Dell Prepping a Smartphone?

Nothing’s final yet, but interesting that they are making it known that there’s an active product before it’s ready.

The Round Rock, Texas, company has had a group of engineers working on the phones for more than a year from an office in the Chicago area, these people said. They produced prototypes built on Google Inc.’s Android operating system and Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Mobile software, these people said.

Dell is focusing on so-called smartphones, higher-end devices that include features like Web browsing and email. One model includes a touchscreen but no physical keyboard, like Apple Inc.’s iPhone. Another is a slider-style phone with a keypad and that slides from beneath the screen, one person familiar with the devices said.

Dell hasn’t finalized its plans and may still abandon the effort, which would pit it against such powerhouses as Apple and Research In Motion Ltd. A Dell spokesman said the company hasn’t disclosed plans to offer phones, adding: “We haven’t committed to anything.”

via WSJ.com.

Unless they do something actually interesting with Android, I can’t see them being anything other than another vanilla WinMo player. Seems like a better option is focusing on the netbook part of the notebook business which would let them take advantage of their existing manufacturing. Not that companies should not spread out, but I just don’t see buying a phone from Dell.

Offline Gmail is smooth

I’ve been using Gmail for years like many people and have also had it working on my mobile devices using both the J2ME app initially and more recently the IMAP option via Nokia Email. IMAP via mobile gives me access to a few days worth of mail based on how I’ve set the prefs which is nice, but if I need to search something while either in a low connectivity zone or on a plane, I’m out of luck. Well not anymore!

I activated the GMail Offline option via the Labs button last night and now have YEARS of access ready to search and access in Firefox. On my commute I’m accustomed to seeing messages like Unable to Connect to Gmail, Will try again in … which pops up and makes Gmail pretty useless until the connection resumes. WIth Offline mode activated, Gmail and Google Gears maintain a very smooth transition. Instead of the annoying (and bright yellow message) I see a simple message at the top of my inbox that reads (paraphrasing) that I’ll have access to my offline store until the connection can sync with the server. It’s about time!

Finnish operator DNA lets you use your phone as you wish

DNA & JoikuSpot

Acknowledging what customers want and then proving the right bundle is key as a service provider and mobile operator DNA in Finland seems to be doing just that. Seeing Joikuspot partered with a carrier is awesome! Of course they recommend a flat rate for data service and offer a nice 2mbps connection to go with it. This is the way it should be done!

I keep looking at a mobile data package to add onto my AT&T plan, but I am having an issue rationalizing the price (in these times) which would be $60/mo for 5GB. I could definitely make use of it … that’s hardly the issue. There are obvious benefits to a dedicated device – battery drain being the main one. But when you can easily connect your phone over bluetooth or wifi using Joikuspot it’s hard to see paying such a high premium.

via IntoMobile

Palm vs Apple

There’s no doubt in my mind that the Palm Pre is going to be a winner …. if they don’t get sued by Apple for patent infringement for the multi-touch BS that just went through. Engadget has a great analysis on the topic and shows how Apple actually borrowed a few tricks from Palm’s IP library … Should make for an a fascinating court case if it goes down. If the Pre does make it through without issue, it opens the door for others to implement multi-touch in a similar way … everyone could win.

Mobile Peer Award Finalists Announced

Mobile Peer Awards Logo

Congratulations to everyone listed below for making it to the final round of the Mobile Peer Awards.  I’m pleased to have been part of the initial jury to help finalize this list! The winners will be announced next month at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.  Anssi Vanjoki, EVP and GM, Markets at Nokia will be kicking off the event with a keynote.  If you you’d like to attend, please be sure to RSVP.

EARLY-STAGE STARTUPS

EMERGING STARTUPS

Are netbooks bad for the industry?

intel atom logo

Thanks to NetbookNews I watched this interesting interview between Xavier from Notebooks.com and Rahul Sood, the founder of VoodooPC and currently the CTO of Voodoo at HP…

Rahul has written a great post which led to the interview on his blog and I definitely recommend you read that as well for a very insider perspective on netbooks and Intel’s Atom.

While listening to the interview and reading Rahul’s post I’ve considered my own experiences with the Samsung NC10
and I would have to agree with the general assessment here. Netbooks are killer machines, but they are also limited in what they can really do well. As long as you understand how they really work, you’ve got a very capable system in your hands.

