Talking Mobile // Tablet // Web Development

Good morning, awesome people!  Today I have brand new, shiny — and I DO mean shiny — toy from Verizon Wireless.  It’s not another hotspot.  It’s the DROID Charge by Samsung.  At first glance, you may be like “Meh. Just another Galaxy S phone“, but the DROID Charge is much more.

For starters, it has a larger, 4.3″, Super AMOLED Plus screen.  The “Plus” means that there are 50% more sub-pixels…mumbo-jumbo aside: Brighter, richer, more efficient.  The front and rear cameras have been upgraded to 1.3MP and 8.0MP respectively.  The rear camera includes a flash.  The DROID Charge also has an HDMI output.

There are some little things that set this apart from the Galaxy S line.  While it still sports Samsung’s TouchWiz UI, the color palette has gone from light blue to brown and orange.  While I don’t mind the new colors for the main interface, the color palette extends into other apps.  So if the developer doesn’t override all of the UI assets, there will be a brown header bar and tabs.  Another small change is the charger and USB cable.  A charger is a charger and a cable is a cable, but the ones that come with the DROID Charge are different than any of the other Samsung devices I’ve tested.  Is this the first in a new line of Samsung devices?

The DROID Charge is the first 4G Samsung phone on Verizon Wireless and will be available on April 28th, for $299.99 (w/ new contracts, etc).  I’ll be putting it though its paces for the next few days and we’ll see how it compares to the HTC ThunderBolt.

If you have any questions, or specific feature’s you’d like me to cover, shoot me a tweet (@breon).

Also, Verizon Wireless is holding another DROID Landing scavenger hunt!  Follow http://twitter.com/droidlanding for more details.  You could win your very own DROID Charge!

Official Press Release:

It all started with the T-Mobile G1 in 2008; The first Android powered smartphone.  3.2″ screen, 528 MHz processor, 192 MB RAM, 256 MB ROM, QWERTY keyboard.  It was a very underpowered device, but it set the wheels in motion.  The Android revolution had begun.

Fast-forward to 2010.  Google releases the Nexus One.  The N1 was intended to be a “reference” phone.  It had the latest hardware (1GHz processor, 512 MB RAM and ROM, 5 MP Camera), a larger, 3.7″, AMOLED screen with a higher resolution, and it ran vanilla Android.  This phone (along with the previously released Motorola DROID) signified the start of “Gen 2″ in the Android universe.  Throughout 2010, many manufactures followed suit, releasing phones with similar specs to the Nexus One.  Some had larger screens.  Some with QWERTY keyboards.  Heck, a couple even saw a bump in processing power, to 1.2GHz.  Never-the-less, they were all still pretty much Gen 2.

Fast-forward to present day…well, a few weeks ago.  Consumer Electronics Show 2011 (CES) opens its door to the public.  Traditionally, CES was all about audio and video products.  Over the past decade, computers and other tech gear has started to infiltrate the show floor.  Mobile phones and tablets have now carved out their own space.  Manufacturers and carriers alike are using CES to announce upcoming products and services.  Most of the phones shared some common attributes; larger screens, 4G technology, front-facing camera.  But just a few stood above the rest.  What makes these phones so special? Dual-core processors.

Motorola stole the show by announcing, not one, but two phones that feature dual-core processors.  The Atrix 4G and the DROID Bionic.  The Atrix 4G will be available on AT&T and features a 4″ qHD screen (540×960 @ 240 dpi), 1GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core processor, 1 GB RAM, 5 MP rear camera and a .3 MP front-facing camera.  Additionally, the Atrix 4G will have a whole host of accessories, including the standard-issue home and car docks.  It will also have two specialty docks.  The Laptop Dock has a large screen and keyboard.  It gives you access to Firefox web browsing, as well as the ability to still access your apps and make calls.  The HD Multimedia dock allows you to connect up to 3 USB devices, like a keyboard.

As the name suggests, the DROID Bionic is part of the Verizon Wireless’ DROID series.  It has the same processor as the Atrix 4G.  However, it only has 512 MB ram.  Other differences include a 4.3″ screen (still qHD), 16 GB internal storage, and an 8 MP camera (with the front cam).  It doesn’t look like the Bionic have the same accessory mix as its brother.  I’d be willing to bet that there will be basic home and car docs.  One neat feature of the Bionic is Mirror Mode.

Multiply your fun with Mirror Mode, which lets you enjoy all of your favorite apps, websites, videos, photos, and games full-screen on your larger home TV.

This is something that I’ve been looking for in a phone.  It will be great to be able to demo apps for clients or for presentations.

Motorola isn’t the only manufacturer throwing their hat into the dual-core ring.  LG announced the Optimus 2X some time ago and Samsung is teasing their next generation phone, just ahead of Mobile World Congress.

