if connected

[updated July 1st]
When designing mobile phones there are always compromises. The trick is to make sure that the compromises that a manufacturer chooses are the right ones for their target market.
With iPhone, Apple have have chosen to omit physical buttons and go all touch: The upside is that there’s much more space available on the handset for an enormous colour screen with an innovative “double touch” interface. The potential drawback is its impact for one-handed control and for writing SMS or email.
Early US reviews are mixed for text input: Mossberg says he got over his initial dislike, NYT is lukewarm: “text entry is not the iPhone’s strong suit” US reviewers have focused attention on mobile email as the main application that requires text input. In Europe, it’s different. Mobile email usage in Europe is fairly niche: Just 10 percent of consumers use mobile email.
iPhone is a consumer-centric phone, rather than a business one. So, SMS is the key application requiring text input in Europe, not email. SMS has been ubiquitous here from the launch of the first 2G networks in 1992-4. Every European digital mobile phone has supported SMS from the start, and interoperability here has always been a given, rather than a promise.
European mobile users are adept at texting with a standard phone number pad. They haven’t embraced the US-focused Danger hiptop devices with their qwerty keyboards in any volume partly because of this, and have found little desire to investigate Treo’s for their thumbpads. Treos have been strongly business focused devices.
Almost one fifth of Europeans send more than 10 text messages a day mostly on phones with conventional interaction methods, like number pads. More casual SMS usage is ubiquitous.
For a European, SMS is an absolutely integral part of making a great mobile phone, rather than an added feature.
My concern on iPhone is whether the text input experience delivers while mobile: How does it feel while writing a text one handed while walking down the street? How does it feel over days and weeks of texting, and one-handed dialling usage?
Without physical feedback — haptics — it’s almost impossible to use an on-screen keyboard without looking…. and on the move that leads to the experience of walking into things or getting run over.
The other compromise with foregoing physical buttons is, ironically the available screen real estate. While Apple gains space to include a vast screen on iPhone, the UI but has to display an on-screen keyboard when needed for input. So, the extra screen size becomes most usable for consumption/playback experiences, and is not so useful for input/creative/text communication ones. And, an on-screen keyboard that is designed for fingers must be even bigger than one designed for a stylus, and Apple have gone for a finger-based UI.
It’s all about trade-offs and compromises and Apple have differentiated from existing mobile phones with their UI approach, as they need to do as a new entrant to the market.
These input compromises will not prevent the current iPhone from selling. People are different. Not everyone will find this an issue, and there will be enough people worldwide that don’t use SMS heavily that Apple can still hit its 10 million target.
If Apple ever wants to become a mass market mobile handset maker in Europe — and that goal is not certain in any way, as Apple may choose to focus on the high end — Apple must either persuade consumers that its text input approach is better, or create a family of iPhones including models with different interaction methods. If any company can convince consumers that its way is best, that company is Apple.

When my Windows Mobile had the screen fault I reverted to my old Palm OS-powered Treo 650, hence I have made so many phone posts this week.

It struck me again, how it’s the little things make or break the mobile/handheld experience. The things you only learn after days or weeks of using a phone…. and not from a demo or a feature list.

The Treo Palm OS UI is superb. Unlike the ideological divide between Nokia (no touch) and Apple (only touch), Palm successfully combines a standard touch screen with hardware buttons smoothly. Users can use the keyboard to do virtually everything one handed, and often without needing to look at the screen. Or, they can use the touch screen…

The phone feels amazingly fast in use although the OS can only run one program at a time (with a few minor exceptions) as launching a different application is near instant, and applications remember state, so the effect is often identical to multitasking.

The Treo’s performance resembles a small Citroen 2cv, Volkswagen Polo, or Renault 5, but with a 5 litre 16 valve engine inside. The OS is old and mature and was designed to run on much less capable hardware than the 300 odd Mhz CPU inside (which is almost identical to the current crop of smartphones from other vendors). So, the hardware is similar, but the Treo feels faster.

It’s subjective speed that matters to a user, not the technology under the bonnet.

The Treo UI makes the address book, diary, notes etc. feel even faster as common tasks require a minimum of clicks, and quick launch buttons enable one button access to all the main applications. The phone UI is the best I have ever used, it’s highly intuitive, beating even my 1999 Nokia.

