2 Months With an iPhone...

It was the beginning of April when I got my iPhone. This isn't my first smartphone. I have had 1 Windows mobile phone, 2 Blackberries, 3 Treos...so I know my way around the space pretty well. Even on my feature phones, I have done things like contact management, e-mail, etc. Suffice it to say, I try to get my phones to do the most that they can.

So, onto my iPhone experience. I assume that anyone in the audience is pretty familiar with the iPhone capabilities, so this won't be a blow by blow description of features. And, next month, with a software refresh, any compliments or criticisms I might levy could be moot, so I won't bore you with all of that. All of that being said, the iPhone is the best information device I have ever had. As a phone, it is as good or better than many other devices, but the phone part of the iPhone isn't the killer app.

The killer app for the iPhone: THE BROWSER.

You've seen posts by me extolling the virtues of Opera Mini (which is pretty terrific) but the mobile Safari browser is the best piece of mobile software I have every used. Even over the EDGE network, getting to REAL web pages is easy. Over WiFi, practically delicious.

I live in a multi-computer house. There is almost always a laptop within 30 feet. When I get home from the office now, my laptop stays in my bag. Mobile Safari over WiFi is so easy and fast that I don't need my laptop as much. In fact, my home usage of my laptop has declined by at least 50%. There is almost nothing that I do (in my spare time) on my computer that I can't do on my iPhone. Web browsing, You Tube (my kids LOVE watching You Tube cartoons on my iPhone...especially old Bugs Bunny!), e-mail...all well implemented, easy to use, and intuitive.

Speaking of intuitive, my 4 year old daughter grabbed my iPhone on the first day I had it. She immediately figured out the slider lock, saw the phone icon and was able to call my wife without me explaining to her how to do it. Intuitive enough that the interface is satisfying to me, and easy enough for a child to navigate. That is incredible.

So, while all my other smartphones had nice features (e-mail and keyboard on Blackberry are better), the iPhone is in a different league. The iPhone has a different mobile ambition than the average smartphone. For example, t he iPod features are also excellent (but they should enable video download over WiFi), the camera is good, but the photo display is excellent! My iPhone is where I keep my important music, video and photos, along side my important e-mails, contacts, and calendar.Smartphones are tools to get things done. My iPhone is my companion that helps me live my life. Nice job, Apple.

iPhone in My Hands

The day before I was headed to CTIA, an amazing thing happened. I dropped my Blackberry into the toilet. ( Embarrassing!) I did not have a backup handset, and Sprint was less than helpful in helping me get a replacement sent to my hotel, so I decided to bail on Sprint. Sorry guys! (I was one of those million + defectors last quarter.) So, during a stopover in Philadelphia, I hopped in a cab, went to an ATT store and got a 16 Gig iPhone. (And, I feel compelled to point out that shopping in an ATT store is pretty rotten. The clerk wouldn't let me leave without getting a credit approval (and since I was in Philadelphia it had some kind of location code attached to it) and when I went to activate through iTunes, it wouldn't let me port in my Boston number. WTF? So, after 2 hours on a payphone at the Philadelphia airport, and getting nowhere with ATT, I just tried activate it like I had purchased it at the Apple store. I didn't use the credit approval code and ported in my number like a charm! Now, after a little investigation, it seems like my erstwhile ATT store rep was trying to earn a little commission on my activation by demanding that I get a credit approval. I hate that stuff. He wasted my time, and I am glad that he got not credit for my activation. Long story short, if you want an iPhone, go to the Apple store.

2 months with an iPhone in my next post.

2 Months...and No Posts Ugggh

So, I am back blogging. Thanks for your patience. Laziness got the best of me.

Mo-Mo Mobile Music

The music industry is collapsing under its own weight. The days of physical distribution are dwindling, and digital has yet to replace that revenue. Well, digital does not need to replace physical distribution (i.e., shipments of CDs to stores), but rather the physical distribution eco-system needs to rapidly compress to keep costs in line with revenue and profits from that channel. But anyhow, the music industry is in trouble. And MOBILE is a place where the opportunity seems to be enormous.

1. So, there are tons of mobile music options, like Pandora, IPhone/iTunes, Napster, XM and any other of a thousand options. The interesting thing that has yet to happen is the emergence of a free music product. There is no free mobile radio. (NPR has done an interesting thing, making some of their local broadcasts available via the voice channel, but that isn't spot on to this discussion). Most services are either subscription based, or per song based.

Now, I love music. And I think that music is a key element in discovering one's essential humanity. BUT, there is no way that I am going to pay for something that I can get free on the radio. Well, there are a few more options to most paid services, like custom playlists, samples, artist discovery, information value added services, etc. But fundamentally, am I going to want to pay $3.99, $4.99 or, heaven forbid $9.99 per month to access these services through my mobile device on top of my data plan? I don't think so.

