Feb 17

MWC 2010: The Year of the Android

Posted in: Android, Mwc2010, Phones, Today's Chili

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BARCELONA — This year at the Mobile World Congress is the year of Android. Google’s operating system debuted here two years ago. Last year we expected a slew of handsets, and saw just a trickle. This year, Android is everywhere, on handsets from HTC, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and even Garmin-Asus. If this were the world of computers, Android would be in a similar position to Windows: Pretty much every manufacturer puts it on its machines.

This is great news for us, the consumer. Android is stable, powerful and now it even runs Flash (I got a sneak peek of Flash running on a Motorola handset here at the show. It crashed). It’s even better for the manufacturers, as — unlike Windows Mobile — Android is free. It’s also open, so the phone makers can tweak it and trick it out as much as they like.

And they do like. Most of the Android phones here at Mobile World Congress are running custom versions of Android, which differentiates them and, in theory at least, makes them easier to use, hiding the complexities of a proper multitasking OS from the user.

HTC has its Sense UI, which organizes the functions into three areas: the terribly named Make It Mine, Stay Close and Discover the Unexpected. In time, we’re sure you could get used to it, but in testing the HTC phones are just confusing.

Better is Motorola’s Blur concept, which organizes everything for you. When you first use a Blur phone, you give it all your logins: e-mail, Twitter, Flickr and everything else. It then pulls in all this information and puts it together for you, grouping the contact details, photos and, say, Tweets from one person all in one place.

These updates then sit on the home screen, similar to what Windows Mobile 7 will do, and let you get to what you need fast.

Others just add eye-candy. Sony Ericsson’s Rachel UI does little more than organize lists as floating pieces of translucent paper. It looks good, but it’s not really usable.

One of the criticisms of Android is that it is already fragmenting into various ghettos, and software made for one handset may or may not work on another. This is true even of the central Android Marketplace. But this is to miss the point of Android. Geeks like you and me will be buying the cutting edge Droids and Nexus Ones and loading them up with applications.

But the general consumer doesn’t care. They just buy the phone and get apps from either the handset maker or their carrier (if they add apps at all). They probably don’t even know they have an “Android phone”.

The real customer for Android? It’s the handset manufacturers. They have been given a customizable, powerful and actively developed OS, and they get it free. Better, they can put in on any device they like. And this is what Microsoft is up against with its fussy new Windows Mobile 7, which has the cheek to specify minimum hardware requirements. Forget about the iPhone. Microsoft is in a death-match with Google and its free OS.

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Feb 17

Hands-On With HTC Desire, Legend, HD Mini

Posted in: Android, Mwc2010, Phones, Today's Chili

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Barcelona — HTC has launched three new phones at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona: The Nexus-alike Desire, the aluminum Legend and the Windows Mobile HD Mini. This morning I took them all for a spin.

First, forget about the HD Mini. It is indeed mini, but the HD part of the name certainly doesn’t mean high-def. At just 320 X 480 the capacitive touch-screen is just plain normal, and the rest of the phone is ho-hum next to the other two Android handsets. We should face it: Windows Mobile 6.5 is dead.

The Desire is much nicer, although the one I tested didn’t yet have the pinch-to-zoom of the Nexus (although it is running Android 2.1, and the specs say it has it — this is most likely a demo-unit issue). If you have used a Nexus, also made by HTC, you’ll be instantly at home. The screen is bright, sharp and colorful, the capacitive AMOLED touch-screen is responsive and the thing fairly whips along thanks to the 1GHz processor. It is, in short, a very good phone.

But it’s the aluminum Legend which stands out. Although the case is only a touch smaller than that of the Desire, it feels a lot more compact, and very solid in the hand. It’s like going from the old plastic MacBooks to the stiff and chunky unibody MacBooks. The screen is smaller, at 3.2-inches (vs. 3.7) and it has a much lower resolution of 320 X 480 instead of 480 X 800. Even the CPU is worse, clocking in at just 600 MHz. But to read the numbers is to miss the point. The Legend feels classy, and those specs are all good enough. Browsing, maps and typing on screen are all responsive and quick. It could stand to lose the stupid nubbin optical “trackball”, though, as could the Desire. Alongside the touch-screen it is quite useless.

If I was in the market for an Android cellphone, I’d probably choose the Legend. Oh, and one more thing: The cameras in all of these phones are terrible. More photos below.