However, the Treo’s appearance has always been an odd man out in Europe. The styling resembles a 1950s US Chevy, or ’58 Edsel, in aesthetics: all shiny chrome and strange shapes. To my European eye, it all looks extremely out of place.

The other failings in the 650 are more significant: sound quality and mic, the lack of modern multimedia, and some system instability due to the OS’ pensionable age. If the voice quality was more tolerable, and the form factor was smaller and more European (even smaller than the 680!) then the Treo 650 would make a stunning current phone.

As it is, there is lots in the Treo that larger mobile phone vendors are still to learn and understand.

Nokia hopes the just available N95 will be a breakthrough media handheld. Yet, although it’s not due out for many months in Europe, many expect Europe must wait for the iPhone for that to happen.

The design of these two mobiles reflects an ideological chasm in thinking:

The N95 is far from being just a mere phone: it has a remarkably good 5 megapixel camera, GPS, a large and very clear colour screen, dedicated music controls on the innovative double slide mechanism that also offers a conventional number pad for texting and dialling, an open Symbian OS with an existing range of add-on software and games, etc. etc. etc.

The new Nokia N95 is everywhere in London. Billboards, phone shops, even in many people’s hands (at least near the Jupiter London office). TeliaSonera reports the N95 is already one of its top 10 selling phones in Sweden.

But unlike the iPhone, the N95 has no touch screen. Nokia believes mobile phones must be completely controllable one handed, and follows that practice even on the ‘Communicator’ range with the new E90.

Nokia does deliver a great one-handed experience in the N95. Plus, as a result, that beautiful N95 screen shouldn’t pick up fingerprints, or scratches, and it has one less physical layer in the construction that would otherwise reduce the picture quality.

Apple’s iPhone is the opposite. It has an innovative “double touch” interface optimised for finger usage, and has few (none?) physical buttons. The iPhone’s OS is as flexible as the N95′s millions-of-installed-base Symbian OS, but Apple plans to retain tight control, and ensure that all add-ons, including games, media, video, whatever, deliver a smooth high quality experience that pleases consumers enough to spend loads.

This is Apple thinking at its most different.

The N95 is Nokia at its best, but also at its most stubborn. Nokia continues to iterate existing mobile smartphone designs — Finnish Kaizen — hoping that their approach will cross a tipping point in the N95 that feels just right, sells millions of handsets, and in turn creates the ideal platform to boost mobile media sales.

Both are worthy approaches. Both deserve to do well. Both may succeed in the market. This is one ideological battle I’m enjoying tracking.
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The coverage of web accessibility (BBC News / W3 WAI response) raises some interesting points. Disabled access is important, but there are other reasons to make a site accessible that have revenue impact: accessibility usually delivers a better customer experience; pages tend to load faster; they are easier for search engines to index leading to better rankings; etc. etc.
Advertising revenue will become another plus. This piece in Google’s AdSense FAQ (branded ‘AdWords’ to advertisers) caught my eye:

2. How do I optimize my site for the most relevant ads?
Our ability to target ads to your site depends on the content and structure of your site. Here are some basic guidelines for optimizing your site:
- Place ads on pages that predominately contain text — only text is used to determine a page’s context.
- If you have a robots.txt file, you’ll need to remove it or add the following two lines to your robots.txt to allow our content bot to crawl your site:
User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*
Disallow:
- If your page contains frames, select the ‘Framed page’ checkbox when generating the ad layout code for that page.
- Place ads on pages that don’t require a login.
- Place ads on content pages that don’t change frequently.
By following these tips, we can better serve the most relevant AdWords ads on all of your content pages. If we are unable to crawl or understand the content on your site, we may serve public service ads or your specified Alternate Ads, for which you will not accrue any AdSense earnings.

So, the bottom line is:
Accessibility to Google’s indexing robots = Greater contextual ad revenues

Go and take a look at MyOrigo ‘s website for a really innovative take on handheld devices. Their idea is that how you hold a device inputs into what you see on the screen. For example:

• Tilt the device forward – the document on the screen scrolls
• Touch the screen – the device vibrates to provide feedback, even in noisy surroundings
• Rotate the device 90 degrees – the screen switches automatically from portrait to landscape

The first example from My Origo is a mobile phone that is due to ship in 2003, but the principle could be applied to other devices from well known manufacturers, such as television remote controls or mp3 players.