Nokia vs BlackBerry vs iPhone

The web is awash with opinion and comment, so why not add my two-penneth.

I sit here with a Nokia E51, BlackBerry 8707v and an iPhone. When the iPhone morphs into a 3G monster something's got to give and that something is the BlackBerry. Ugly hunk of plastic with terrible browser that it is.

Fantastic email device but that's all it is. It's an awful phone. Exchange access on my iPhone, yes please. I actually like typing on the iPhone's touch screen now more than on the BlackBerry keyboard. Who'd of thought?

I think of all the losers in the wake of the iPhone success, it's BlackBerry that are going to suffer most. They are making a big move into the consumer and SME space. Vodafone here in the UK have most definitely nailed the colours to that particular mast. The problem is the iPhone is just so much better for that market.

Whether or not Apple crack the big enterprise market, or even if the really want to, the Exchange support added to IMAP and POP3 means if you want mobile email as personal or SME user, the iPhone is the one to choose because it's also an iPod and an amazing mobile Internet experience.

So why am I keeping the Nokia? They operate in a very different space and I'll be keeping my E51 because of it. Apple's closed app distribution model will prevent true innovation when it comes to mobile apps. if you want to do things like Qik or Shozu, they're going to come first to Nokia because it is the most feature rich and that is what all the mobile geeks use. That unpaid QA department in the cloud that are happy to work through the foibles of the platform because they desperately want the new stuff to work.

Yes the Nokia OS is a pain to use but the hardware is the business and features allow developers and entrepreneurs to flex their technical creativity.

So bye-bye BlackBerry, all being well you won't be missed.

iPhone goes for the enterprise, BlackBerry fight back

It's an iPhone with a QWERTY keyboard!

BlackBerry 9000 in the wild

OK so no touch screen interface but this promises to be a serious bit of kit that will cement BlackBerries in the enterprise. Must check out the BlackBerry development kit so how that stacks up against the iPhone SDK that Jonathan is wrestling with at the moment.

Is mobile blogging the answer to blog torpor?

As regular readers will know, I had a bit of a blogging hiatus through December. Truth is I just got out of the habit. I got busy and my blog was the balancing item.

I suspect that this is the case for the vast majority of blogs out there. We start with good intentions but soon the next interesting thing comes along and today's brilliant, can't live without, new toy becomes yesterday's forgotten plaything.

Services like Twitter are designed to disseminate transitory information. I have signed up for an account but I really can't imagine anyone would find my random thoughts of interest, and anyway I can't really be bothered. The good thing about Twitter is if I say something that I subsequently wish I hadn't it doesn't hang around. It's forgotten in the sea of titbits about everyone's lives.

Blogs however are a different story. With their archives and syndication, once you've hit publish, that's it. This certainly makes me consider everything I'm posting and perhaps that's constraining the content and timeliness.

One of the problems with timeliness is access to a computer to make posting possible. By the time you get home, there are umpteen other things to catch up on before writing up the blog post you thought about while on the train, in the car, out at lunch.

In the past I've used my BlackBerry for mobile blogging, sending an email to this blog for editing later. When I remember to do it, it works pretty well, though I end up having to reformat and strip off the rather long (thanks to legislation) company email signature. We've recently launched BlogIt here at Esendex so people without email devices can do the same using just SMS.

While these services help to enable the physical act of blogging as and when the mood strikes I also think they require a bit of an attitude shift. I have to remember that every blog post doesn't have to be a long considered essay, it's perfectly legitimate to post something up as when the feeling takes me.

I probably should be championing mobile blogging via SMS as the answer with us running the BlogIt service, but in reality I'll use a mix of both. It'll depend on the situation at the time, what device I have with me, how long the post is, and whether I want to give it a bit of thought before posting.

The key point is that mobile blogging, be it by SMS or mobile email, gives me that choice. For something to become a habit, it needs to be easily assimilated into your everyday life. I spend a lot of time emailing and texting while on the move so now I can blog just as easily.