Here is where I would love to see the industry head:

1. Music Industry: Figure out a way to make streaming your music so cheap that there will be 10,000 mobile radio channels playing all the time. This is a sticky wicket, I understand that. You have the costs of developing and producing the music that we want to hear, and that takes oodles of cash. But face it, the physical world is over for music. Grow your revenues by providing even more services to artists, like show promotion, merchandising, rights sales, etc. Either add value to the artists and become a marketing hub that drives profits for you and the artists or get out of the way. I, frankly don't have the answers, but I am continually impressed with the creativity and intelligence, passion and drive of all I know in the music industry. The answer is there, somewhere, but restricting access to your content by charging users $6.99 a month (and then asking them to pay again to have access to the music on other devices) is not the right approach.
   
2. Mobile Carriers: Face it, people already pay for voice and data. Cut them some slack and load up the basic service tier with lots of compelling content. The cable guys have been brilliant at this. (The only reason you pay $32.99 for basic cable is that it offers you a ton of value in increased content and reception improvements) So, give me 25 FREE radio stations with my data plan, and you will get significantly higher data plan uptakes, especially in the under 25 crowd...and they have the highest lifetime value of any customer...

Mobile music is a HUGE opportunity, and I believe that mobile will be the dominant growth area for music over the next decade. It just needs to be free.

Unlimited Voice Plans Ahoy!

In the latest bit of "Oh yeah, me too" marketing, it seems like the top 3 mobile carriers and an MVNO all have (or will have soon) flat fee plans that have unlimited voice, messaging , and data. As a nice geture of inclusivity for smartphones, apparently the ATT plan includes iPhone users. (No word on the Blackberry crowd, yet)

Cool stuff. Soon enough, tethering or card access will join. Hooray!

ATT Plans (unlimited will be up on 2/22, I think)
Verizon Plans
Sprint Plans
Helio Plans
and T-Mo is in the game, too!

As a side note, Sprint plans seem to be limited to certain markets.

This is good stuff. Look for these prices to compress even further in 2009.

Verizon to Join In on Unlimited Plans on 12/19/08?

I've heard this from a number of folks, but Engadet Mobile is where I read it first. It seems like Verizon will be offering unlimited voice and data plans as soon as tomorrow. This is a good deal, but at the top end of the plans, the price seems a little steep. No mention of if this includes tethering or BB data. Stay tuned.

• $100 - Nationwide Unlimited (voice)
• $120 - Nationwide Select Unlimited (voice, SMS, MMS)
• $140 - Nationwide Premium (voice, SMS, MMS, VZNav, VCAST, email)
• $150 - Nationwide Email and Messaging (voice, SMS, MMS, and data)
• $170 - Nationwide Global Email and Messaging (voice, SMS, MMS, and international data)
• $200 - Family plan with two lines, $100 per additional line.

BlackBerry 8830 Review: 6 Months Later, Would I Buy It Again?

While this won't be an exhaustive review, you either love or hate Blackberries. This 8830 was an upgrade to my 7200 series. The 7200 had a GREAT keyboard, the thumb friendly scroll wheel, and INCREDIBLE battery life and all sorts of other fancy, schmancy stuff. It did, however, have a very poor screen that was hard to see. So, I upgraded to the 8830. Here is what I was attracted to:

• Great Looking Screen


• TrackBall


• Narrower Form Factor

6 months into owning the 8830, I have more complaints than I thought I would have. Here goes a section by section look at the device:

Phone: As a phone, the 8830 is good. The integration with the addressbook is very good. I like having all of my phone numbers in one place. Is it better than my old Treo? I am not sure. It is certainly a big step up, as a phone, from the 7200 series. The inclusion of a speakerphone is good (although the volume could be a little louder), and the connectivity options (bluetooth) are better than in the 7200 series, but the phone call quality seems improved (and this is surprising since my old BB was on Verizon, and my new one one Sprint and I think Verizon's voice network is significantly better). So I attribute the better defintion and ability to talk longer without significant ear fatigue to be a product of the phone. I think that the BB 8830 gets a B+ on phone call quality, and an A on addressbook integrations. It gets a C on playing well with Bluetooth headsets, however. I have a Moto H700 and a Jawbone, and neither has reliable connections with my BB. The handset form-factor is much improved over the 7200 series. Overall Phone Grade: B

E-Mail: E-Mail on the Blackberry is fine...mostly. For various and sundry reasons that have more to do with Sprint and with my company's exchange server, I can't connect directly to my corporate e-mail account, so I have messages sent to my Blackberry e-mail address as well as my corporate address, so I don't have comfortable synching. So that is a problem, but I don't attribute it to the BB. My other issue is that I have about 5 or 6 active e-mail addresses, and although the BB handles up to 10, the setting up of all these accounts is very slow and painful, and forget working out signatures for each. It is hard. To complicate matters, I manage all of these e-mail addresses through GMail. GMail and BB have a complicated relationship, mostly because both want to leverage their strengths. BB wants to leverage its real-time, proprietary messaging infrastructure, and GMail wants to provide a similar mobile and web management experience. They aren't terrific together, and if I were to start this again, I would stake advantage of the BB device strengths and not have all my e-mail coming through GMail, or I would pick a different device. I need to do a little more exploration on making these things work together. But here is my major complaint with the BB: it doesn't handle HTML e-mail. I would say that 40-50% of e-mail that I get that I want to read is in the form of newletters, or web-group e-mails, or what have you, and these are almost unreadable on the BB. I hate this. I have a very powerful handheld device that can render complex images, handle web pages, and can't do an HTML e-mail? Ridiculous. Really, really, really ridiculous. I know that there is a BB software update in the works but this is an afterthought, and I am really disappointed in the existing experience. On the flip side, I have been using the GMail app on the BB and find that it is very good. It doesn't render HTML e-mails faithfully either, but it strips out the text and presents it in a readable fashion. I find myself using the GMail App more and more and wish that I could just replace the BB e-mail with GMail completely. So, kudos to BB for having great real time e-mail deliver. Boo for your handling of HTML. I may be being a little harsh here, but I feel like the e-mail could use a fair bit of improvement. I use my BB for 40% of my e-mail, so it needs to be ROCK SOLID, and I don't get the feeling that it is. Overall E-Mail Grade: B-

