Mobile phones: 15 years and a world apart

Friday, December 2nd, 2011

Fifteen years ago – almost to the day – I got my first mobile phone, a Motorola mr20. It was a chunky thing, with a two-line black-on-green LCD display and a battery that lasted for up to 12 hours (so long as you didn’t use it to make calls or try out any of its three different ringtones). It could receive text messages, but not send them: for that you needed the upmarket mr30 model.

Today, a decade and a half later, I’ve taken delivery of a Samsung Galaxy S II. If ever you wanted an illustration of the phenomenal pace at which technology advances, here it is. In what seems like an alarmingly short time, we’ve progressed from that rudimentary brick to a slim, slate-style affair with a vibrant full-colour touchscreen, a feature list as long as your arm, 16GB of internal storage and, well, slightly better battery life.

Consider that voice calls are now just a small part of a smartphone’s job and you could question whether the two phones are even really the same sort of device. (more…)

Mobile money: a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist

Thursday, June 2nd, 2011

Mobile money is the future, or so I’m assured by research into the use of Near Field Communications (NFC) systems, which says most of us will be using our smartphones to pay for stuff within the next four years.

First things first, mobile money is not new. And, no, I’m not talking about the fact that money itself is pretty damn mobile when you think about it — what I’m talking about provides a system whereby you don’t have to carry real cash and can instead just point an easily carried payment device at a retailer.

Most of you will immediately know what I’m talking about when I mention the name of this bit of wonder kit, this device that has revolutionised retail, that does away with the need to carry cash and that just about everyone is comfortable using: it’s called a debit card.

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Cloud security: is Android the weakest link?

Monday, March 7th, 2011

Much has been written about the security of data in the cloud, and even more about the insecurity of the same. Until now, things have been somewhat quieter when it comes to how we access cloud-based data on the move. That, I suspect, is about to change.

Plenty of effort has been poured into securing online data stores, and plenty is made by the providers of those cloud services in making sure potential customers know about it. Which is why the bad guys are understandably looking for the soft targets, and at the moment that would appear to be Android apps.

I’ve said it before, and I will say it again: the smaller your business, the bigger the benefits of cloud computing. That rings especially true at the ‘free’ end of the cloud scale where the attraction of services such as those provided by Google can offer real bottom-line savings for hard pressed small business concerns. Security within the free or low-cost cloud isn’t somehow automatically weaker than that found at the expensive end of the cloud provision market either.

You can be sure that Google has invested heavily in securing the data at rest within those cloud bases, incorporating all the multi-layered protocols and synchronous replication processes you might expect. But perhaps it needs to invest more at the other end, the smartphone to be precise. What you need to ask yourself is whether Android could be the weak link in the cloud security chain?

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Nothing fair about “fair-use” policies

Thursday, January 13th, 2011

This is the problem when I’m out of the office for the PC Pro podcast: there’s nobody to get irrationally angry when my colleagues say something moronic.

Step forward David Bayon and Darien Graham-Smith, who claimed that T-Mobile’s decision (now partially reversed) to cut “fair use” data caps to 500MB was essentially “fair” – it was just the way T-Mobile presented it that was the problem.

Sorry chaps, but you’re wrong. Hideously, grossly, sleep-with-your-wife’s-mother-behind-her-back wrong.

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Android App of the Week: Posterous

Monday, December 20th, 2010

Social-networking tool Posterous has been around since May 2008, and it’s gained a sizeable following thanks to its minimalist design, which allows you to post links to photos, MP3 files, documents and video in seconds.

While Posterous has a fully functional mobile site, we’re surprised that it’s taken this long for an Android app to appear, especially since the iPhone version was launched in August 2009.

We’re pleased it has, though, because the new app makes using this simple service even more convenient. Open the app and click the button marked Post and you’re presented with a simple blogging interface, with title and body copy boxes alongside a couple of option buttons: the former allows you to add tags and location information, and the latter facilitates photo or video attachments.

