scherle.com» telephony

Sprint Rolls out Flawed Android Strategy at Developer Conference

Rick — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:38:27 +0000

This week, Sprint is hosting its ninth annual developer conference in Santa Clara, CA and the theme is definitely smartphones. Android, Palm webOS and Windows Mobile are all featured heavily as Sprint attempts to catch up to T-Mobile and ATT in the smartphone market.

I really only care about the Android. I was anxious to see Sprint’s version of Android and try it out on their network. Would they muck up the interface with a lot of Sprint-only apps designed to make money for them and stand in the way of my using the features in my phone? Charging me to change ring tones, share pictures, and use the navigation software is simply not going to fly anymore.

Sprint was giving out a new HTC Hero plus a month of service to the first 400 developers who proved they could build a “Hello World” application before 6:30 PM. I got a late start at 3:00 PM (this isn’t my real job, you know) and barely made it, delivering my app at 6:10 PM. Most of that time I was waiting for 750 MB of developer tools to download over the crowded WiFi and EVDO infrastructure. The actual app writing took only 20 minutes. But, all’s well that ends well; after too many lattes I got my phone (and a bad case of the jitters).

The Hero is a really nice phone; lightweight, attractive, with a stunning OLED screen that automatically adjusts to room brightness. Its performance is very snappy, especially in the browser. The software is pretty standard Android stuff, with a few little twists. For example, your contacts are now integrated with their Facebook profiles (more useful and less annoying than I thought it would be), there is an included PDF reader, and Microsoft Outlook and Exchange is supported via HTC’s Sync application.

I was glad to see that Sprint had largely left the Android operating system intact. A layer of big phone carrier goo would have been a deal killer for me.

Unfortunately, the phones are running Android version 1.5 while the rest of the world is on 1.6. This means that a lot of newer applications (including the new version of the Android Market) won’t run. With everyone else talking about releasing 2.0 next month, Sprint is saying “2010″ for version 1.6. That’s bad.

Worse is the fact that Sprint’s network doesn’t support OTA (over the air) upgrades for the Android. This means that, while other carrier’s customers get their phones upgraded automatically, Sprint users will have to visit the Sprint store or go through some complicated software installation procedure using their PC and a USB cable, a gymnastics exercise which is beyond most users.

So, bottom line, is it time to move back to Sprint? They have snappy data speeds and really broad coverage in most of the country, plus a lot fewer dropped calls than T-Mobile, and I’ve been really happy with their customer support. A lot of people should be really happy with Sprint’s new Android offerings.

But I can’t do business with them if they don’t have the products I want, and what I want is the current version of the Android operating system and all the latest software. After all, what would my friends say?

Pure Seduction: BlueAnt Q1 BlueTooth Headset

Rick — Wed, 06 May 2009 14:41:34 +0000

I’ll just come right out and admit it: This gadget seduced me. You could set the retail package on a pedestal in the MoMA and it would blend right in. It is a work of art.

I opened up it up, stuck it in my ear and it just started working. It talked me through the process of pairing with my phone (a process which is ALWAYS a pain in the butt), and that was that; we were instant friends.

The Q1 is completely voice operated, even to turn it off. You can say stuff like “Redial”, “Call back”, “Answer call” or “Ignore call,” even “Check battery.” And, you can pair it with up to 8 devices just by saying “Pair me.” It can even monitor two phones at once and answer which ever one is ringing.

Nice, but how does it perform?

The Q1 actually has 2 microphones, one to monitor the environment and one to listen to you. The signal from the environment is fed into a DSP chip where the noise is digitally subtracted from your speech, giving whoever you are talking to a crisp clear signal devoid of road and wind noise.

One of my most demanding specifications is battery time. In spite of its light weight and small size, the Q1 has a talk time of 4 hours and a standby time of 100 hours. It charges through a standard micro USB connector. When it is time to charge it, you can use the tiny foldaway AC adapter or the USB cable to charge it off your laptop (both are included).

The USB cable has one other function. The Q1 is designed to allow the firmware to be upgraded to accommodate new phones, add features or (heaven forbid) fix bugs.

