Tuesday, December 16, 2008

The perfect phone

I had originally written an article describing several mistakes phone manufacturers are making in their quest to compete with the iPhone. I realized that was too negative. Instead of describing all the stupid stuff other companies are doing I should describe what I've seen that would make a phone capable of truly competing with the iPhone. On its own terms, and not just a "this is as good as I can get, being stuck with this carrier."

The phone should be about the same size as any recent BlackBerry, and weigh about as much (4-6 oz). This is important. If the screen is too small no one will be able to read the increased font and picture sizes required of a touch screen phone.
Fully or mostly touch screen phones are catching on, while full touch screen phones may not last... the idea is here to stay.
Also the weight is very important. Any lighter and the device will feel too cheap, any heavier and no one will want to tote it around as a phone.

Using a capacitive touch screen like the BlackBerry Storm and the Apple iPhone opens a few interface possibilities which the iPhone has leveraged (in a small way. If you hold the phone to a heat source while in a call, the screen turns off to save on battery.) This also allows the phone to exist in your pocket while locked and not accidentaly call people. The Storm and the iPhone are also capable of leveraging multi-touch. The perfect will leverage its advanced touch screen to save battery and provide cooler applications.

This is purely my opinion, but I love the "click" screen included on the BlackBerry Storm. It allows to have not only "tap", "flick" and "hold" events in your interface but "click", opening options like "click and hold". I'm just theorizing here, but as interfaces advance to and past the touch interface of Minority Report, differentiating between a "tap" and a "click" will become increasingly important. Having the feedback of actually clicking a real button actually helps me type incredibly fast on this keyboard. RIM done good. The perfect phone will include some form of haptic feedback, preferably in a clicking screen.

Include a real headphone jack. I'm serious. I threw the HTC Dream (otherwise known as the Google Phone or G-1) out of the race for forcing you to use a mini-USB dongle to use a standard pair of headphones. This behavior may have been acceptable when the major companies (Samsung, Nokia, LG, and Motorola) ruled the market with a laconic fist, but now that Apple has rocked the boat the consumers rule. If a jack is not offered, people will quickly jump for a new phone that offers this as soon as possble. You can't annoy the market into buying shitty Bluetooth headsets to listen to music. Not anymore. The perfect phone will let me use my own headphones without being annoying, it will let me listen to my music on my terms.

Wait long enought to offer your phone. Apple kept the lid on the iPhone for years before its launch, waiting until they could offer a comprehensive and integrated solution for each feature they wanted to include. They let the store cover anything they couldn't think of by themselves, which I imagine is what the fabled BlackBerry Storm application center will be like. Samsung/Sprint jumped the gun on the Instinct and released an unstable and immature phone into the market, and they're paying the price. Their development SDK couldn't even mimic KEY features of the actual phone (like the keyboard), crippling 3rd party development (which they tried to encourage with the Instinct Developer Contest). Make sure your device is ready to play with the big boys before you get into the game. The perfect phone will mature enough that the existing features of the existing applications will work.

Be productive. The line between entertainment phones (RAZR, KRZR, Vu, Dare, Instinct, Rant) and business phones (BlackBerry ANYTHING, Windows Mobile ANYTHING) has begun to blur since the iPhone includes all these features. The line between the "hip" and the business-folk is also blurring, as younger people become industry leaders. Pulling the RIM (Research In Motion) and charging an extra $15 a month to access your exchange/exchange clone calendar is not going to fly for much longer. This information is accessible via IMAP, just check that when you check your email and be done with it. The iPhone already does this, and Windows Mobile does it even better. BlackBerry/RIM and feature phones are the only groups not on board with this idea. Just drink the koolaid, already...people are scheduling their lives online. The group that offers this without making a big stink is the group that is going to win. If everyone puts it out there, that's one less stupid thing to judge a carrier on. The perfect phone will let me WORK and PLAY.

The perfect phone will let the user community enhance this phone. I'm talking to you, Verizon. iPhone, Blackberry, Nokia, etc provide a relatively complete SDK which allows software developers to create applications for the phone. Even if they're not blessed by the carrier and not included in a central "Application Store", you can easily install these things on several phones as long as you accept it as a security risk. The perfect phone will let me screw around with it, since it's good enough that anything I do will be enhancing the phone, not hacking around its limitations.

Realize one thing: As a mobile device manufacturer in 2008/2009 you are now a slave to the market. If Apple has proven one thing it is that a hand-held device is capable of more than anyone thought possible. Except the BlackBerry people, they've had half these features for YEARS...they're just too busy to say anything. But the other half, if your phone doesn't do it people are going to leave you for the phone that does. Apple is not exempt from this. They have a very poor history of paying attention to the market, people just happen to like what they do a lot of the time. iPhone users have been asking for haptic feedback, MMS, camera flash, video camera, flash enabled web-browsing, etc, since the phone hit the market. If they don't deliver soon, some of their customers may jump ship to a different carrier when their contracts expire...which should be soon.

Two more phone reviews will be coming soon. I will be exchaning my BlackBerry Storm for a Samsung Omnia within the next few days and will review both of those soon. Then the winner takes all championship match: The iPhone v. EVERYONE ELSE.

--PXA

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