The app lets you post to several different sites – handy if you’ve got one to post news about your favourite sports team, for instance, and another for personal links and musings – and a range of settings means you can choose different levels of picture and video quality to conserve bandwidth. (more…)

Poll suggests third of Android owners really want an iPhone

Sunday, November 14th, 2010

Android is on a wave, it would seem, what with Gartner just announcing that the Google mobile OS has a 25.5% global market share. This puts it in second place behind Symbian on 36.6%, miles ahead of Apple’s iOS on 16.7% and RIM on 14.8%. Indeed, Gartner says that 1.4 million more Android handsets were sold in the third quarter compared to this time last year, taking the total to 20.5 million. However, one piece of polling would suggest that not everyone in the Android camp is a happy bunny.

A survey conducted by a mobile phone comparison website called MyPhoneDeals reckons that many Android owners would much rather have an iPhone, truth be told. Interestingly, the reverse is not true. MyPhoneDeals found Android owners some four times more likely to covet an iPhone than iPhone owners were to desire an Android handset. Apparently a third of the Android-owning folk asked said they wanted an iPhone, and 7% of iPhone owners actually said they would prefer an Android model thank you very much.

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Android and Apple iOS will not beat BlackBerry

Sunday, November 7th, 2010

Fanboys had better sit down before continuing, as I have some bad news for you, unless your particular tech obsession of choice is CrackBerry or Windows flavoured. Neither Apple iOS nor Android will beat BlackBerry or Microsoft as a mobile business platform any time soon, according to the latest market research.

But more of that later, first let’s start with some confusing jargon. A newly published study conducted by Plantronics reinforces what I already know, namely that more and more people are working outside of the traditional office environment these days.

Well, actually, that’s being a little disingenuous as in reality it confused me greatly by suggesting that people increasingly work in ‘transitional spaces’ and, to be honest, I had no idea what that really meant.  Delving a little deeper, it would appear that it means ‘public spaces used while in transit’ according to Plantronics. Translated into normal-speak I think what the survey was actually trying to say is that people are doing more work while on the bus, train or plane. And in hotel rooms, airport lounges or coffee shops for that matter. Anywhere outside of the office, other than the home environment in other words.

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A message to Steve Jobs: Shut The Fanboy Up!

Wednesday, October 20th, 2010

October has been a month of ‘Fanboy FAIL’ as far as sensible smartphone market analysis is concerned. First there was Steve Jobs bigging up iOS, iPhones and the iPad while dissing Android and RIM. Then there was the inevitable fanboy fracas from all sides that followed, including Jim Balsillie throwing some RIM soundbytes into the mix. This has truly been the month that common sense was finally shot in the head.

If you need further proof of this, then take a look at the Good Technology Device Activation Report for the 3rd quarter of 2010. At first glance, this report would appear to suggest that both Apple iOS and Google Android platforms are being rapidly adopted within the enterprise sector, while BlackBerry has vanished from the business market altogether.

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Flash 10.1: Developing for Desktop and Device

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

Yesterday Adobe made the beta of its new Flash 10.1 player available for desktop testing via Adobe Labs. The fact that it’s only a point release suggests that it’s a relatively trivial update but that’s not the case. In fact 10.1 is one of the most significant releases in the history of Flash.

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Will you hit the Orange iPhone “unlimited” cap?

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

Orange’s big unveiling of its iPhone tariffs has caused a bit of a kerfuffle, not least because its prices are almost identical to those of O2. A lot of people are up in arms about the promise of “unlimited browsing”, which in fact comes with a fair-use limit of 750MB.

But, ignoring the terrible decision to put an “unlimited” label on a very clearly capped tariff, is that amount of monthly data actually “fair-use”?

As discussed in this week’s podcast, there’s a very easy way for existing iPhone owners to find out if that data cap would prove troublesome. Just go to Settings -> General -> Usage, and take a look at your Cellular Network Data. I did just that, believing this cap would be encroaching at least a little on my roaming lifestyle, but I was in for a surprise. (more…)