As Rahul points out, the confusion with Netbooks started with how they came to be. Initially designed for the lower end and emerging markets, they quickly found greater success as supplementary systems in more developed markets due to lower costs and pretty solid specs. What’s happening now is a fairly vast commoditization of systems. Looking at the spectrum of netbook news as I’ve been since becoming interested in the category, the specs across the board are essentially the same. The main differences tend to be based on size and how much standard RAM, HD and whether you get a 3 or 6-cell a battery. Just about every brand is using the same 1.6Ghz Intel Atom chip running Windows XP. Aside from a few players the category is pretty vanilla.

The more I’ve used and enjoyed my netbook, the more annoyed I also get with things like flash video stuttering or that I can move faster in google reader than Firefox seems to want to go. I know I bought a “cheap” system but because I’m running standard operating systems and applications it’s easy to forget … The danger here is that the we see a crossover in the types of products in which Atom gets used and as we go bigger, the worse the result.

I’m far from sold on new operating systems or start up modes for netbooks as interesting as Jolicloud does look. Instead I’m sold on the longer battery life, ultra light and mobile systems we currently call netbooks. I hope we see innovative ways to bring the power but keep the size – just like the good old days of Moore’s Law! Now that I’ve experienced the potential power of ultra mobile computing I just want more … absolutely not less. I don’t think netbooks are bad for the industry. Sure these are interesting financial times, but look at how many people are talking about and more importantly buying these PCs. So Rahul, if you are thinking of a Voodoo machine in the 10″ range with at least 6 hours of battery life (though perhaps not a netbook), I’m definitely interested.

T-Mobile G1 is an almost …

T-Mobile G1

I’ve been playing with the T-Mobile G1for a few days now and I’d say it’s definitely a mixed bag. The form factor is interesting and the screen is gorgeous. As noted last week, the initial user experience is hands down the ultimate experience I’ve seen yet on any platform. With a simple login to Google, you have access to all your data – awesome! Actually using the G1 though afterwards is considerably less awesome…

The first thing I noticed using the G1 is that you have to constantly use both the touch screen and the hardware keys. There’s no way to do it all from one or the other and that’s both frustrating and confusing. There’s NO text entry in portrait mode which means this is a two-hander in almost every use case and something I hate. No easy way to tap back a tweet, sms or any form of text. You can dial in portrait mode, but there’s no T9 mapped to the keys – or a virtual keyboard. I know this is coming in Cupcake, but this is a huge miss.

Typing on the keyboard takes getting used to like on all devices. Because of the hump on the right side, I actually find typing to be less comfortable than on other devices because I’m always moving my hand to get comfortable and this is slowing me down – way too much.

The trackball is both a strength and a weakness. Cruising through a web page or a list it’s great, but when you are actually trying to click on a small link it’s way too sensitive. I’ve honestly not looked to see if this can be adjusted yet, but imagine your mouse is operating at hyper-speed on a tiny screen and you ‘ll get the idea of what it can be like to use.

In general the UI is nice to look at but harder to use than you’d expect. There are a lot of ways to access things from the on-screen buttons to the menu key as well as the back and home buttons and unfortunately you need to know when to invoke what option. The only truly simple thing is that the green button calls up your dialer and the red key turns the screen off.

The Camera is pretty average. No flash, 3MP = poor indoor shooting. The shutter is mushy and I found the lag to be considerable. Typical for a phone actually though even the iPhone’s on-screen button snaps faster than this. Neither can compare to a several year old Nokia NSeries though …

The browser is very solid. Much faster on wifi than anything else – which brings up a related point on TMO here. The coverage in NYC is pretty good though not stellar but you lose ALL signal on the train platform’s at Grand Central and there’s little to no signal on Metro North making any T-Mobile device useless for the commute. Anyway the browser is as good as the iPhone in my book. There’s no flash support, but you can easily manage multiple tabs and moving between them is quite nice given the tile management system in Android. There’s no sync for bookmarks though so you’ll be adding what you want as you go here which is a definite hole that should be filled.

