The latest on smartphones (and other gadgets)

Motorola has been turning out Android-based smartphones at a rate of knots, and in every conceivable form factor. Have you seen the Flipout or the Backflip? I think they are simply throwing designs out to see which ones will stick. The Droid Pro is one such design which is going to stick I think. It is a design that has been used successfully for years by Blackberry – portrait with a fixed qwerty keyboard. Coupled with a 1GHz processor and Android 2.2 which provides enterprise email integration and document editing capabilities this promises to be an impressive device. The device will come with other enterprise goodies, such as remote wipe, complex passwords, device and sd card encryption and VPN ability.

If you are a corporate Lotus Notes user you will be very pleased to hear that Notes Traveler for Android is in beta. Hopefully by the time the Droid Pro lands on your desk you will be able to sync your Notes email, calendar and contacts using Notes Traveler.

The Droid Pro will launch on Verizon in the States in the next month or so. No word yet on a European launch, but if Motorola does release it in Europe it is likely to be called the Milestone Pro. South African droiders shouldn’t hold their breath though, as Motorola has been very slow in releasing their Android phones here. Point in case: the Milestone was launched in Europe/UK a year ago, while it became available in South Africa only a month or so ago.

This morning I re-read my January post on Nokia’s Maemo-based qwerty slider called the N900. Why? Because I have had one in my hands for the past few days so I wanted to compare my expectations with reality.

Reality bites.

I know the phone is already 6-7 months old, but still, Nokia could not have thought that they can take on the iPhone or Android (or even Palm WebOS) with the N900. Firstly the phone just is not stylish – it is too thick and chunky. It doesn’t say look at me I am cool. It says look at my I am a geek. I know there are many geeks out there, and some of them are loving the open-source nature of the N900 and Maemo, but there are not enough of them to create serious market momentum behind the Maemo platform.

The slide-out qwerty keyboard is not bad, but is also not good. It has three rows only, with very little space between the top row and the edge of the screen. As a result my thumbs bump against the screen edge when I type on the top row. At least the keys are nice and large with decent travel. The keyboard on my Motorola Droid/Milestone is much better.

The screen is nice and bright with good resolution (not as bright as the Milestone), but is resistive. Those Finns and their gloves again I guess. The response of the screen is poor compared to any of the zillion capacitive screens out there. It is similar to the N97′s screen in terms of response. The N900 even comes with a stylus! I thought styluses (is that a word?) died out with Windows Mobile. Anyway nothing shouts geek like a stylus.

And then there is the screen orientation. Nokia has been marketing the N900 as a “mobile computer” rather than a phone, but forcing one to do everything in landscape orientation, except for phoning, is a bit much. It means you need both hands for pretty much everything. What a drag. Anyway I don’t see how this phone is more of a computer than any of the other high end phones out there, except maybe for the iPhone 4 which still cannot properly multi-task, something which computers have been doing for years.

Let’s look inside the phone, at Maemo the operating system, which at one point was touted as Nokia’s new high-end operating platform. If it is, Nokia is in trouble. Maemo may be open-source and powerful underneath, but it is dressed in out-of-date unstylish clothes. The user interface is better than Symbian’s but only just. Compared to WebOS, Android, and iPhone OS, it looks and feels way out of date. And it is just not finger-friendly enough. The multi-tasking works well though, with a single screen called the dashboard showing all your open apps. Not that you will have many apps open, as there are only a handful of apps available for Maemo.

The list of shortcomings in Maemo/N900 is long:

* No Youtube viewer. The browser (try Mozilla Firefox if you don’t like the on-board browser) supports Flash so you can view videos directly in the browser, but the performance and image quality is a distant second to the excellent Youtube apps available on all Android phones, Palm Pres and iPhones. Even the Winmobile HTC HD2 has a Youtube app.

* The browser is so-so. It doesn’t even reformat the text when you zoom in, so you have to drag the screen left and right in order to read text. What a pain.

* The N900 wouldn’t upload the phone contacts to my car’s bluetooth system. I read up on this and it seems this a missing feature in Maemo. More pain.

* The phone does not sync properly with Gmail calendar and contacts. Read about Maemo’s Mail for Exchange implementation here before you buy this phone.