With Mobile World Congress and CTIA just around the corner, I expect that most of the hottest new phones will rock dual-core processors.  Rumor has it that there will be quad-core phones out by December of this year.  I’ll believe it when I see it.

Well, it finally happened.. Today is the day that many an iPhone fan has been waiting for. The iPhone is now available on the Verizon network! It has been hailed for years as the day that Apple would have access to the 93 million subscribers in the US and annihilate any other smartphone on the market ( or that is what Apple would like to have you believe ).

After hearing this news today though, I paused and thought about exactly what this might mean to other mobile OS platforms on the market and in particular, Android. In short, I believe it really does little to harm the adoption of Android.

Here’s why:

1. Android Has Gained Adoptance : Android has been steadily cementing itself as a true contender to the iPhone throughout 2010. Last quarter it outsold the iPhone in number of units sold both in the US and worldwide. Here in the US it’s a little closer, but worldwide Android is being purchased well more than iPhone and is closing in on Symbian.

Why does this matter? The iPhone on Verizon will use CDMA technology. The possible number of carriers and subscribers able to use CDMA is much smaller than what is currently used with a competing technology called GSM. GSM is more portable ( pop your sim card out and move to another phone ), is used by vastly more carrier worldwide and more importantly GSM allows for simultaneous data AND voice to occur at the same time. Remember those iPhone commercials where people are able to call someone AND surf the web at the same time? You won’t be able to do this on the iPhone with Verizon.

2. IPhone not a 4G Device : Not only will the iPhone on Verizon be a CDMA device, it won’t be running on the new LTE (4G) network that the Android smartphone coming out around the same time will be on. What does this mean? If users are looking for fast download speeds ( 12 – 25 Mb/s ), they should skip the iPhone and purchase one of the many Android devices with LTE on the market.

3. Users Are Stubborn : It’s hard for users to change devices. So many of Verizon’s users have bought Android phones. In fact, many phones were probably just bought this past holiday season. Sorry Apple, but these users are now Android users. If the iPhone would have been on Verizon BEFORE, say Thanksgiving or even earlier in the year, it would have carried more weight. But the millions of Android devices ( recall that 300,000 A DAY were being activated at one point ) this past holiday season are now Android users and as we all know, it’s very hard to get a user to convert from one platform to another.

4. Competition is good : The assumption has been all along that when the iPhone came to Verizon, the other platforms would not be able to step up and compete. If there is one thing that I have seen in the past year is that competition in the smartphone market forces companies to innovate and create new products, new ways of solving problems and new technology. Look at Windows Phone 7 for example. Microsoft has put out a very solid device in the face of strict competition. It’s still a first stab ( arguable a much better first stab than Google’s own G1 in 2008 ) and Microsoft is innovating by trying a different design approach and user experience than both Apple and Google. Likewise with Palm WebOS V2. It’s a risk, but something that companies need to do to compete. With the iPhone coming to Verizon, it just means that Google MUST continue to improve Android. It’s a win for Android users!

5. Need Other Carriers Besides Verizon : There is still T-Mobile, Sprint and many other networks around the world that after today still DON’T have the iPhone! Even though we will see many hundreds of millions of user’s having access to the iPhone while staying on a network running CDMA technology, there’s still many, many hundreds of millions more potential user’s that this announcement doesn’t affect. If the iPhone were suddenly announced on all of the carriers in the US and worldwide that Android devices were, this would be much more of a threat.

Some people might read this as a negative article, but in reality I welcome the iPhone to Verizon! The more devices that are accessible to user, regardless of the network are better for consumers. This whole idea of “exclusive” devices per carrier is quite maddening. Owning and using both an Android device and an iPhone, I enjoy each for its own merits. At the end of the day, people will buy what devices they enjoy using and won’t have to deal with carriers exclusive terms. I dream of a day when all phones are available on any network and the consumer has true choice. Until that day though, we’ll have to wait years for an announcement like we heard today and realize that things that maybe seemed so ground breaking in a carrier controlled world, actually aren’t all that special. If things were just more open from the beginning ( imagine the market share Apple would have today if the iPhone was available on all networks back in January of 2007! ), we would have increased competition, advancement in the technology and announcements like we heard today won’t be such a… hmm, what’s the word? meh.

Over the past few weeks, we here at Recursive Awesome were able to get our hands on the 2 mobile devices Palm is currently offering on the Verizon Network – The Palm Pre and Palm Pixi running their WebOS operating system.

Thanks to @albertmaruggi, @karenvzw and @rshidla

At the end of the day, I must say I am fairly impressed with their offerings.

