Posted: October 6th, 2009 | Author: Saleh Esmaeili | Filed under: Mobile | Tags: android, blackberry, chrome, flash, htc, htc hero, iphone, Mobile | Comments Off
HTC always made great gadgets but the no-no point was always the Windows Mobile Platform even the new WM6 does look scary. So I decided to go the Android route with my next phone n’ got my hands on a beautiful White HTC Hero.
Back in some ancient days I was a die-hard Sony Ericsson fan ’till they blew it with Xperia’s late launch. The first look at the Hero got me flashbacks to my old Sony Ericsson P1.
Hard buttons, Trackball, and a beautiful Multitouch Screen
If you were a hardcore user of Blackberries you’re gonna’ love the Hero as it combines basic hard buttons that are there in Blackberries; Send, Cancel, Menu, Home, Back, Search and in addition to the Trackball there’s the Search button that pops search functionality into supporting applications and widgets. Brilliant!
That means you access your phone mode along with the dialer, history, and phone book by a press of a button(Send button). You cancel everything with the Cancel button(Disconnect button). Then comes the useful Return/Back button, this one is borrowed from Sony Ericsson designs combined with the Trackball. Remember the Jockdial and the Return button on the sides of “P” series?
Search button is amazing, on normal modes it fires Google search, on Application/Widget/Page mode fires document or files search. Neat! Menu button, is there too.
In the first days of using Hero’s interface you’d be confused as no options are there on the screen, all are hidden ’till you fire up the Menu button. It could feel odd if you start using the Hero after an iPhone but would make sense if you were coming from the berry world.
Screen is good, not as bright as iPhone but it’s really responsive and best of all is the vibrating feedback mechanism. Nothin’ new in that department. iPhone does it, Palm Pre does it, and the new N900 does it too. So it’s all old news. Horizontal view, G-sensors n’ all the goodies. Doesn’t come short in any of the interactive screen features. Pinch in n’ out, flip, drag, swipe, you name it. It’s got it. But, where it shines is at tiny spaces, the sensors are so accurate that even though on-screen keyboard keys are tiny it detects the right key every time.
Keyboard
It’s not a surprise to have an on-screen keyboard that aims at competing with iPhone’s and it does it right. On vertical mode keys might look small to you but when used they’re just as useful as iPhone’s big keys. Unlike iPhone every key has a lower character and a symbol, jus’ like a regular computer labeled keyboard. Holding a key gives you options to choose from -> less taps.
On Horizontal mode, keyboard expands and gets you good chunky keys that you can easily tap with your thumbs. They’ve done a great job on this one. Writing e-mails are fast once again. Words/Phrases prediction is great too, not only give you option(s) it saves what you type if not in dictionary n’ the best thing is that it tells you it’s saving it when it does.
Keys feedback is the plus on Hero’s keyboard. Upon every key tap the phone vibrates smoothly giving you the feel of having done something that needs to be acknowledged unlike iPhone that gives you a sound, Hero gives you a little shake.
Widgets & Screens
It seems more like a trial, a test perhaps. The Hero comes with Seven screens including Home. A closer look figures it’s actually a series of pages just like the iPhone. The only addition to that are Widgets.
I once called Hero a Palm Pre wannabe. And I still hold my statement. It does allow you to have multiple Screens, run applications in the background and sport a beautifull drawable Notification bar. And treats your e-mails/messages as cards in Widget mode. Wait a second, all this were introduced by Palm Pre? Right?
Storage & Performance
1GB external SD Card + 256MB internal memory. Not bad. Not gonna’ replace your iPod!
It could get sluggish at times, specially when switching screens or changing from Vertical to Horizontal mode. Updating to the latest ROM n’ Build solves that problem and in addition adds a new feature to Camera that enables you to select your Focus area by a tap on the screen.
Battery, Sound Quality, Speakerphone n’ Headphone
It didn’t feel any different than iPhone or Blackberry. Use data & make a good number of lengthy phone calls n’ the orange light goes on.