Web Browsing: The browser that ships with the BB8830 is garbage. It is REALLY rotten. It isn't really any better than a WAP browser. Boo! Hiss! Get the torches! Really, I am very disapponted with the long term performance of this piece of software. It is slow, it renders pages very awkwardly. For example, many pages that are tabbed result in a long list of non-clickable images of the tabs. Very frustrating. Also, the speed is very slow. I know that it trying hard to make things work, but the speed, even on Sprint's EV-DO network (which provides reasonable speeds) is so slow as to be useless. Long story made short, I have switched exclusively to Opera Mini (see my earlier post on Opera Mini on

Mobile Ambition). The downside to that is there is no way t configure Opera Mini as your default browser, so if I click on an e-mail link, I end up in the disappointing BB standard browser. Uggh. Using the trackball with browsing is pretty good, especially on Opera Mini. Overall Browser Grade: D

Keyboard: The keyboard on the 8830 is pretty good. The keys are easy to get to by feel and have a satifying "click" response when you touch them. I consistently get confused/fat-fingered by the SHIFT and ALT keys. That is a little frustrating and I feel like it is an ergonomic/layout problem, but it could be that I am just not able to map my brain to this keyborad. Your mileage may vary. Strangely, I feel like this keyboard is more likely to be inadvertantly dialed by keys in your pocket, or by a curious toddler (I have a 3 kids, 5, 4, and 2 and Daddy's phone is a desired object). I know that I can lock the keyboard, but I never had to do that on my last BB, so it is a little frustrating that this keyboard like to dial when I am not watching, but other than that it is very good. This would have gotten an A if it weren't for the SHIFT/ALT thing. Overall Keyboard Grade: A-

Apps, Etc: There are a ton of apps for the BB. A lot of them are terrible, but, conversely, a lot of them are wonderful. I really like Sprint Navigator, Yahoo Go! 3.0, Opera Mini and the Google Apps. I don't use many others, so my experience is a little limited. Overall Apps Grade: A

PC Synching: When I was using Outlook, the synching features were stellar. I never had a problem. That gets an A. But, when I switched to using GMail, Google Calendar, and managing my contacts through Plaxo and Google, I haven't synched with my PC...which is fine. The only drawback is phone numbers. As I add new contacts into Google, they don't get into my Blackberry address book...which is just a killer. So my BB address book is 5 months out of date. Can anybody help? Overall PC Synching Grade: Depending on your circumstances it is either an A+ or an F

Media Support: One of the big advances of the 8000 series of BB was supposed to be media support, and I have listened to a little music on my BB, and watched the video that came with the phone. So, when push comes to shove, since there is no iTunes, Pandora, Rhapsody client, and there is no support for streaming audio or video (as I understand it, the BB can only play media that is resident on the device, so there is no streaming available, which is the way that most mobile media is delivered) so most regular mobile media services don't work. And, the closed nature of iTunes means that I can't make my BB play well with my music collection. (That is a major downside to working with iTunes, but I find that the iTunes inerface and iPod synch to be so compelling that I accept is limitations, albeit begrudgingly.) So, if I were a real tech guy who wished to play with files all day and whatever, I might be happier with the BB, but as my teachers always used to say, the BB has a lot of unrealized potential. Overall Media Grade: C+

Would I Buy The BlackBerry 8830 Again? I think that I can comfortably say no. And much of it has to do with the browser, the lack of web-based synching and media support. (There is also the issue of a $39.99 data plan on top of a huge voice plan that frustrates me, but I won't attribute that to the BB) The BB wants you to check in with your PC everyday. And, frankly, I want all my data accessible all the time so that if I don't want to synch, or don't have the opportunity to synch, I am still up to date. I know that there isn't a perfect solution, but the BB seems to be more geared to big corporations and places that are forever tied to their PC. I want my mobile to share data with my PC (wirelessly) and have enough oomph of its own to be my PC Lite when I want it to be. The BB isn't there yet. My Treo, weirdly enough, felt closer to this. Maybe the iPhone is the answer? Who knows. Let me know what you think.

Blackberry 8830 Overall Grade: B. Would I Buy It Again? No.