Mobile Content

Today I’d like to share with you some rather surprising mobile industry data conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International between August 3 to September 5, 2007, among a sample of 2,400 adults, 18 and older. I’m not sure what you’ll be able to do with it, but nonetheless this is some juicy data for sure.
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The 3G iPhone will undoubtedly generate huge sales for Jobs and company. But, how much of that is due to hype? I think most of us know that answer, and most know that BlackBerry users aren’t about to leap into Apple’s bosom.

To help illustrate this point, we’ve compared the new iPhone to a couple of popular cell phones from that other smartphone maker, BlackBerry. Forget the iPhone’s horrific virtual keyboard — you know the one that requires you have elfin fingertips if you want any sort of accuracy. It’s the features and accessibility the iPhone doesn’t have that will keep BlackBerry users coming back for more:

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What’s going to be the next touchscreen phenom? You might think that the 3G iPhone will remain king of the hill, but the mobile gurus at Wirefly have taken Apple’s gadget to the lab and compared it to three other leading touchscreen contenders (HTC Touch, Samsung Glyde, & LG Vu) that offer as much, if not more, than the iPhone: (more…)

And we are back for part 2 of the battle royale between mobile browsers. I’m still awaiting word back from HTC about my new Touch Pro but I’ll let that slide…for now.

Access NetFront 3.5 (Technical Preview)

From the guys who made Palm’s proprietary OS comes this simple but elegant solution. The first screen shot is the default view when a web page is loaded. The second screen shot is what happens when you double tap the screen. A full view of the web page is placed in front of the viewing area, allowing you to use your fingers to slide the viewing box (the red outline) to the content you want to see. Double tapping a second time on that box zooms you into that content area.

Pros:
• Easy to use because of similarities to Pocket I.E.
• Fast and smooth finger scrolling.
• Simple interface for power users who don’t need a lot of bells and whistles.
• A small page map appears as you scroll, so you always know where you are on the page.
• Tabbed browsing.

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First, before I start this entry: If anyone from HTC is reading this, I’d like a Touch Pro please. It’s a great way to get brownie points with one of the top Windows Mobile geeks here at Wirefly. Thank you.

Now down to business. Ever since the 800 pound smartphone made by Apple hit the market with the force of a mega-ton bomb, mobile internet browsing hasn’t been the same. With its finger friendliness, ease of use and revolutionary zoom, Apple’s Mobile Safari is one of the first modern mobile browsers that can claim to deliver the full internet. The problem is, if you have a Windows Mobile device, Blackberry, Palm OS device or Symbian (Nokia) device, you’ll never get to use Mobile Safari, for obvious reasons. That’s where the following heroes step in (for some) to save you from your WAP-enabled prison with finger friendly solutions. Let’s take a look at the most well known browsers and how they all render my second favorite site (behind this blog of course!).

Pocket Internet Explorer (aka Pocket IE or PIE)

This is the default browser you get with Windows Mobile (5, 6 and 6.1) and the control variable I’m using for the sake of this (and my subsequent) post. It’s not very finger friendly nor does it give a great full browsing experience, but it gets the job done for quick browsing. Microsoft was developing a promising browser codenamed “Deepfish” but the last update I’ve seen was April of last year.

Pros:
• Easy to use on the go.
• Pocket IE 6.1 has a zoom out and zoom in function.
• Useful for quickly reading WAP enabled websites

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Television on the phone. It will be highly useful on trains, waiting for planes, or for the more brave, watching while walking down the street. What better way to while away the time in a dentist’s waiting room?

In order to watch TV signals on the phone, a couple things must first be present: a decent color screen on the phone, and a way to receive TV signals. The latter has become pretty common – almost every phone made today has a decent screen. Receiving a TV signal on the phone is a much more interesting challenge as there are several ways to accomplish this goal.

Many of the east-Asian phone companies have integrated regular TV receivers directly into the handsets allowing the users to watch regular broadcast TV. This solution so far has not been adopted into the United States. The two technologies currently found in the states can be divided into two major groups: those that rely on the data-features of the carrier and those that have discrete TV signal broadcasts.

TV as Data
Sprint and Verizon have focused on pushing TV service through their 3G data services. TV shows are converted to digital files and then sent to the phones. This technology is a close cousin of the way video is distributed on the Internet.

The Good: Since the TV signal is piped through the data services, broadcasts are generally available every place the user has a good data connection.
The Bad: Picture quality is mediocre and the TV isn’t a live feed (no sporting events).

Enter MediaFLO
AT&T has decided to go a different route to serve up TV to the cellular phone. They are rolling out a network that distributes TV via discrete signals. In a nutshell, they are broadcasting TV by itself and the phone can pick up on it. As of now, Wirefly offers two phones with AT&T’s Live TV functionality: the LG Vu CU920, and the Samsung Access.

The Good: The TV feed is live, and picture quality is pretty good.
The Bad: The current network where the signal is broadcast is currently limited to certain major citites.

The Bottom Line
TV on the mobile phone is still a developing technology and the coming years will see a lot of upgrades, alterations, and probably false starts. That being said, even somewhat choppy quality is better than nothing when stuck in a dentist’s waiting room.

A fascinating revolution is underway in the cell phone world that goes beyond the ‘Break Brick’ days of your Blackberry. Nokia is running full speed towards bringing gaming to your cell phone with its N-Gage Internet platform for devices such as the Nokia N81.

Not to be out done, Sony Ericsson is leveraging the Sony experience in gaming with the Playstation to introduce gaming to its handsets. Phones such as Apple’s iPhone, and the soon-to-be-released RIM Blackberry 9000 series with expanded Internet capabilities, are sure going to enter the fray. But it seems to be Nokia and the N-Gage at the forefront.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Nokia plans to leverage the community surrounding its N-Gage platform to aggressively enter the gaming market. They will provide high graphic games at a reasonable price point for download ($10-$15). As more and more handsets offer faster and faster internet experiences on better displays this appears to be a completely new way to expand the uses of your cell phone.

What does all this mean? Well, in a nutshell, that cell phone is not just for calling anymore.