old way of thinking — when consumers were made to work for it instead of encouraged by having pre-enabled services. Just consider how the iPhone’s unlimited data package contributed to usage and think about what pre-connected services would do to the usage figures. Retention of course will still be up to the service provider to put forth something of considerable value.

Android netbooks on their way? Not so fast …

asus-android-screen

A team at VentureBeat was able to get Android running on an Asus EEEPC 1000H netbook, which is certainly a cool hack.

I’m not sure this is something I would personally want in the current state other than as a proof of concept. Though once things are perhaps more optimized for a larger touch screen it might be cool on a MID.

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.

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.