Reviewing Three's 2nd generation MiFi unit, which comes with many new improvements and features including hardware, software and performance improvements
Sony Ericsson has just released the latest update to their Xperia Arc and Play handsets, which upgrades the handsets to the latest Gingerbread build (2.3.3).
This update brings lots of fixes and optimizations within many different areas but here are some important ones:
Battery performance
General software stability
Wi-Fi stability
HD Video recording performance (Xperia™ arc)
Touch responsiveness
This update will be possible to perform over the air directly from your phone or through PC-Companion.
Besides these updates the main focus will be on the Facebook integration which will turn the handsets more Facebook focused. The integration is very deep and is pretty much everywhere. From the gallery, to the contacts and even lock-screens, Facebook will be predominantly visible and integrated.
The video below shows brief examples how "Facebook Inside Xperia" will be.
There is also news the Xperia X10 will also get this update, whilst all handsets coming from Sony Ericsson onwards, will have Facebook heavily integrated within the handsets.
Finally there is a proper app for the BBC News website. Previously the BBC News was just a bookmark which loaded up your browser and pointed you towards the BBC Mobile website. But this new BBC News in the Android Marketplace is a proper app with a nice UI and features.
Key features:
Simple design with scroll functionality to enable efficient browsing
Tap to reveal full-screen article and in-story video
On a story page, swipe sideways to read the next story
Sharing tools to post stories to a range of social networks, or email / SMS to a friend
Latest and breaking news ticker
An 'Edit' menu, allowing you to personalise the homescreen by adding and removing news categories to suit your preferences
Live streaming of the BBC News channel for Android 2.2 devices running Flash
Settings to allow the app to automatically update in the background
Font controls to increase or decrease the story text size to suit you
Full range of News categories: Top stories, World, UK, Sport, Technology, Entertainment & Arts, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Business, Politics, Health, Education, Science & Environment, Features & analysis, Also in the news
Not only is the app easily customisable to your preference, it's smooth UI is nice to use, the app is clearly designed with touch in mind. All usual Android touch related gestures work. Swipe through the different categories to see stories, swipe through whilst reading a particular story to find more in that category, whilst pressing down on any story gives the options to share it via Twitter or other platforms.
There is also a live stream of the BBC News channel, although it has to be said, it's jittery and of poor quality. Probably the only negative thing I could find about the app.
Microsoft has announced the latest and long awaited update to Windows Phone 7, codenamed Mango. With it brings features we've all been waiting for, in order to bring Windows Phone 7 up to par with it's competitors. Below are the juicy titbits from the official press release.
Improved Live Tiles, which provides even more real-time information to the home screen. Live Tiles on Mango can be more dynamic and contain more information.
Multitasking allows users to quickly switch between recently used applications and pick up where they left off by simply pressing and holding the back button.
Live Agents, which enables developers to create a number of multitasking apps for scenarios involving media, communications, augmented reality and more – all without compromising battery life and performance.
Personalized Live Tiles make it possible for users to easily access individuals or groups from the home screen. Individuals can be pinned to the start screen as Live Tiles, providing users with at-a-glance access to real-time updates from social network feeds and notifications without having to open multiple apps.
Multiple email accounts can be combined and linked into one inbox.
Built-in voice-to-text/text-to-voice functionality, which will allow for hands-free texting or chatting.
Web browsing now also has an added layer that allows users to take advantage of functionality such as location awareness, the phone’s camera and its microphone.
Local Scout prioritizes hyper-local search results based on user preferences and recommends the closest restaurants, shopping and activities in an easy-to-use guide.
Visual search enables users to initiate a Bing search by photographing barcodes, QR codes and Microsoft Tags (without using a third-party app).
Music search allows users to search Bing and get detailed information about music (like song title, artist and album title) by simply holding the phone up to a speaker.
Those are just the highlights of the latest release which will be available to current and future Windows Phone 7 users by Autumn. For the full press release, click through.