Expect to hear more from me.

Facebook for BlackBerry, the problem is...

None of my friends have it.

So I'm ready to interact whenever and use Facebook to communicate with my friends about friends stuff while I'm out and about, they have to be sitting down. And not just sitting down, but sitting down in a place or time that is Facebook friendly.

With organisations increasingly blocking access to sites like Facebook or restricting access to lunchtimes, etc, I wonder if my prediction of Facebook participating in a new paradigm in communication is really going to be realised.

While the service is delivered as a web site it's easily blocked by corporate IT. A mobile device interface allows people to interact when they're not sitting down.

On the way to and from work I would say is the time when most friends would want/need to communicate, reviewing the day, last night's TV or planning the night ahead. They could access the Facebook mobile site but the problem with that is the synchronous nature of the interaction.

Navigating a mobile web site requires a consistent data connection, not always possible on the commute. The beauty of the device based applications is that they can work asynchronously, masking network availability fluctuations from the user.

They can also provide a responsive and functional user experience, another area where mobile web apps suffer, flying on PC browser style interactions with servers that we designed with a reliable data connection in mind.

So we need, Symbian, Java, BREW and I guess Android versions of these applications. Someone like Facebook, with a lump of Microsoft's cash, probably have the resources to do it and to drive this forward but is that really going to really going to be the answer?

From a purely technical point of view, it comes back to opening up the OS on phones and standardising the APIs, something that Google's Open Mobile Alliance is purtaining to be about. The problem is that some rather large companies stand to have the business models that made them what they are today destroyed if this happens, so it probably won't.

While innovation and adoption happens at light-speed on the Internet, in mobile it can't while these interests remain protected.

I'm not naive enough to beat a drum and say this must change irrespective of the outcome. These companies employee huge numbers of people and contribute greatly to economies all over the world.

So I guess we'll just have to see where the chinks in the armour open up. There are enough developers and entrepreneurs working in and watching the mobile space to work out how to make these things happen, me included, so when it does happen, you can bet it'll happen quickly.

Facebook for BlackBerry, my view

I think it's really well done.

It seems to use the standard email notification system but intercepts the messages before they get into the main BlackBerry inbox. You then get a little facebook icon in the alert are on the BlackBerry home screen.

It doesn't have applications it's really about seeing the status of your friends, poking them, writing on walls and exchanging messages with them.

There's been a lot of talk at CTIA Wireless about mobile device applications just focusing on what the mobile user needs. This follows those principles.

When I'm out and about, the most important functionality to me is communication. Zombies, film quizzes and all the other stuff that you do when you're a bit bored is a lot less important.

Actually what this does for me is change facebook into a powerful, realtime, communication service, rather than something I do when I'm looking for a diversion from whatever I'm working on.

Take this thought forward and email is no longer a communication application but it becomes just a transport layer for a richer, contextual communication paradigm. If I want to communicate with my friends I use facebook, for work I use Outlook.

Crazy valuations or not they are shaking things up. I was a little sceptical about facebook before but the more I get familiar with what they're doing and how they're doing it, I'm becoming more and more impressed.

It's also made me want a BlackBerry Curve, the photo tagging feature looked very cool and my trusty old 8707 just 'aint gonna cut it in the new era.

BTW, BlackBerry screenshot created using BBScreenShooter. You have to also download the BlackBerry JDE (90MB+ which you have to register for) but the application worked a treat, very simple.

Facebook app for BlackBerry - looking very cool indeed

At the keynote from Duncan Moskovitz, co-founder of facebook, and have just downloaded the BlackBerry app they've announce and it looks very good, very well implemented.

Proper review later.

BlackBerry Free Island Offer

Came across a very funny bit of marketing from Sprint for the new BlackBerry 8830.

A limited time offer of a free island with every purchase for only $10.5M.

Private Island Offer.