Playing with the Market / App Store (whatever the actual name is) has been pretty positive and I’ve seen how well integrated people are able to write applications. The store itself is nowhere as simple as the iPhone store, but certainly not hard to figure out and there’s a nice diversity of applications in each category. I can’t speak to the quality of things in general but the apps I’ve tried are all quite good. So far, I’ve tried and am using Accuweather (killer GPS integration), Truphone, Bonsai Blast, Compare Everywhere, Connect 4 and Tic Tac Toe (for Hannah who’s 5), fBook, Last.fm, My Maps Editor, PixelPipe, Pac-Man, Shazam, TuneWiki, and Twitdroid

I love how the notification system coordinates throughout the system! New apps installed, emails, tweets, sms messages … all come through the menu bar and you are able to switch modes to engage with the latest info that’s poured in. I cannot state how powerful this concept is enough. Looks like Palm is actually doing something similar in WebOS for the Pre though on the bottom… should be interesting to compare in a few months.

All of the potential power within the G1 is rendered useless within a few short hours of light use by it’s absolute crap battery. T-Mobile and Google should be ashamed for releasing such a power hog! I found that just be leaving email and Twitdroid on, the phone was dead by around 3pm – taken off power at 7 am when I left for work. In that time, I did some light browsing over cellular and perhaps 30 minutes of wi-fi use at the office. That’s awfully quick and I’m guessing I could actually kill the battery before lunch with heavy (more normal for me) use.

The G1 is a solid first effort but I would not recommend it to anyone other than a mobile geek looking to explore. I think the average person would have a lot to get used to which is certainly true of most devices, but the mass market simplicity you should expect to find today is just not there yet … and of course the battery issue.

Palm’s Synergy could be game changing

While they clearly still actually have to deliver on the vision here, the intent and initial demo of Palm’s Synergy concept are amazing when you consider what’s happening. Instead of having to sync, the device is seemingly aware of your various accounts across work and personal services and just able to present the relevant information in context. Even when looking at a single calendar, you are gently reminded of previously booked time from your personal life … When reviewing a contact, you can see all your information from Exchange, Gmail and Facebook (as well as others) in a single contact card!

I’ve been messing with sync for probably as long as I’ve been playing with mobile devices and to say it sucks would be putting it lightly. Sync is just too damn hard and even when it works well across systems you typically end of up data that’s intermingled poorly. That is you don’t want your work colleagues personal email to come up by default in Outlook since that’s somehow the sync logic. Instead Synergy leaves your various account data in place and “simply” presents it within the Palm Pre. I love this idea. As initially mentioned, they actually have to deliver here, but it’s looking damn good.

Well done Serko!

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.

Do you need or even want an instant-on netbook?

There’s been a good deal of chatter and even video posted lately about Hyperspace, Phoenix Technologies instant-on OS for netbooks. Sony seems to have felt the pressure as well launching the Sony Vaio P with their XMB start-up option.

In both cases, you get a limited OS but access to things you are most likely to want to check quickly – email, web, voip music etc … It sounds good though as I’ve thought about my own usage, I don’t actually turn the machine off. My laptops and netbook are basically always on. I put things in standby when they go in my bag for my commute and even when I’m heading to the airport. I’ve never felt that the limited loss of battery life was substantial enough to be concerned with or something that warranted turning the computer off to conserve.

According to liliputing, the boot time savings is about 30 seconds on a Lenovo S10 they tested recently. AllThingsD recently gave this a test as well:

“It’s misleading to say that the Phoenix HyperSpace products offer a faster way to start up your computer, because they don’t actually open Windows, which is your computer’s heart and soul. Instead, they offer a primitive, bare-bones user interface that relies on Web-based applications. For example, you can send and receive email, but only by using a Web-based email program like Gmail or Hotmail. Documents must be created using a program like Google Docs, and when you watch videos, you must use a player like YouTube rather than something like Windows Media Player or QuickTime. Photos can be viewed either via a photo Web site like Flickr or in the HyperSpace browser. Nothing like Word or PowerPoint is available in this slimmed-down environment.”[AllThingsD]

If something like an email needs immediate (of course a very relative term) attention I’ve got my phone. Otherwise I think waiting the few extra moments will give me to tools to deal with a situation more effectively.

What happened to Windows Mobile 7?

At last year’s Mobile World Congress there was a good deal of chatter regarding Windows Mobile 7 – particularly around the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1. Almost a year later, the X1 has shipped (with Windows Mobile 6) and now the talk is around Windows Mobile 6.5 and it’s looking set for devices scheduled to ship in Q4.