The future of Android is becoming more focused, structured and linear, according to Google's latest announcements at their I/O session. The biggest news is that Ice Cream Sandwich - which is essentially a mashup of Honeycomb (Android 3.0) aimed mainly at tablets and the more well known and distributed Android mobile OS Gingerbread (Android 2.3), will be deployed universally to all handsets and tablets. The aim here is to unify the experience and have less of a "fragmentation" that seems to be the concern for many.
With the current rate of handsets coming with dual core processors and bigger screens, the gap and distinction between phone and tablet is becoming smaller than the gap between laptop and tablet. I think it's essential to start planning for a unified look between either platforms and a universal experience as Android starts to approach maturity - something Apple has achieved to a certain extent with the iPhone and iPad.
As we move towards more focused to data services, in the next 2 years voice calls, sms and other similar add-ons will be the exception rather than the rule. It's already a case in my personal lifestyle, but with Google's other services being integrated into the latest iteration of Android and a true universal convergence of devices, voice, sms and similar offerings will be effectively irrelevant. Everything will be focused on data. Google Voice + Chat could essentially replace voice calls and sms, indefinitely. I see similar things happening with the acquisition of Skype by Microsoft, whilst Apple already has Facetime but seem to be the weakest link going forward.
Supporting Devices
I'm glad finally there is some work to universally support devices for longer and is being taken up by the members of the Open Handset Alliance. The whole argument of Android's fragmentation has been due to the various different versions of it on various differing specs and features of hardware. Hopefully this will remedy this, although I do think 18 months is quite short, but going forward not so much if the pace of developments around mobile is sustained.
Beyond Mobile
Android long term has been always planned as a convergence OS, which would essentially work on almost anything, it was designed to be flexible. I said 2.5 years ago Android would take over everything and would be everywhere in 5 years time, and this seems to be where Google is also planning to go with Android Open Accessory, Android Home.
Fridges, Ovens, TVs, Car Dashboards, Garage Doors, Lights and Doors could essentially all be running on Android, interacting, syncing and communicating together - all controlled by your Android handset / tablet. A truly connected future.
Google Music
Just a little side note on what Google Music is and why in my opinion it won't be anything more or better than what we already have with services such as Spotify. The whole cloud streaming concept is a good one, I like the concept and idea behind it, but like many things at the moment, it's more of a case of trial and error until it can be 99.999% full proof and the infrastructure to support such services can built and perfected.
Only open to the US in usual Google exclusivity which gets all those first time exclusivity people excited, it essentially offers backing up your music collection to the cloud and streaming it wherever you go. Which is fine. But here is where the problems start.
Streaming - I don't necessarily want to stream my music, especially high quality content which would require a lot of bandwidth. Also we don't have a 100% signal everywhere we go, if I have signal it's likely I would be using my data connection for other means; e-mail, Twitter, RSS, podcasts. Whilst that can be remedied with offline storage my point here is; then why bother with streaming? It's not like storage is an issue here. Maybe in 2000 when storage was a big issue and we couldn't fit our collection of music on our devices, it would have been a good idea to be able to stream / download our music to our walkmans, phones etc then. But now? Not necessary.
Who Profits - This is the bigger point, who profits from the use of this services? Operators and distributors. The user has minimal profit from this situation. It's a system designed more to make it easier for those cloud shops to be able to distribute their wares and make profit wherever you are. Essentially you the user become a walking, living, shopping trolley.
I personally think a more connected service would be better. Give us devices with more storage, give us a faster, more reliable and better network to utilise this service. Have total sync with the cloud, hand-held and desktop. Use the cloud as a backup storage for my desktop and hand-held device. Have the content locally stored on the hand-held and desktop and sync / backup via the cloud. If I download content on the go, give me the security of knowing that's it's also been synced to the cloud and my desktop, with me as a user having to do minimal work. There are many ways to extend this use case and improve on how cloud streaming can be used more effectively, but in essence until we get the infrastructure to be able to support it, it will be a test service.