Reunited with my BlackBerry

It's back, finally. I'm in Qwerty heaven. I never did get on with SureType.

Thinking maybe I should get an Otter Box to avoid being separated again. Make sure you check out the video for the incorrect usage warning.

BlackBerry non-corporate email account setup

Took me a while to find this so I thought it was worth a post.

We use the BlackBerry Enterprise Server to redirect emails to our BlackBerries. I wanted to be able to access my personal email accounts on the same device.

Conceptual leap for me, apologies if it was obvious, was that I needed to setup the BlackBerry Internet Service with my carrier.

If you're on Vodafone UK then you go to mobileemail.vodafone.net enter your PIN and IMEI and you're away.

BlackBerry Salesman - easiest job in the world?

As an Orange Partner in the UK we get invited to internal product fairs to keep their sales teams up to date with our service offerings. Also in attendance were RIM and their very shiny, very latest handsets.

The stand was inundated during the breakouts from the product briefings with people admiring and stroking the 8800. I'll be honest, it was the first one I'd seen in the flesh and I think I've concluded it's not for me. It's like a big Pearl which looks great but I know that sleek exterior would be scuffed in no time at all if my record with mobiles is anything to go by.

Chatting to one of our sales team who was their yesterday, apparently what I saw was nothing compared to the clamouring scrum that developed when the produced a Curve.

Their product marketing and development has been fantastic. They've started with a ratherer utilitarian device that works very well and a lot of people want. These have now developed into shiny, sleek objects of desire that send grown men weak at the knees.

Now where's that barrel, right in I get, oink, oink!

Microsoft Visual Studio Plug-in for BlackBerry Application Development

Found this on the BlackBerry web site: Visual Studio Plugin. As a committed BlackBerry user and part-time Visual Studio developer I can't wait to give this a go.

My initial thought was that BlackBerry had ported the CLR to run on their platform. It turns out however, this is a forms based development environment designed to interact with web services with a bit of JavaScript thrown in for the detail.

Now this is reminding me of all the other dreadful 'simple' and 'fast-track' development tools that seem impressive in a demo scenario but don't give you any degree of control when you actually try and develop something useful. But I'll stop being cynical and reserve judgement until I actually get my hands on it.

It's currently in closed beta, not part of the in-crowd I guess ;-), so as soon as I get my hands on it I'll let you know how I get on.

BlackBerry Curve

Forget the BlackBerry 8800, that just soooo March 2007, I want one of these: BlackBerry® Curve™ | The New Smartphone That's Brilliant and Beautiful.

Still haven't had the prognosis on 8707v. Here's hoping it's not a warranty fix ;).

Manifesto for SMS

This post was sitting in my RSS client waiting to be read. Seems that my Easyjet flight is delayed, again, so I've had a chance to read it. If you want to know why I'm in this business, I recommend you do the same.

Communities Dominate Brands: Letter to American Execs: Joining the future of communication, via SMS text messaging

It's a baby BlackBerry

Well I've got my replacement BlackBerry, not an 8707v as I hoped but a 7130v. Now this isn't a real BlackBerry, it hasn't got a Qwerty keyboard. Sot it looks I'm going to be wrestling with SureType technology foir the next few weeks.

But first to wipe the data from my current device, unlike the previous owner of the loan one. In case you don't know how:

Wipe BlackBerry Data

• On the BlackBerry device Home screen, click Options.
• If you are running BlackBerry Device Software 4.1 or later, click Security Options > General Settings. Otherwise, click Security.
• Display the menu and select Wipe Handheld.
• Click Continue.
• Type blackberry. All the data on the BlackBerry device is deleted.

See the BlackBerry knowledge base article for the full details.

Every cloud has a silver lining

Seems I missed the worldwide BlackBerry outage http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6568191.stm thanks to my screen failure.

I've also just heard that the fantastic guys at Aerofone are going to have a loan device waiting for me when I get back into the office on Monday.

