Tag: mobile

As reported by IW:

The “repetitive now” user is someone checking for the same piece of information over and over again, like checking the same stock quotes or weather. Google uses cookies to help cater to mobile users who check and recheck the same data points.

The “bored now” are users who have time on their hands. People on trains or waiting in airports or sitting in cafes. Mobile users in this behavior group look a lot more like casual Web surfers, but mobile phones don’t offer the robust user input of a desktop, so the applications have to be tailored.

The “urgent now” is a request to find something specific fast, like the location of a bakery or directions to the airport. Since a lot of these questions are location-aware, Google tries to build location into the mobile versions of these queries.

This definitely makes sense. In short: remember what people keep coming back for, constrain to location if they need something right away, and tailor to the medium.

From the guys who discovered the issue:

AT&T had plenty of time to inform the public before our disclosure. It was not done. Post-patch, disclosure should be immediate– within the hour. Days afterward is not acceptable. It is theoretically possible that in the span of a day (particularly after a hole was closed) that a criminal organization might decide to use an old dataset to exploit users before the users could be enlightened about the vulnerability.

Even in this disclosure, which I feel they would not have made if we hadn’t publicized this vulnerability, AT&T is being dishonest about the potential for harm.

I’m pretty sure I was impacted by this list the first time around, and it’s clear that AT&T doesn’t have a clue what they’re doing when it comes to the web, especially when it concerns security.

Dustin Curtis:

There has been a lot of discussion about the pixel density in iPhone 4’s Retina display, but most of those discussions are missing the point. The Retina display isn’t revolutionary because of pixel density — some Android phones have featured almost 300ppi for months. iPhone 4 is revolutionary because it has increased interface definition.

Yup. If you’re doing it right, you’re quickly finding yourself using the concept of a “pixel” less and less, especially on iOS devices.

Why is Apple so controlling? Why do they have phones that are all nearly identical? Why do they have particular restrictions on background apps? It all comes down to battery life. Battery life is not just another feature on some specifications checklist. It is the driving philosophy behind every design decision made on the iPhone.

He suspects that Android will only develop more battery life issues, and things are already getting pretty bad.

Again, it’s all about balancing constraints. If you want to run seventeen apps at once, or play flash games, you have to expect you’ll get a couple hours out of your phone, max. Apple isn’t willing to create a device where consumers need to be charging their phones five times a day.

The highlights:

• Same design as the phone taken by Gizmodo
• Clever glass and stainless construction
• Better battery life
• Screen resolution is quadrupled to 300+ dpi
• Front-facing camera for video calling (aka “FaceTime”)
• Better rear camera with flash
• Faster, with the A4 processor

From where I see it, Apple keeps pushing the bar further than the other manufacturers can reach. They’re working on making every feature feel like it’s always been there, spending a year or more on pieces like the retina display, and then the competition feels forced to slap together an answer in a couple months.

AT&T notwithstanding, the average consumer shouldn’t have much of a problem choosing this device over the myriad android phones.

The Wall Street Journal reports (subscription required) that as of June 1st, AT&T will nearly double the early termination fee for customers on smartphone contracts such as for the iPhone, going from $175 to $325. The change, which would apply only to new contracts, appears set to come just prior to the launch of a new iPhone.

I wonder if this means that Apple is getting a larger subsidy for the new phone than before. Maybe the costs of these gen-next devices are such that AT&T is taking a smaller share of the rev, but protecting themselves against cancellations, while keeping the subsidized price of phones relatively stable. Or, they could just be huge d-bags.

As with all Nielsen publications, take this with a bit of salt, but it’s certainly worth a thorough read.

Spot-on essay by MG Siegler.

PPK claims that by designing only for the iPhone, we’re setting up for another IE6-like event.

This article counters that:

When Koch damns developers for professional hypocrisy and incompetence, I see a quiet revolution of mobile developers waiting for other phones to catch up to the iPhone.

It’s still early on for the mobile web, and I think that gives us reason to push things a bit more than would be appropriate in a Y2K, IE6 world. If developers don’t accept the limitations of conventional mobile browsers right now, mobile manufacturers may well start moving things forward.

If we can get close to parity or unanimity in the mobile browser space, we’ve succeeded, and then need to start getting back to traditional principles of progressful degrahancement and the like.

Phil Gyford:

For some time I’ve been meaning to test my small collection of PDA/smartphone gadgets to see which of their methods of input was quickest. The iPhone’s software keyboard? The Newton’s handwriting recognition? Palm’s Graffiti? With the possible imminent arrival of a tablet from Apple that will save the world, it seemed a good time to get round to the test.

Huge blow to the Gowalla and Foursquare camps.