This is where operators can come in to help ease and improve the situation and help progress a lot quicker. This is an ideal chance for them to stop thinking the old dinosaur way of marketing; selling minutes, sms bundles and data bundles. Create a fast reliable tiered data network. Sell prioritised speed data packages over amounts of data. Tier the the speed of data user subscribe to rather than the amount they can use. For those looking to utilise such services as streaming music / content - bill them for data speeds as they require. If the network infrastructure doesn't exist, start building it, don't get left behind.
HTC, Motorola, Sony Ericsson all have their own UI overlays for Android, the aim being it offers a user "experience", alters the way the phone works and aims to add to the overall Android experience. It's their attempt to try and differentiate between each other. Whilst I see the point here, I don't quite agree with this strategy.
I've pointed out before short term it's a decent strategy, when Android itself was still an ugly duckling. But, times have changed, Android is no longer the ugly duckling it started off as. It's more polished, streamlined and capable since release and personally think all these UI overlays and experiences actually hinder the overall experience of Android. Of course they serve a purpose and do have some great additional stuff the user gets for purchasing their own handsets, as each experience is locked to the handsets purchased (without hacking).
But why are they restricting their "experience" to only their handsets? Why not use the available space to attract customers from their competitors using the Android Marketplace?
Lets take for example HTC and their Sense UI on their Android handsets. I myself own a Desire and am quite satisfied with it. I'm rooted and running a custom ROM (GingerVillain). I do this because I want the latest Android release ASAP, also for the fact there are some optimisations included in the custom Rom which make my life easier and using Android much more pleasant. But, I do miss some cool features form Sense; mainly the Camera and Music player. Now I'm not going to re-flash back to the stock Sense Rom to gain these things, rather I'll look for alternatives. This is where I think companies like HTC are missing an opportunity. Why not offer the Camera and Music player, or even the Framework in the Android Market?
There's an easy and simple revenue model there; have a free and paid versions of Sense elements found on their handsets, make them compatible with other manufacturers or with stock Android and offer them in the Market. Not only do you get income from those who may not have purchased your handsets, but you're offering your current customers the choice of picking and choosing which elements they may want or not on their handsets. This benefits you in another way and gives you some free market research data:
You can easily see which elements of your custom UI are popular and can include them in your next handset versions and remove the bloat-ware no one is using or installing.
Now I'm not familiar with the technical obstacles which may be there, but from what I have seen, the Android community can pretty much bake a custom Rom to their liking with features added and patched as they please.
So what's stopping these multi million pound companies with bigger resources? If you want to differentiate between yourself and your competitors in an even playground, in my opinion change the landscape to your liking. Use it to your advantage. When it comes to Android, the AOSP (Android Open Source Project) is the biggest gateway for any of these manufacturers to bend and change as they please. It's just staggering how any of them aren't doing any of this. Instead they're opting to add in gimmicky features like Facebook and Twitter integration. To me it seems like once again, we're back to the same situation we were in the days before the iPhone - a starvation of innovation. Linear thinking and strategies.
In my last blog post I wrote about the easy way to move to the awesome AYCE plan on ThreeUK and even how I found calling customer service an easy process. I've been on PAYG for a while now, I decided to not be bound by long term contracts, for me they just aren't flexible enough. Just recently Three announced The One Plan on a Monthly Rolling contract.
I've decided to make the jump and get one, why? For me it's easily the best value SIM only plan out there, with enough flexibility to be able to cancel if my needs change. The AYCE data and the free SMS and Calls, make this a pretty easily sell-able plan for me. But this isn't why I'm writing this post! Here's why:
I spoke with ThreeUK on Twitter about tethering on this new rolling monthly plan, but was told everything was the same as the 12+ month contract except the tethering. I wake up this morning to read this - a total opposite of what I was told. Through the power of Social Media and because they actually "listen" to their customers, ThreeUK have turned everything on it's head and are allowing tethering on the Rolling Monthly contract too!
The rest of you should just watch and follow lead; there's much to be learnt here. THE best affordable plan out there, bar none. You know this is true, when I'm rocking it too.