The nervous ticks are subsiding.

I can survive without my BlackBerry, I can survive...

It's broken.

The screen has what appears to be a crack across it, yet there is no sign of any damage on the case whatsoever.

I am on holiday so it shouldn't really matter but it's moments like this that one has to admit one's addiction. Hopefully it's a warranty issue but how long that will take is anyone's guess. Looks like I'm back to one of our spare 6230's for a while :-(.

Just in case, I did find this useful link http://www.somelifeblog.com/2007/03/blackberry-how-to-replace-broken-lcd.html. I hope it doesn't come to that!

BlackBerry Blogging

Being complete besotted with my BlackBerry as I am at the moment, I'm always on the look out for more things I can do with it. One of these was using it to blog. Now my idea was to find a way of managing this blog from my BlackBerry while roaming around. This article popped up on a Google http://www.blackberrycool.com/2006/01/11/001265 and excitedly I clicked on hoping to find a piece of software I could download. Unfortunately not. It was just instructions on setting up email posting, however that is really handy and I should have thought about it before embarking on a grand scheme. It's just that, like emails, blogging is something that's really good to do when you're on/waiting for trains, planes, etc. I also like to make a few notes for a blog entry and review it several times before publishing. I'm guessing email folders are the way to go but I'll see what I can come up with.

The BlackBerry Threat

Recently took delivery of a Blackberry 8707v and it truly is a marvellous mobile email device. I do use it as a phone, for which it seems less well suited, dropping calls, sound quality can be poor, etc. It is also a great device for SMS and has given us some great ideas for the upcoming new release of our Web SMS application. The BlackBerry success story has always been raised by investors and colleagues as one of the key threats to our business at Esendex. "If everyone has a BlackBerry", they would say "then who needs SMS?". While on the face of it, BlackBerry, and mobile email in general, is a threat to SMS there are a number of reasons why mobile email will never replace SMS, in my opinion. Firstly, the raw numbers, there are 6.2 million BlackBerry accounts worldwide¹. Compare that to over 40 million mobile phones in the UK alone. Mobile penetration is now over 100% 13 of the 17 countries in Europe. In the GSM world, just about every phone can send SMS as well as receive. If you want to send or receive a text message from your customers, employees or colleagues chances are they haven't all got mobile email devices, but they almost certainly have a mobile phone. People buy mobile phones and devices for a vast set of reasons. Just peruse the replica phones at your local mobile phone retailer to see the plethora of features and styles and you'll see not everyone wants a Blackberry. Secondly, email isn't necessarily always the best method for a given communication exchange. Each of the three forms of text based communication commonly used by businesses today have different styles and presence requirements, described in the table below.

	Communication Style	Presence
Email	Verbose often with attachments	No presence required or necessarily expected
SMS	Short, to the point, often informative	Expectation that the recipient will be available within a short time period
Instant Messaging	Conversational, 2 way, question and answer	Recipient must be available to start communication, expectation that they will respond almost immediately

When someone initiates a communication exchange they choose the medium based on these critiera. Do they want a response, how quickly, how much information are they sharing. For example:

• A monthly sales report may work best as an email. The reader is likely to need time to digest the content and consider a response.
• The monthly sales figures update is probably best as an SMS sent to all interested parties. Doing this from a virtual mobile number allows the recipients to reply with congratulatory messages, or otherwise
• For the sales manager wanting to clarify the terms of a deal being reported in the sales report with one of his team, IM could be a great route.

So it's all about messaging that's fit for purpose. I believe, all will continue, all will coexist. SMS is a key requirement of any mobile device. Take a look at the Apple iPhone. Revolutionary user interface, ultra-cool styling and the SMS function is in the most prominent position of it's menu system. BlackBerries are great mobile email and SMS devices and my life is better for having one. Or are these the ramblings or a delusional crackberry addict ;)

1. Research In Motion interim results, September 2006