* The biggest killer for me is that the support for corporate email and calendar stops at Mail for Exchange with no plans to support Lotus Notes. Not clear why Nokia has not provides Lotus Notes support, especially considering that the E72 comes with Notes Traveler built in. To me this is big sign saying that Nokia does not (never has or no longer) regard the N900 as their flagship nor Maemo as their new platform. I have asked the guys at Commontime to see if they can get their mNotes5 product working with the N900. If they succeed then the Lotus Notes geeks (like myself) will be able to sync our corporate email, calendar and contacts.

I can carry on with the litany of shortcomings, but I am fast losing interest in the N900. So, in summary, it is not good enough. Nokia needs something better, and they need it fast. Roll on Symbian 4.

Yesterday Palm announced their financial results for Q3 FY2010 and it was ugly. Worse news is that Q4 is going to be even uglier. Palm made a loss of $102.8m. In terms of cash flow, Palm burned through an additional $22m cash this past quarter, still spending more than they are managing to bring in. Nearly a million phones were shipped, while only 408,000 were actually sold. Ouch. This was also fewer than the 573,000 phones sold during Q2.

Given that Palm has an excellent software platform in WebOS and competitive hardware in the Pre, I blame their woes on:

1. Their initial exclusive tie-up with Sprint which was not good for them as Sprint did not invest enough in marketing the Pre. It also meant that by the time Palm launched on Verizon their moment had past, and the Droid had arrived in a big way, stealing what little thunder was left for the Palm. The Droid sold 1.05m units in the first 74 days after launch, more than the iPhone’s 1m units.
2. Their restrictive practices around developing WebOS apps as well as restricting access to the apps to users in the US.

How is Palm going to reverse their fortunes? They still have options, but will have to move quickly if they want to stay relevant.

They should launch in South Africa. That will be turn things around. Maybe not for Palm but it will for me and Alastair and Roland, the only 3 Palm Pre users in Africa.

This is what my brother-in-law had to say about his new HD2 after a few days (he changed from a Blackberry Bold):

“I have configured up the HTC and must say I am enjoying the phone. Microsoft Mobile is not better than Blackberry in all aspects and some things seem a bit clumsy to get around. Initially I missed the Blackberry but the more I get used to Microsoft, the more I like it although the Blackberry is definitely easier and more intuitive to use. The phone itself is great. In spite of the size of the screen it carry’s easily as it is thinner. It is also significantly thinner than the iPhone so it easily slips into your pocket. It is a “solid” phone with a metal case. This makes it feel heavy but is not actually a weight in the hand or pocket.

The screen is great and pretty responsive. The camera is also quite good. Typing on a touch screen is definitely more difficult than with a keypad although I find it is easier if I put the phone in landscape. The processor seems to be fast enough so I have not experienced any lag. I find with the screen and the Microsoft menu system I do sometimes dial by mistake. As with all phones there are some irritating features but the availability of aps is great, compared to the BB. There seems less flexibility around ring tones, especially on alarms etc but there may be an app to sort this out. Also, HTC have a non standard USB connection so the “normal” cables, car chargers etc don’t work. This is irritating. One problem is that access is easy and so I find myself fiddling with it while I drive-not a good thing.”

He also told me that the battery life has surprised him pleasantly, and that after a full day with the phone with wifi enabled, regular email checking and about 40 minutes of calls via bluetooth in the car, the HD2 still had around 40% of battery left. That is pretty impressive for any smartphone never mind for a Windows Mobile phone. And I had a look at the phone the other day and the battery was only 1230mAh. HTC have outdone themselves with this phone. Ironic that Microsoft kills off Windows Mobile at a time when the hardware appears to have finally caught up with the demands of its software. I was also very surprised and impressed with how light the phone felt in my hand. Felt much lighter than my Droid for instance.

I have been watching this phone for some time now. It looked like the perfect Android phone, for me at least, with a large screen and most importantly a qwerty keyboard. So eventually I gave in and bought one from my trusty online mobile phone retailer cacell.co.za and 2 days later I had the phone in my hands. Here is a picture of the phone while I was typing this post on it using a WordPress blog posting app for Android. The Android market rocks. Quick to find apps and quick to install them. But why do I see only the free apps on the market. I can’t see the paid apps. Does anyone know why this would be?

The Droid or Milestone is a beast. It looks all angular and industrial. It feels hard and masculine. The metal casing gives it a very durable feel. The phone is thin for a qwerty slide but heavy. My initial impression is wow this is one serious mobile phone. It is going to kick butt. Watch this space for more posts as I explore the Droid.