I’m not a windows mobile expert and I don’t even play one here so I can’t say whether this is semantics (6.5=7) or some backpedaling … What am I missing here?

Mid Moves

Mid Moves logo

Mid Moves is a new site focused on highlighting the power and capabilities of Mobile Internet Devices and the full internet experiences they offer. There are four writers and each will be taking at least two of the latest MID’s with them for a real tour over the next 8 days. It’s a mega-mobile extravaganza!

There’s some great unboxing content as well as very real world experience being shared to understand how these pocketable devices perform. If you are interested in the category, it’s a must read.

The Samsung NC10 Hackintosh

About This Mac

I’m happily writing this on my Samsung NC10 in MarsEdit in version 10.5.6 of OSX. Courtesy of an awesome forum and guide, I was able to install OSX on a partition and now have this little trooper of a laptop triple booting across WIndows 7, XP and OSX. I’ve been going back and forth between Windows 7 and OSX and think I’ll get rid of XP at some point down the line when Windows 7 is ready for release.

At first I tried my own way with the OSX project, but discovered after failing (twice) that perhaps I should read the guide through and once I did it was actually very straight forward and relatively simple to do it. The experience of failure certainly helped as I know a lot more about the process, but in general if you are comfortable partitioning a disk and installing an operating system it’s really not so bad.

If you are considering this project, there are a few kinks that I still need to sort out and these are known issues currently being worked on by the community:

  • My screen brightness tends to be lower than I’d like when booting over battery power.
  • Sound through the headphone jack does not work.
  • Ethernet is not supported as the Marvel controller has no OSX driver.
  • In order to get wireless running you need to swap the wireless card, which I’ve done.
  • The trackpad is a bit less controlled than I’d like though I’ve been using a mouse with the system quite a bit anyway.

The amazing upside here is that OSX easily sees the Windows 7 partition and vice a versa. I’m able to use dial up networking for remote connections. Software updates appear to work just fine as illustrated in the following:

NC10 Hackintosh Software Update

Updating OSX Software

01/14/2009 - NC10 running Software Update

As I had previous discussed the wireless slot on the NC10 is pretty small given the size of the system and you need to have the right card to swap in. From everything I’ve read, the Dell series of wireless cards seem to be the most compatible across Windows and Mac OS. I chose the Dell 1490 which offers 802.11 a/b/g. While I’ve got an N capable router I have too many things that run on G and it did not seem worthwhile at this stage to pay more than twice as much just to say I had it.

Back inside we go … I removed the 15 screws on the underside and gently pried the cover apart. Here’s a quick shot of the wireless slot empty:

Samsung NC10 Wireless Card Slot

As you can see the stock card and the Dell are exactly the same side … unlike my attempt to get the Airport Extreme card in there.

01/14/2009 - Samsung NC10 Wireless Options

Once the card was installed I noticed as expected that Airport was not enabled yet. This is because the network port is tied to the previous hardware. Adding the new port is simple. Open the Network Control Panel and select the + in the lower right as seen here:

Adding a new network interface

You can name it anything you like and also remove the prior one which is what I did so the new one could actually be called Airport. As soon as I added this new interface it found my home network and I added a preferred network for my office and that connected instantly today when I got to work.

After that it’s up to you what you want to do … I’ve installed my core apps and synced in my personal data. While the NC10 is not of the same caliber hardware as a Macbook, the cost and bang for the buck here is substantial. The NC10 is showing around 6 hours of battery life which is far better than any MacBookPro performance I’ve seen yet actually a bit less than my experience in XP. I think Windows 7 and OSX are running a pretty close race in the battery life department here and to be honest while more is better with regard to battery life, I’m very pleased with 6 hours.

Gotta love the Mac!

OSX DUN on the Samsung NC10 Netbook

It’s been a while since I’ve had the pleasure of traveling with a Mac laptop and even though my current setup is a tad unique, the same rules apply. The Samsung NC10 netbook is a killer travel machine … light weight, strong battery life, great keyboard etc. It also happens to run OSX like a champ and I’m really very happy with my sub 3lb mac hackintosh. A few kinks to work out still (brightness controls and sound through the headphone jack) but generally speaking this a great way to go – though far from a simple out of the box experience.

