One of the things I look forward to every day is reading the Wall Street Journal. To my mind, it brings back the days when the first thing I did every day was to read the newspaper. (The Times of India, before they morphed their print edition into a tabloid and also created one of the worst ad-infested websites I’ve seen) The downside is that if I find a great story, I can’t send it to my friends since the online version is subscriber-only. Thankfully the Mossberg columns are available on his blog, so if you haven’t seen or read his timely rant about the state of the cellphone service industry in the US, please do so now.
Apart from all the usual criticisms of the way cellphone services operate in the US, there’s one that is strangely accepted – the fact that incoming text messages are charged! Leave aside the fact that text messaging is ridiculously expensive (when it is so cheap for the carrier to provide the service) – it is strange that folks are charged for incoming messages when there is no way to block text messages from appearing. At least you can refuse to answer an incoming call – there is no way to decline a text message, and if you have friends who love their unlimited text messaging plans (I know, I was one of them until recently), you can rack up charges for no fault of yours.
I can’t wait for the rumored gPhone to shake up the way the cellphone industry works.
Posted by Anil on October 31st, 2007 :: Filed under
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Posted by Anil on October 21st, 2007 :: Filed under
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I’ll admit that when it comes to gadgets, I have yet to meet one I didn’t like. I’m the early adopter you hear about – the guy who buys v1.0 of every gadget and beta tests them so that the unwashed masses can get a better v2.0 of the same gadget. In the past year I have tried out smartphones of almost every kind – Windows Mobile, Palm, Blackberry and yes, the iPhone too. Here’s what I think is wrong about smartphones:
- Good looking hardware is not enough: RIM makes some sexy-looking devices these days. It’s a far cry from the nerdy corporate fatberrys that they used to make a few years back but the user interface is just a slightly more colorful version of the same old interface the old blackberrys used to have. Palm has begun to make good looking phones (even though someone needs to tell them that the world has moved past antenna stubs in the last century) but their OS is even less of an upgrade from their old 90′s version. (Someone also needs to tell them that the world has discovered anti-aliased fonts, smooth button and icon edges, shading and scrollbars that don’t look like Windows 1.0). Taking a fancy looking phone out of my pocket and then finding my way through an archaic OS is not my idea of using a smartphone in 2007.
- A mobile OS is not the same as taking a desktop OS and shrinking the screen-size: When Microsoft decided to make their Windows Mobile OS, they simply took their Pocket PC software and added some phone functionality to it. So you take some PDA software and add a phone to it – that should create a smartphone, right? Wrong. Not if the PDA software itself is ill-designed. When they created PocketPC, they changed the hardware and screen real-estate requirements, but they didn’t design it around how people would actually like to use software on a small screen. So you still have a menu toolbar, drop-down menus and scrollbars that cannot really be used without a stylus and good eyesight.
- Good hardware and software have to go together: This is pretty much obvious, but not to every cellphone maker. Maybe you like the way Windows Mobile works and you know exactly how to navigate the menus to get to the options you want. So what about the hardware – almost every Windows Mobile phone out there is ugly looking. The Motorola Qs have more edges and holes and protrusions than a space-station and the HTC phones are trying hard to establish their brotherhood with bricks. Phones like the Porsche don’t even bother to show the software interface in their advertisements, instead focusing solely on the (admittedly) great looking hardware (I’m not sure if it’s a smartphone, but all they talk about is how good the phone looks – not a very good sign.) Well, if I was using the phone as a prop in a movie, I’d go for some great looking hardware, but why can’t I have both? After all, these companies have been making phones and writing software for it for years now – surely it can’t be that hard to get it right!
Posted by Anil on October 21st, 2007 :: Filed under
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