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Feb 16

Gallery: Biggest Smartphone News From Barcelona

Posted in: mwc, Mwc2010, Phones, Today's Chili
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The annual Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is one of the world’s biggest trade shows devoted to cellphones, smartphones and mobile gear. Wired covered the show — as we do every year — to bring you hands-on photos of the biggest announcements and most interesting new gadgets from the floor of the trade show.

Dominating the headlines, of course, was Microsoft’s announcement of are branded, updated mobile operating system they now call Windows Phone 7 Series. Modeled on the eye-popping Zune HD interface, it looks like one of the most ambitious, ground-up re-imaginings of the smartphone interface in years.

And then there were more eclectic product announcements, like the Motorola Golden-i shown here. This headset is a prototype hands-free terminal for use in construction or other tough environments where the user has his hands busy, but still needs a computer. Designed to fit under a construction helmet, the Golden-i puts a tiny screen up close to the eye which gives the equivalent of a 15-inch display, and also has a headphone, a microphone along with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi for talking to other devices.

Read on for more highlights from MWC 2010.


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Feb 16

HTC Clones Nexus One, Launches 3 New Phones

Posted in: HTC, Mini, mwc, Phones, Today's Chili

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It’s just the beginning of the year and already HTC is on a roll. The company has announced three new smartphones — two of those will run Google’s Android operating system — and a redesigned user interface that aggregates social networking feeds.

The three new HTC phones are HTC Legend, a Nexus One clone called HTC Desire and HTC HD Mini, the only one in the pack to run Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system. The phones have been designed by One & Co, the San Francisco-based design firm that HTC acquired in December 2008.

“HTC Legend and HTC Desire take Android to another level in both substance and style,” said HTC President Peter Chou in a statement.

Thanks to its close partnership with Google, HTC has emerged as a powerhouse maker of Android devices. The company designed the first phone to run Android, the T-Mobile G1. In January, HTC’s Nexus One became the first smartphone to be sold by Google.

Last June, HTC introduced Sense, a user interface that allows users to set up profiles for work and play and has widgets that bring in data from different social networking streams such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr.

Since then, the idea of aggregating all those feeds and offering them to customers through a single window has popular among cellphone makers. HTC rival Motorola got a jump on the idea with MotoBlur, an interface that aggregates Facebook and Twitter feeds and debuted on the Cliq.

HTC has tried to mimic that with its HTC Friend Stream that organizes updates from different online sources into a single flow. Friend Stream also lets users organize their contacts into different social circles such as groups of friends, colleagues or even high school friends.

All three of HTC’s phones announced Tuesday at the Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona, Spain, will include the updated Sense interface.

HTC Desire Takes On Nexus One

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Yet another Android phone from HTC, the Desire, with its 3.7 inch OLED display, is closest to the Nexus One in terms of its technical prowess and features.

The Desire uses the same Qualcomm 1-GHz Snapdragon processor that we have seen in the Nexus One phone. It has a 3.7-inch display and weighs about 4.7 ounces. It also runs Android 2.1, the latest version of the Android operating system, first seen on the Nexus One.

The Desire, formerly known as HTC Bravo, supports Adobe Flash 10.1. It has a 5-megapixel camera with flash and geotagging capability, digital compass, FM radio, GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity.

The phone has an optical joystick surrounded by a narrow button instead of a trackball in an attempt to ostensibly improve usability.

Desire will initially be available in Europe and Australia before the second half of the year, says HTC.

HTC Legend Builds on the Hero

htc-legend3HTC Legend ups the ante in terms of design, says the company. The smartphone’s design is an extension of what we have seen with HTC Hero. The difference is in the softer look and the smooth surface milled from a single aluminum block also known as unibody construction.

It includes a 3.2-inch, OLED display and weighs 4.4 ounces (compared to 4.8 ounces for the iPhone 3G S and 4.5 ounces for the Nexus One). The Legend’s 600-MHz processor, though, is slower than the 1-GHz processor seen in the Nexus One.

Otherwise, the Legend mimics the Desire in terms of what it offers: a 5-megapixel camera, flash, geotagging, digital compass, FM radio, GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity.

The Legend will also run Android 2.1 operating system.

The Legend will initially be available in Europe through Vodafone around April, says HTC.