With a PC running windows it’s easy to get a bluetooth to phone data connection using either PC Suite or Ovi Suite and your choice of Nokia handsets. On the mac side, you need some modem scripts and and a little patience. I hope this brief guide helps. I’ve written about DUN connections previously but thought this would be a good time for a new post as the conditions have changed. OSX 10.5 has moved things around in the network panel though it’s not too hard to track down what to do. For this example I’m using a Nokia N85 and ATT.

The first step is to define a PPP connection and you do that right on the first panel once you’ve selected Bluetooth. I’ve set the following options:

Telephone Number: WAP.CINGULAR
Account Name: WAP@CINGULARGPRS.COM
Password: CINGULAR1

Network Control Panel - DUN

Ross Barkman’s excellent modem scripts are still THE way to go for anyone looking to use a phone as a modem on their mac. I downloaded the HSDPA scripts and dragged them over to /LIbrary/Modem Scripts. Once there they become available within the Network Control Panel though you need to select other as your brand of phone. I chose the first script which is the Nokia HSDPA CID1 version. Enable error correction and compression in modem is active and I’m ignoring dial tone. I turned sound off too though because you are not actually dialing I don’t think that actually matters.

Network Control Panel Advanced - Modem

Last step is to check the far right tab under advanced for PPP. I did not change anything in mine, though you can certainly check the box for Connect automatically as needed if you find you’ll be doing this for an extended time. That will make sure there’s an open network connection anytime something makes a request so be sure you are comfortable with your data plan.

Network Control Panel Advanced - PPP

You have 10 minutes to get the F— out!

Location based services are something that’s been hyped for a years now. While everyone has heard of the coupon from Starbucks example, how about a real world practical use case?  The emergency system in Israel is the first time I’ve heard of anything like this and sounds very impressive.

The 10 minute warning system that Israel has been using to notify civilians in the vicinity of structures they will be bombing is fascinating. I could not find an online description of the system but the way it works is that civilian neighbors of a structure that will be attacked are given a 10 minute warning by phone to evacuate the area. It appears to be fairly precise given the counterproductive nature of giving evacuation warnings across too broad of an area.

Think for a second about what it would take to make such a system effective. First and foremost, they would have to have a map of every structure in Gaza, which is clearly something Google does on a daily basis, but then they would have to have a database of phone numbers attached to every person in each structure (remember this is predominately a mobile based telecom system). [Venture Chronicles]

Average person will soon have two mobile phones

In my regular commute on the train it’s not uncommon to see people with two phones – and like the cited UK survey notes one is the typical work Blackberry. The other varies from a freebie looking flip to an iPhone.

The average mobile phone owner now has an average of 1.8 handsets and the figure is expected to rise to two mobiles for every person soon.

The rise in ownership is thought to be because more people have one mobile for personal calls and another for work as companies give employees Blackberry devices to keep in touch out of hours. [via Telegraph]

Initially my (non-standard) usage was one for personal and the other as a work-issue, though over the past couple of years that’s evolved to be two personal devices. I do use a work-issued SIM so they pay the airtime as well as my international roaming and data – I’m traveling for work after all.

Interestingly now I ‘m at the point where I’m considering a second plan for my personal consumption … only be for data though my third independently connected device.

Nokia Internet Stick CS-10 – Almost

Nokia Internet Stick CS-10

The Nokia Internet Stick CS-10 made a quiet appearance at Nokia World earlier this month and the news piqued my interest. Though after a quick check I saw it only supports the 850/2100MHz bands which is a real bummer unlike other higher end 3G modems which also add in 1900MHz for tri-band world compatibility this Nokia device will be hard to consider for purchase.

The 850MHz band is something that tends to appear in a more limited capacity here in the States, though this device should be just fine if you only travel in Europe.

Quick N85 and N79 Photo Test

Just getting going with both the new devices and decided to snap a quick picture following breakfast today …

First the N85:

12/24/2008 - N85 Close Mode Pancakes

And now the N79:

12/24/2008 - N79 Close Mode Pancakes

Aside from the “pilot error” in focusing on slightly different parts of the plate, I’d call this pretty even. Both devices offer Carl Zeiss 5MP AutoFocusing optics and response time is excellent. The N85 had a much easier time acquiring my position over A-GPS, but that’s thanks to AT&T vs the T-Mobile TZones connection of my other SIM card.