Yelp has boatloads of venues already, they obviously have an even larger number of legit and useful reviews, and they most importantly have existing relationships with these businesses (at least on the order of Yelp window stickers). Soon to come, deals for having a Regular badge at a given bar, or special happy-hour specials if you check in with multiple friends.

I’m a huge Gowalla fan, but these updates leave only one feature necessary for the Yelp app to really put the future of both Gowalla and Foursquare in jeopardy: contact import from facebook/twitter/etc. At that point, Gowalla will look like a “not as powerful, more game-like” version of Yelp’s offering.

Marco Arment discusses the two sides of the iPhone app store — the popular side and the craftsman side — and how apps targeting the wrong one can find themselves on the wrong side of success. He takes, as an example, the Iconfactory skee-ball game Ramp Champ, which has been revealed to be a commercial failure thus far.

Alex Russell in response to PPK’s new mobile browser tables, which reveals wide disparities between various versions of mobile WebKit:

The important takeaway for web developers in all of this is that WebKit is winning and that that is a good thing. The dynamics of the marketplace have thus far ensured that we don’t get “stuck” the way we did on the desktop. That is real progress.

Interesting concept screen from Larva Labs:

Larva Labs proposes an intelligent home screen that creates a meaningful hierarchy out of a user’s information. Designed for an Android-based handset, our home screen is intended to appeal to Blackberry owners and people struggling with information overload

Now it looks like BlackBerry devices will be using WebKit too. It’s quickly becoming the default platform for smartphones, and a behemoth among all mobile platforms.

From the Twitter Blog:

We’re gearing up to launch a new feature which makes Twitter truly location-aware. A new API will allow developers to add latitude and longitude to any tweet. Folks will need to activate this new feature by choice because it will be off by default and the exact location data won’t be stored for an extended period of time. However, if people do opt-in to sharing location on a tweet-by-tweet basis, compelling context will be added to each burst of information.

This, along with their mention of the ability to pull messages based on geographic scope, will open up a lot of possibilities. News reporting is one of the biggest ones, but events and even finding people in your neighborhood are obvious extensions.

An interesting comparison of the details between the iPhone’s keyboard, and the Android keyboard, as implemented on the HTC Magic:

A virtual keyboard lives and dies by the details. It’s not that there’s a single feature which makes the iPhone’s virtual keyboard better than Android’s; it’s death by a thousand cuts. A number of small differences end up making a huge difference.5 Apple obviously spent a lot of time getting every little detail just right (well, except for the ducking dictionary), while Google decided to go ahead with what they had – which is usable, but no match for what the iPhone offers.

The 10% difference in physical screen size (while still being equal in terms of pixels) probably reduces performance by well more than 10%

Mike Rundle has a pretty great post outlining the common types of iPhone application interfaces, major apps that use each type, and the advantages/disadvantages of each.

Campaign Monitor, one of the best email marketing software platforms around, released some really useful and interesting email client stats today. More than 300 million uniques is a pretty solid sample size:

It continues to blow us away just how quickly the iPhone is moving mobile email forward. The iPhone now caters for 5.78% of the email client market, breezing past Gmail to become the 5th most popular email client in the world.

Do you test on the iPhone? Another interesting bit:

We figured it was a safe assumption that more and more people would be moving from traditional desktop email clients to web-based email clients. While it’s certainly clear many of us are shifting to reading our emails on a mobile device, the same can’t be said for web-based email clients. The market share for both Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail has more or less plateaued over the last six months.

Outlook’s share faltered a bit, with 2007 getting a modest gain, but 2000/2004 falling.

Apparently Apple and RIM are doing something right:

The two accounted for only 3% of all cellphones sold in the world last year but 35% of operating profits, according to Deutsche Bank analyst Brian Modoff. The disparity will become even starker this year when, he estimates, the two will take 5% of the market in unit terms but 58% of total operating profits.

You don’t always need enormous market share to have a very healthy business.

I posted this just about a year ago, when people were upset about the 3G upgrade policy, and it still holds true for the 3GS:

AT&T subsidizes the price of every phone it carries, by about $200. So that RAZR phone you got a few months ago for free was actually about $200. You’ve probably seen these un-subsidized prices if you’ve ever damaged a phone and had to purchase a new one at full price.

The new iPhone 3GS coming out has a similar policy, except that there is no grace for 3G owners since the 3G, unlike the original iPhone, is subsidized.

If you’re not near the point where you’ve paid off your subsidy — and usually that means being more than 18 months into your plan — you’re not eligible for an upgrade at the subsidized price. You can purchase an early upgrade for $200, which is essentially paying for a significant part or all of that subsidy, or you can purchase a plan- and subsidy-free phone for a $400 premium.