HTC Mini Dials It Down

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The HD Mini is the only device in the batch to be based on Windows Mobile 6.5, a signal that HTC, despite its focus on Android, is not yet entirely abandoning the Microsoft platform. With its 3.2-inch LCD screen and 3.8-ounce weight, the Mini is a compact phone that shares almost all the same characteristics as the Legend. What is missing is a digital compass, flash in the camera and geotagging.

There’s also an unexpected design twist that seems to be of questionable value. Once the battery cover is removed, the inside of the phone is a bright yellow.  The bad news is that the Mini might not support the newly announced Windows Mobile Phone 7 operating system.

The Mini will be initially launched on Vodafone’s network in Europe.

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Photos: HTC


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Feb 16

Garmin Shows Android Nuvi-Phone and its Ugly Sister

Posted in: Mwc2010, navigation, Phones, Today's Chili

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BARCELONA — Garmin-Asus has announced a pair of new Nuvi cellphones at the Mobile World Congress. One is a sleek, fast and easy-to-use Android handset, the other is a clunky device that runs Windows Mobile 6.5.3.

The WinMo-powered M10 is a Windows Mobile cellphone with a 3.5-inch touch screen and navigation features. I hated it from the moment I fired up YouTube and was greeted with a desktop-style scrolling list of countries do I could agree to terms and conditions. With a stylus I might have had a chance at hitting “Spain”. With a finger, it was impossible. I moved on to the Android-powered A50.

The A50 is a rather nice device. It definitely feels like an old-school smartphone, not a new-style mobile computer like the Nexus One or iPhone, but it is single minded in its purpose: Travel. Garmin’s map application is as good as you would expect, and managed to get my position right even inside the conference center. It keeps running if the phone rings, too, so you won’t get lost as you dangerously try to talk and drive at the same time.

And because the phone knows where you are, it uses this information to help in other ways, too. For instance, it’ll give you local gas prices, weather, traffic conditions and even public transit information. But this would be pointless if the interface was as bad as that on, say, the M10. Thankfully, Android was designed for touch-screens, and the big icons make it easy to find your way around the 3.5-inch HVGA capacitive display.

With Google Maps on the latest Android phones incorporating turn-by-turn navigation, and the internet itself offering much of the info found on the A50, the appeal diminishes here. But if you’re a frequent traveler, the newest Nuvi might be worth a look. More pictures below.

Garmin-Asus M10 [Garmin]
Garmin-Asus A50 [Garmin]


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Feb 16

No Flash On Windows Mobile 7

Posted in: flash, Mwc2010, Phones, Today's Chili

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Windows 7 Phone Series, the brand new (and great) cellphone OS from Microsoft, will ship without support for Adobe’s Flash. WinMo 7 joins Apple’s iPhone and iPad in ignoring the widely used browser plugin. Could this be the end for the annoying, processor-hungry runtime?

In an email sent to Information week, an Adobe spokesperson said the following:

Microsoft and Adobe are working closely together. While the newest version of Windows Phone won’t support Flash at initial availability, both companies are working to include a browser plug-in for the full Flash player in future versions of Windows Phone. More details will be shared at Microsoft MIX next month.

We’re sure that Adobe wants to put Flash onto Windows Phone 7, but perhaps Microsoft would prefer to use its own Silverlight plugin instead. This news comes with ironic timing: Adobe has finally announced Flash for Google’s Android platform, although we’ll have to see if it takes off.

These shenanigans really hurt nobody but Adobe. The fewer new platforms that support Flash, the better, for the consumer at least. We might miss out on Hulu in the short term, but if you think website owners and content providers are committed to Flash itself, you’re nuts. If the world moves on, they’ll just re-code their sites, especially as HTML 5 has native support for video, the main use for Flash on the web.

In the meantime, as Adobe’s tech gradually fades away, we can enjoy cooler machines, less browser crashes and longer battery life.

Windows Mobile 7 Won’t Get Flash [Information Week]

Photo: Charlie Sorrel

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Feb 15

Hands-On With Windows Phone 7 Series

Posted in: Mwc2010, Phones, Today's Chili, Windows, Windows Mobile, windows phone 7 series

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The awkward name might be pure old-school Microsoft, but the new Windows Phone 7 Series is more Xbox and Zune than Windows Mobile 6.5. The design team was proportionally one of the biggest for any Microsoft product, and it shows.

