Smartphones and Cell Phones

Has Apple quelled smartphone buyer expectations for finished products?

I have been spending a lot of time with my T-Mobile Touch Pro2 over these last few weeks and it has made me pause and think a bit more about firmware updates and how they relate to mobile phones. In the late 90s and early 2000s we never really thought much about upgrading our devices and we purchased them knowing exactly what their functionality and capabilities were while paying hundreds of dollars. If you look at the feature phone market, buyers still appear to think this way when they purchase the latest messaging, touchscreen, or camera-focused mobile phone. With the launch of the iPhone it seems people have started making purchasing decisions on whether or not a phone could be upgraded and have features added later in the lifecycle. This mentality has resulted in kudos for the iPhone, WebOS, some BlackBerry, select few Windows Mobile, and many Android devices while slamming Symbian, T-Mobile branded Android (who may not get future updates), Windows Mobile (selected devices may be upgraded), and BlackBerry devices. It seems to me that modern smartphone makers may have suckered us into thinking that upgradeability is always a good thing.

September 1, 2009 by Matthew Miller in Enterprise Software

T-Mobile Touch Pro2 already has most improvements of Windows Mobile 6.5

Microsoft finally confirmed a date for the release of Windows Mobile 6.5 today with the announcement of 6 October availability. There were not a ton of details in the press release, but I did see that T-Mobile USA was not listed as a carrier in the list and it will be pretty disappointing if their brand new T-Mobile HTC Touch Pro2 (see my first thoughts) is not upgraded to WM 6.5 since it is a pricey phone that has the horsepower to be upgraded. However, much of what people will see in WM 6.5 has already been implemented by HTC in the HTC Touch Pro2 so there may not be that compelling of a reason to perform the upgrade anyway.

September 1, 2009 by Matthew Miller in Mobile OS

Mobile Napster site lets you download your purchased tracks OTA

As I have mentioned in the past I have a rather small personal music collection so I enjoy streaming music and subscription services that let me listen to a ton of music from several genres. I have been a subscriber to the Zune Marketplace (check out my thoughts on the service) since they started giving you 10 free songs a month, but do have some issues with the service since it is still not easy to find MP3 only files and if you forget to download the 10 free songs you lose them. Today Napster launched their new mobile site, m.napster.com, that gives you the ability to discover and download your music over the air.

September 1, 2009 by Matthew Miller in iPhone

Sprint HTC Touch Pro2 announced for 8 September release

I don't think it has ever been officially stated, but rumors have shown that we can expect the excellent HTC Touch Pro2 (see my initial impressions) to come to at least the four major US wireless carriers. T-Mobile was the first a few weeks ago and today Sprint announced the Touch Pro2 will be available starting 8 September for the same $349.99 price that T-Mobile sells the device for. Unfortunately, you will have to pay $100 more on Sprint and wait for a mail-in rebate while T-Mobile has no mail-in rebate. There are a couple of hardware and software bonuses with the Sprint model compared to the T-Mobile model though.

August 31, 2009 by Matthew Miller in Mobility

Back to school special: QWERTY messaging phones

It's that time of year when kids go back to school and people start to think of ways to stay connected and in touch. If your kids are like mine, text messaging is used 90% of the time compared to voice calls on mobile phones and they are all about the QWERTY keyboard for easier, faster texting than a phone keypad. Every carrier realizes this too and has a lineup of QWERTY phones to meet these texting needs. Let's take a look at two of the best QWERTY phones available from each of the four major wireless carriers.

August 30, 2009 by Matthew Miller in Networking

MobileTechRoundup show #181; mobile apps, Nokia news, and Motorola Android devices

James, Kevin, and I record the show on Macs and both of them were tracking their Snow Leopard package using the Palm Pre as we started MobileTechRoundup show #181. James then asked about apps driving people to buy certain phones and we chimed in with our thoughts. Sony announced a new Reader device and one is on the way to my house. The Nokia N900 was a big news item of the week, along with the Booklet 3G. There are Motorola Android handsets being announced soon and Kevin and James will be there in person to hear the news and hopefully get some hands-on time.

August 30, 2009 by Matthew Miller in Microsoft

Hallelujah! Nokia N900 Maemo 5 device supports T-Mobile USA 3G

I have the Nokia N800 and N810 Internet Tablets and while they can be fun to use from time to time, but their performance and speed holds them back. Today Nokia announced the rumored N900 running Maemo 5 and with T-Mobile USA 3G support I am putting my Nokia N97 for sale. The N900 is the latest Linux-powered Internet Tablet with GSM/HSDPA and just about every other wireless technology you could want.