Sound quality is decent it doesn’t come short at all. Speakerphone is a little cheapo on the Hero n’ takes you back to walky-talky days. Lousy speakerphone.
3.5mm headphones performed really well even at high speeds on the highway. I was impressed when I was asked if I was at home or office while doin’ 160 on the highway in a loud car.
Camera, it’s 5MP
Pictures quality are very good for a camera phone. Video recording goes really well given you had decent lighting at your scene. Sharing photos n’ videos couldn’t be hard when you can choose from Facebook to Twitter to Flickr n’ Youtube. All there.
Manual focus is one of my favorite features in Hero’s camera. You tap on the area where you want to focus n’ click all done. Lovely!
Android n’ Chrome with Adobe Flash 10
All the stuff mentioned above are nothing but the form. The functionality uniqueness lies in two important ingredients for Hero’s success; Andrioid’s Google Connectivity and Google’s Chrome supporting Adobe Flash 10.
Google Contacts n’ Calendars are great. They sync very well over the air. This isn’t a surprise, think about it, we all expected Google Docs n’ Spreadsheets to be included as well. It’s a Good Start.
Chrome does magic. Opens any website for you. Even those that have JS problems on Local websites. I recharged Salik with it. Played Google Videos on it. Vimeo, any flash based Video. Saw ads n’ abused some clicks on Arabian Business. It supports tabs, jus’ like iPhone(let’s say they took a page out of iPhone’s book).
Facebook’s integration is nice n’ easy but could be very confusing in the beginning. Specially if you download Facebook for Android. One useless peice of application. The web version does a better job as it is the same version that serves iPhone.
Email
If you couldn’t like anything about the Hero this is the function that will get you back to it. E-Mail client on Hero is one of the best I’ve ever seen. Specially if you setup your account to connect via IMAP. It’s fast, crispy and the UI can’t be any better. Google is all about search so you’re darn right it gets Search right. Connecting to your Server folders are nothing but some taps. Attachments? No problem. Any other standard feature that you’d need. All there. But with style and an intuitive interaction. My favorite part of the day is when I have to read a lengthy e-mail while on the Go. I like it Horizontal. And if the e-mail was HTML then treat it like a browser window. All Good.
That’s just the Standard e-mail client that HTC ships with Hero. How about the very native GMail Client? Nothing but app-poetry.
Application Market
Not impressive. That quite said. But then, you have a fully capable web browser that could access desktop Flash websites, what could be possibly missing? Yea, a lot. Considering Android’s age and user base it is fair to say it’s early to have high expectations from the Marketplace. Expected to grow fast. Fingers crossed.
Hero ships with an elegant Twitter client(Peep) that has a beautiful Widget too. Then you downlowd Twidroid you finally have all your contro back on Twitter.
Youtube, Image folder, Music n’ Multimedia Player. All today’s standards, loading images from Facebook, Flickr, n’ your local files. The Music player is Fine specially if you use HTC’s widget. Not an iPod though!
In Brief
It’s a phone full of features, could be complicated for those who don’t play around with gadgets. Confusing enough to setup for feature phone users. It’s not a phone to show off with n’ be unique. Nope! If you’ve come from a place where you loved applications, go back, it’s still not time for applications on Android.
The Hero is not that phone to make statements with. Just a Smartphone that happens to be amazing under the skin. Looks odd. Very odd to some. If you’re not gonna’ play with it n’ exploit it to explore Android just don’t get one and stick to your iPhones n’ Blackberries.
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Posted: October 5th, 2009 | Author: Saleh Esmaeili | Filed under: Micro-Sites, Mobile, Mobile-Web | Tags: adobe flash, android, blackberry, browser, flash, flash mobile, htc hero, iphone, Mobile, mobile ads, Mobile-Web, online advertising | Comments Off
Adobe Flash is gonna’ hit Smartphones before you know it, they announced their support for Blackberry, Android, WebOS, Windows Mobile, and Symbian systems among the others.