It wasn’t difficult to give them back and return to my Nexus One, but they definitely do a fit a certain niche in the market and I’m a little surprised that the Palm WebOS sales have slumped as bad as they have.

On one hand you have a major carrier like Verizon doing a fairly good job of promoting the device, both in stores and in print advertising. I can’t go more than a day or so without seeing another Palm commercial, billboard or sign on a bus or at my local light-rail station stop. It would seem that there would be a lot more excitement over the device with it’s somewhat unique design, flip out keyboard, snappy interface, multi-touch (Android just got this in its latest release), and now supporting video capture and Flash. It seems like the time would be right for Palm to make a major move in to the market. Alas, though, that may not be the case.

What’s To Like

The first thing that struck me when using both of these devices was the performance. Despite their small size, they both felt very responsive and able to do multiple tasks at the same time without much lag. In comparison to some of the smaller Android devices and first generation iPhones, Palm has a very good start. They seem to have done their homework in optimization of  WebOS and keeping processes lightweight and execution times short during launch and usage.

Speaking of execution of apps, WebOS allows the user to run multiple application at the same time very easily. The Palm devices have a “flick” type of gesture support that you perform on the area below the screen. If you want to jump out of an application you swipe your finger (or thumb) vertically and you are presented with a scrolling list of applications that are running. You then can swipe side to side to select the application you would like to jump into. I found at first this a little different and cumbersome, as I was used to looking for an actual button to get out of an application (i.e. the home or close buttons on iPhone or Android). However, after playing with the phone for a hour or so, it actually became very easy to master and was a feature that I got very accustomed to and liked a lot. Interestingly , it seems that Palm agrees and realizes that it might take users some time to try out this swipe feature ( when you start up the phone for the first time, they force you through an entire tutorial and exercise on how to use this gesture feature ).

Another nifty feature is what Palm calls “Synergy”. It links together all of your contacts into one list, with calendars, and status updates pulled in from all of your various accounts (GMail, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Exchange, etc.).

I also personally like the fact that WebOS is built on top of the Linux operating system and all things being equal will support a company pushing the use of open source software over their own proprietary software and lock-in model.

What’s To Dislike

So, I’ve given a pretty good list of the likes, but what about some things that should be improved? Much of my dislikes revolve more around the hardware than the actual operating system itself. It might be because I’ve now gotten used to having a 3.7″ AMO-LED screen on my Nexus One, but it felt to me like the device was pretty cheap and not very sturdy. The screen seemed small and the device felt at times more like a toy than a true smartphone that would stand up to the test of time.

Another issue I had was with the keyboard. Neither of the Palm devices offer a virtual (on-screen) keyboard, so you are stuck using the physical keyboard on the device. While adequate I found the keys to be very small and difficult to use at times. They again felt cheap and found myself having to hunt for a number of different symbols and punctuation marks. Additionally, since the Palm Pre’s keyboard is hidden behind the screen, this requires you to pop the screen out vertically to access the keyboard. While this worked well, when the screen is open the device felt very top heavy and made using the keyboard not as nice as it could be, since I felt like the device was going to slip out my hands.

Finding and opening up the slot for the micro-USB plugin was not at all easy to use. Maybe over time the small plastic cover would be easier to open, but I found myself almost breaking the cover off trying to get access to charge and plug-in the phone.

Finally, and the most largest flaw with Palm (and probably the one that will ultimately prove to biggest hurdle) is getting application developers to create apps for this platform. At Recursive Awesome, we have done some work developing applications for these devices when it was first launched last summer, but since that time, none of our clients have been asking much at all about WebOS. If there are no applications being developed for the platform, end users certainly will suffer from lack of functionality of the device and certainly will start looking to other options of smartphones that they will purchase. While I have not seen any statistics on the true number of applications available, most think the number is in the few thousands, as opposed to the tens, or even more than one hundred thousand found on iPhone and Android.

Conclusion

So, who does this device work for? The prime target I see these devices working for are my parents generation. People that are not technology savvy users, that want a basic web experience with out all of the bells and whistles. I could see myself recommending this device to my mother or even grandmother for that matter. It still feels like a PDA however in some ways. Basic interface, somewhat intuitive to use (one you learn the gestures), and allows you to have all of your contacts and email in the palm of your hand.

In the end, it’s nothing really groundbreaking, but really an extension of some of the old palm devices I have owned in the past. That’s not to say that Palm is out of the game, but with the Windows Phone 7 coming out later this year, Palm will have a lot of competition on its hands. It already is a distant 4th on the smartphone circus behind iPhone, Android, Blackberry and without an injection of applications and buzz around the devices, 2010 might be the year that Palm is bought (or withers away in to the ether). Which is kind of too bad, since I do think that their WebOS, does provide some very useful and new ideas when it comes to interface design.