August 26, 2009 by Matthew Miller in Mobility

Nokia Money to provide financial services to the unbanked

Nokia posted a press release this morning for an upcoming mobile service that I think could have a significant impact on the world. Nokia Money is a new financial service that will allow the millions of people who have a Nokia device and no bank to conduct basic financial transactions. It may not have much of an impact in the US or other developed countries, but in areas where banking is not as vital it could be huge. According to Nokia's press release there are more than 4 billion mobile phone users and only 1.6 billion bank account around the world today.

August 25, 2009 by Matthew Miller in Hardware

Microsoft announces OneApp for emerging markets, includes Nokia smartphones

I received an email yesterday from a Microsoft representative regarding their Unlimited Potential Group's announcement for a new mobile software application. The funny thing about the email was that it stated the OneApp application was designed for feature phones to access mobile apps like Facebook, Twitter, Windows Live Messenger, and more around the world (and especially in emerging markets). Looking at the list of compatible devices we see a lineup of some of Nokia's finest S60 smartphones, including the E71, N95, N85, and N96. I think someone may want to educate Microsoft on their competitors since these devices are much more than just feature phones and are high end Nseries and Eseries devices.

August 24, 2009 by Matthew Miller in Mobility

Google brings Listen podcatcher to Android devices

One of the primary functions I perform on my smartphones is listening to podcasts, which I actually listen to much more than music. Nokia has an excellent Nokia Podcasting application that lets you subscribe and download podcasts with and the iPhone has iTunes integration so syncing podcasts over is fairly simple. There are a couple of 3rd party apps for Android, but I was very pleased to see Google launch their own podcatcher called Listen. Listen lets you search, subscribe, download, and stream podcasts to your Android-based device.

August 21, 2009 by Matthew Miller in Google

Windows Mobile Summer love fest continues

I am not the only Windows Mobile fanboy talking about the platform and defending its honor. Check out the excellent post that Michael Gartenberg made about this leading mobile operating system.

August 20, 2009 by Matthew Miller in Mobility

Forget 99 cent smartphone apps, let's be fair to developers too

I wrote about the BlackBerry App World minimum pricing plan back in March as RIM stated the minimum cost for a priced, not free, application would be $2.99. As I said then and still say today, 99 cent apps don't give most developers what they deserve for creating the application and is a bit ridiculous for consumers to use as a standard for mobile application pricing. Microsoft is holding some developer events this week in Redmond and has encourage developers to follow a strategy similar to RIM where apps are priced more reasonably in line with what is fair to both the developer and the consumer. It doesn't look like Microsoft will dictate this minimum price level and will let the market decide, but I sure hope we don't end up with thousands of 99 cent apps.

August 20, 2009 by Matthew Miller in Developer

Get off Microsoft's back, EVERY mobile OS has different co-existing versions

There has been a lot of talk today on the Internet about the possibility that Windows Mobile 6.5 and Windows Mobile 7 will co-exist in 2010. I have to say I really don't understand why people seem to think this is a big deal. We currently have different flavors of Windows Mobile available right now (5, 6.0, 6.1, Professional, Standard) so it seems to me that nothing is changing in 2010. Windows Mobile 7 has not been officially announced by Microsoft, but there is a ton of information out there in the public that shows it is coming in the future. Mary-Jo seems to have the inside scoop on Windows Mobile releases and even talks about some kind of chassis lineup. There are different version of mobile operating systems running Symbian, BlackBerry, and even iPhone co-existing today so this seems to me like a way to try to slam Microsoft and Windows Mobile rather than reporting on anything that is unusual.

August 19, 2009 by Matthew Miller in Windows

Blockbuster to bring movies to Motorola phones in the future

As a daily train commuter and a person who travels on airplanes about once a month I do enjoy occasionally watching movies on my mobile phones. The iPhone is great for iTunes rental or purchases, while the Nokia N97 and Nokia 5800 are excellent Amazon Video On Demand devices. According to the Chicago Tribune Blockbuster made a deal with Motorola to bring an OnDemand movie application and service to future Motorola handsets. There are no details yet on when the service will launch or on what phones, but we do know that Motorola plans to release Google Android devices later this year or in early 2010 so the service may launch at that time.

August 18, 2009 by Matthew Miller in Mobility

Canalys Q2 09 data shows touchscreen smartphones taking off

The Gartner Q2 2009 data was posted last week and now we have the Canalys data to compare and confirm that everything reported last week is pretty consistent between the two. The North American data shows that Apple made significant increases, 365%, over the 2nd quarter of 2008 and continues to rise. RIM leads in North America with 52% of the market share, followed by Apple now at 23.3%, HTC at 4.6% (I believe this only counts HTC branded devices), and Others at 19.2%.