I’ve been using an Android phone for nearly a month now and I do have the beta version of the Adobe Flash 10 player on it. Yes, it’s Flashy and it’s seamles.
Online Ads & Microsites go Mobile
With such a multimedia capable player going mobile there’s no more divide between Computer n’ Handheld devices in terms of reach and accessibility by advertisers. Having that said, many iPhone/Android applications that were made around limitation of having no Flash support to gather data from Flash based websites will deminish for good.
So what happens next? Now the whole tranformation of Desktop browser Ads to Mobile browser Ads starts. It won’t be anymore about showing the right content to Mobile users but showing Mobile Ads to Mobile users. And this transition will take place
FAST! This change in Ad format or utility will be fast for two important reasons:
- The same authorware, serving, and reporting systems that are used for normal web banners and matrixes could utilize n’ serve Mobile Ads
- Unlike the Mobile Web(sites), Mobi, or em-dot Mobile Flash Ads won’t be a luxury add-on to your website to make it Accessible on Mobiles but in addition accelerating sites Ad-Space-Burnup; Selling more Ads. Thus, it will be a priority
So whoever said Mobile Ads will be slow, and that year would come sometime but we never know “when”. It’s Now!.
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Posted: September 1st, 2009 | Author: Saleh Esmaeili | Filed under: Mobile | Tags: blackberry, bold, etisalat, iphone, palm pre, review, rim, switch | 3 Comments »
From day one of the Palm Pre launch I had it planned to be my next phone. It never happened as Palm didn’t even set plans to go unlocked or even reach to ME anytime soon. And the community of the Hackers n’ Crackers are still struggling with unlocking the Pre. So I moved on and after having a Blackberry Bold for nearly ten months, going through nightmares of malfunctioning patch from Etisalat and another Removal patch from RIM, the phone was in a bad shape n’ I had lost the love for it. I tried to Wipe it. It was good, but it was time to let it go.
Came iPhone, the phone that I used as my iPod in the car. Magically it worked all fine with the car head-unit, communicating all smooth, sending Album Artwork to Kenwood’s headunit screen. So it was what everyone else thought was an iPod Touch. But it was an iPhone 3G.
Got that out n’ put it to use as a Phone. The transition is a heck of a confusing one. Moving from Blackberry to iPhone is really like changing your left-hand-car with a right-hand one.
Keyboard
As it happens with every phone replacement, keyboards are all unique. But moving from a Hard keyboard to a Touch keyboard was a huge step. The feedback at iPhone’s keyboard is an amazing one, but yet, I had to go through a real tough time for around 10 days ’till I got the hang of the keyboard. Still, I’d be at least Five times faster typing with a Blackberry.
Phone Mode
One of the main features that I miss from Blackberry is the immediate access to the Phone. In Blackberry, and also in Nokia E series, Sony Ericson P Series and the Windows Mobiles, you get to access your Phone by typing on numbers/typing contact names or by pressing on the Send button. You don’t need to enter “Phone Mode”. Phone comes first, then the rest of the goodies. This is the hardest thing to do on iPhone. First you need to “tap” the phone icon then god forbid you were on the Recent Calls then you have to make another tap to reach to your keypads or contacts. And when you reach to your contacts you gotta’ scroll to a letter n’ then again scroll ’till you find the contact you wanna’ call.
However, with the 3.0 update and having Spotlight as a panel. This is partially solved. So you open up Spotlight n’ type a name n’ there you go. But if it’s a number that you have to dial, it’s still short.
Indicators
iPhone is a chique device when it comes to interaction with the user, but somehow too gentle. It’s so nice that it doesn’t bother you if you skipped an e-mail. You’ll only see it if you unlocked the screen. Unlike Blackberry the signal light keeps on being Red ’till you do something about the notifications. It’s in-your-face style of notification.