The handset I tried is a no-name developer tool, a plain plastic box in which the camera doesn’t line up with the hole in the case, and the capacitive touchscreen doesn’t even meet Microsoft’s own minimum hardware specs for a Windows Phone 7 Series mobile phone. But despite this, the OS itself seems both polished and simple. The UI is very flat, almost all simple, sharp squares and plain text. In fact, it feels like you are looking at the large-print accessibility version.

But despite this simplicity it’s a lot of fun to use. The “hubs” into which content is organized by type are an intuitive way to work, but most of what you do every day can be done without leaving the home screen. IPhone users who live in three or four apps and constantly switch between them for updates from Twitter, e-mail and RSS will be jealous of the dynamic front page. Choose what apps, people, podcasts or almost anything you want on the main screen and they update in real time, with new information swimming sweetly onto the icons. It’s almost like a moving photo in Harry Potter, only less hokey and far more useful.

The phone I tested felt sparse, mostly due to a lack of content, but there was enough on show to appreciate how the hubs work. Hit up a contact in the People hub and you have everything relevant, from their contact details (tap to call) to their Facebook or Twitter status. It’s surprisingly natural.

This is an early iteration, and I couldn’t get any more news from Microsoft about future software. It seems, though, that this hub framework will be the way any other apps will fit into the ecosystem. Hardware, too, will change, and Steve Ballmer mentioned that the software will come on all shapes and sizes of handset.

What surprised me most was that I was expecting yet another iPhone clone. And while the Windows Phone 7 Series isn’t the huge game changer that the iPhone was upon its debut, it is different enough to embarrass pretty much everyone else except Apple.

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Feb 15

Carriers, Manufacturers Buddy Up for a Wholesale App Store

Posted in: Apple, developers, iPhone, Mwc2010, Phones, Today's Chili

Cellphone carriers worldwide are apparently sick of Apple’s iPhone App Store hogging all the attention and loot in the mobile software market. Two dozen of them are teaming up to open a cross-platform app store.

Carriers on board include Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, China Unicom, China Mobile, Softbank and Vodafone, among several others. The group has also partnered with three manufacturers — Samsung, LG, and Sony Ericsson — to support the initiative.

Announced at Mobile World Congress 2010 in Barcelona, Spain, the alliance’s goal is to create a “Wholesale Applications Community,” offering an open ecosystem that will enable developers to create one app for one store that’s accessible on a broad range of phones. Combined, the carriers serve 3 billion customers to date, which could be the potential audience for the wholesale app store.

The move, then, would free developers and consumers from vertical business models like Apple’s App Store. The App Store is exclusive for iPhone customers. Develop an app for the iPhone OS and it only works on iPhone OS devices (iPhone, iPod Touch and the upcoming iPad). Likewise, if you buy iPhone apps, you lose those apps if you switch to a non-Apple phone.

“The GSMA is fully supportive the Wholesale Applications Community, which will build a new, open ecosystem to spur the creation of applications that can be used regardless of device, operating system or operator,” said Rob Conway, CEO and Member of the GSMA board. “This is tremendously exciting news for our industry and will serve to catalyse the development of a range of innovative cross-device, cross-operator applications.”

As promising and beneficial as a wholesale app store sounds, it would be naive to expect it to arrive anytime soon. Cross-platform mobile operating systems, like Windows Mobile, already suffer from the issue of fragmentation: You can’t develop a single app for every Windows Mobile phone, because they vary in features such as screen size, buttons and more. The Wholesale Applications Community’s goal is to create an app store working on an even broader range of devices, and fragmentation will be an even more severe challenge to overcome.

The Wholesale Application Community also appears to be ignoring the fact that vertical integration was a key strategy that drove the App Store’s success. iPhone developers code apps that work only on iPhone OS devices, and thus they’re able to hone the quality and optimize the performance of their apps. In turn, because developers only have to code one type of app that reaches out to a large audience of iPhone OS users (about 75 million to date), many of them believe they have a better chance to make money this way. Vertical integration appears to be succeeding so far: The App Store has served 3 billion downloads and claimed 99.4 percent of the mobile-software market.

The Wholesale Application Community is aware that it would take a long time to achieve its goal.

“Ultimately, we will collectively work with the [World Wide Web Consortium] for a common standard based on our converged solution to truly ensure developers can create applications that port across mobile device platforms, and in the future between fixed and mobile devices,” the Wholesale Application Community said in a press release.

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Feb 15

Opera Mini for iPhone is Fast Like a Rocket

Posted in: Mwc2010, Phones, Software, Today's Chili

screenshot-mini5b2-iphone-press_hi-resBarcelona — Today I tried out Opera Mini running on the iPhone, and it kicks Safari’s butt. The folks at Opera have a native version of their browser running on the iPhone, and while there are limits due to the way it is built, for sheer speed of browsing, it has Safari beat.

Opera Mini has not yet been submitted to Apple for approval: The demo I saw was of a very mature but unfinished version. But when it does get sent to Apple’s crack team of picky, fickle reviewers, it should, technically at least, pass. The reason that browsers other than those based on Webkit (Safari) aren’t allowed on the iPhone is that Apple bans the running of interpretive code. This means Java, or Flash, or any other runtime is out.

Opera Mini gets around this by doing all the rendering on the server – Opera’s servers actually run web browsers – and sending what are essentially pictures to the phone. These “pictures” look and act like regular web pages, only they are 90% smaller. That’s a big deal if you’re using a phone in a country with expensive bandwidth (Russia is a big market for Opera Mini).

IPhone users will be more interested in the cost reductions for roaming data use, and in speed. We loaded up the NYT front page in both browsers (Opera’s Phillip Grønvold is pretty good at hitting both “go” buttons at once) and we were up and browsing five or six pages deep with Opera before Safari had even finished the front page. Better, Opera is responsive to zooming and scrolling as soon as the text is up on screen. IPhone users know that this isn’t the case for Mobile Safari.

Another speed-up comes from caching. Not caching pages, but keeping the markup file (like we said, they’re not really just pictures) from each page, ready to re-display. This gives instant back-and-forward navigation.

There are some quirks. In order to keep things consistent across platforms (Opera Mini is available for almost any modern phone), some iPhone UI conventions are ignored. Copy and paste gets its own custom widgets, although it still talks to the built-in clipboard. In this way it is a little like, say, Photoshop, which has almost identical versions on Windows and OS X, even if the OS X version annoys many Mac users with its UI.

If Opera makes it through the Apple approval process, I’ll be grabbing it right away. The speed makes it perfect the kind of fast reading you do on a phone. And it has one feature that will surely make Apple warm to it: because it doesn’t support video of any kind, Opera Mini won’t display Flash.

Opera Mini for iPhone sneak peek [Opera]

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Feb 15

Sony Ericsson Still Using Android 1.6

Posted in: Android, Mwc2010, Phones, Today's Chili

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Barcelona — Sony Ericsson has jumped aboard the Android Train at the Mobile World Congress 2010. Of three new handsets announced, two use Google’s phone OS, and only the poor, dull Vivaz still uses the tired Symbian OS.

The Android phones are the Xperia X10 Mini and Pro. The main difference between the two tiny handsets is the slide-out QWERTY keyboard on the pro model. In fact, so similar are these handsets that even their mother, the bigger Xperia X10 releasewd last year, has trouble telling them apart.

Both have touch-screens, small at just 2.55-inches and with a decidedly last-century VGA resolution (240 x 320). They also have 5MP cameras, A-GPS, the standard Webkit browser and, on top of the usual Android OS, a lot of customization.

The most obvious tweak is Timescape, which is a kind of floaty cover-flow view for contacts, pictures, missed calls or pretty much anything that can be put in a list. Imagine the bits of information on a series of translucent pieces of paper, hovering in space, and you have the idea. Whether this is useful or not is debatable.

The touch screens are also less than perfect, with a slightly laggy feel that comes from resistive touch. But then, these are clearly aimed at the non-smart market: Android OS 1.6 isn’t going to attract any of the geeks buying the Droid or Nexus.

This fragmentation of the Android range so early in its life is bound to lead to problems, with so many different devices with differently tweaked skins running on top. The irony is that, with its new Windows 7 Phone, Microsoft has moved from this fragmented position into a much more Apple-like approach, with minimum hardware specs and tight relationships with manufacturers and carriers.

Xperia X10 Mini and Pro [Sony Ericsson]


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