Browsing
No comparison at all. Safari Mobile. Can’t get better. The only advantage with using Blackberry’s browser was the fact that the Internet connection was not proxied, meaning it was wide open. That was a plus.
E-mail & Productivity
While in the e-mail business Blackberry wins easily, the e-mail client has lots o’ shortcomings such as Truncating big e-mails and hard to use Menus. The search function comes really short on Blackberry. Once you pass a thousands of e-mails you’ll see how slow your e-mail client becomes. On iPhone, you get access to your IMAP, POP3 or any other e-mails straight with no proxy in the middle. But, it ain’t as live and connected as Blackberry. Not even close to Pushmail. But then it’s all about UI. E-mails are so easy on the eyes to read on the iPhone.
Data Plans
I was on the domestic unlimited BIS packages. Even with that I’d often be charged with Data Usage?! by Etisalat, sometimes around AED 200. which is weird. Unlimited, but no YouTube. Tiny screen, slow n’ incapable web browser. What’s the point of the unlimited package then?
With iPhone I’ve been using the pay-as-you-go for now as I’m not sure which phone I’ll land with, it is damn expensive! But it’s easy to use. And I enjoy browsing on it.
Applications
Well, no comment, it ain’t no secret. iPhone beats all. To my amusement there was Need For Speed, GangStar and even Call of Duty. Now naturally I’m not a gamer, but I loved playing Need For Speed on it.
Synchronization & Computer Connectivity
Both suck! Word! If my smallest Nokia could sync it all using iSync through bluetooth, why should iPhone or Blackberry be wired. Blackberry doesn’t even come with a Mac suite. I managed to Sync using the Missing Sync and synced with Google Calender and contacts using Spanning Sync. I don’t need to do that with iPhone as it syncs all good with my Addressbook, Entourage, and iCal. All good. But still, 2009, and we’re still wired to sync??
Twitter n’ Facebook
Applications. Hands down, iPhone wins huge. It’s so much fun to tweet when the user interface is so intuitive and crying for you to scroll. Specially with Facebook 3. It’s just all there.
I’m using Twitterific & Twitterfon. And I love’em both. I keep on swinging. I like Twitterfon cuz it’s a mini Twitterfox to my eyes. But I love Twitterific because it’s done by Icon Factory and gives me the feel of the rich UI of Tweetdeck. Though Tweetdeck has an iPhone version now.
Blackberry is just out of the game in these arenas. After 10 months I still wasn’t used to Twitterberry. And the Facebook application? Nope, I was on the Web Browser instead.
Storage, Camera, n’ Music
Storage, no need to even go there, 16GB vs. 1GB. Both have lousy cameras but iPhone does a good job with lighting. Not bad at all! Music, no comparison, iPod built-in.
Speakers n’ Mic
I’m not a headphone person nor I like to look like Will Smith from iRobot with a bluetooth headset hanging on my ear. But iPhone comes short on Speaker phone.
Batterly life
Depsite what is advertised, both are lousy for talk time. If yo do Data & Talk on’em you’re down with max 3-5 hours. Bold comes short on batterly life if you keep Lots o’ online sessions open such as Blackberry Messenger, MSN, GTalk n’ Twitterberry. The vibrator kills the battery more than anything else, how’s that for a fact? iPhone is no better. After all what’s iPhone if I didn’t use Youtube n’ played my iPod music? Do that, n’ you need to plug in.
I need a combination
That’s why I was gonna’ go for Pre, but god knows when it’s gonna’ come down? This morning I came across Nokia N900 n’ now I’m actually somewhere close to what I’m gonna’ get next.
With all the shortcomings, Blackberry Bold is the phone I kept the longest with me. It’s a record, I like gettin’ new Phones so I let go really fast. But I guess, I didn’t find a serious phone in the market after the Bold. It’s Practical, but it ain’t fun at all. Think of it as n H1. You can go to war with it, but you wouldn’t be able to park it in the basement.
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