Sadly, the Q1 makes my Jawbone headset, which I was SO excited about just a couple of months ago, seem obsolete and hard to use. (Ouch!)

I’m giving the Q1 five stars.

Portable Speakerphone for Your Car

Portable Speakerphone for Your Car

Rick — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 14:10:10 +0000

Portable Speakerphone

I have one of those legendary Jawbone BlueTooth headsets. It works great, but I hate having to deal with it: Put it on. Take it off. Forget you have it on and look like a dork. Charge it when you get home. Lose it.

What I REALLY wanted was a speakerphone for my car that I never had to think about. It would just work when I got in and quit when I got out. Well, now I have one; the BlueAnt ST3.

I tried a bunch of different devices before settling on this one — Sony, Motorola, BlueConnect. None of them met my specs for performance and convenience.

The ST3 is small, just barely bigger than my phone. At first, I was suspicious because of the unit’s small size and light weight. I wondered how much battery power it had onboard (read “talk time” and “standby time”). I’m going to save to you bunch of time and give you the answers: an unbelievable 15 hours of talk time and one month of standby time on a single 3-hour charge.

The sound quality is very good. It’s plenty loud enough even at freeway speeds and the other end of the conversation is ALMOST as good as my Jawbone (which is saying a lot).

If your phone supports BlueTooth directory integration (which the Android sadly does not until later this month), the ST3′s text to speech processor will even announce who’s calling and allow you to voice answer or not, making the unit truly hands-free.

I don’t even bother turning it on or off. When it notices the BlueTooth signal fade as you walk away, the ST3 shuts down. But it has a vibration sensor in it similar to the ones used in car alarms. When you return to your car, the ST3 wakes up, finds your phone, and locks on.

I suppose that some time, a week or two from now, my ST3 will ask to be recharged. It comes with both an AC charger and a car cable, so no problem. Meanwhile, I’m giving it 5 stars.

Rating: * * * * *

Street price: under $100

BlueAnt Wireless Website

Attack of the Mobile Barcode

Rick — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 14:30:22 +0000

QR code in the Wild

That funny looking symbol on my new business card is a QR code. Lately these little beasties have been cropping up on everything from T-shirts to magazine ads.

The QR (Quick Response) code is a two-dimensional bar code that can store contact info, URLs, even paragraphs of text. Although they were invented clear back in 1994, they were relegated to industrial applications until a new generation of consumer electronics made them practical for just about everything.

Now that phones like the Android and iPhone have easy to use software for decoding them, QR codes are spawning a new generation of applications called “hardlinking” or “physical world hyperlinking” that make it easy for consumers to capture data from products, magazines, billboards and even each other’s phones.

You can get your own QR codes to start pasting on stuff at the link below.

Make your own QR Code courtesy of ZXing project

Google image search of social QR code applications

Silicon Alley Insider, “Mobile Barcodes: Big In France!”

Sprint Rolls out Flawed Android Strategy at Developer Conference

I Fell in Love with an Android

Rick — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 15:15:32 +0000

"Greetings!"

I bought an Android phone just to check it out (’cause that’s what I’m supposed to do; my friends count on me for that.) I bought it in spite of that fact that I hate T-Mobile, in spite of the fact that the Android didn’t support Microsoft Exchange or view PDFs or let me view and edit Microsoft Office documents, and in spite of the fact that T-Mobile wanted to assign me a “ghetto” 510 area code number. None of that mattered. I just wanted to see it. I had 30 days to return it and that’s what I’d do.

Goodbye, Sprint!
What a surprise! After spending 100 hours playing with the phone (downloading software, configuring things, hooking up external devices, even making some phone calls), I had to admit I was in love. Goodbye, Sprint! Nothing else matters.

Why? It’s all about the software. In their attempt to lock you into their platform, brand themselves, and encourage you to buy silly things from them (like ring tones), the carriers all cement a layer of useless bloatware over the phone’s native programming. This junk is always thrown together haphazardly, poorly integrated, and badly designed. Basically, Microsoft and Palm and Sprint each have their own agenda and they are slugging it out in the arena of your phone. (Even now, Sprint is delaying the launch of it’s own Android phone so that Samsung can add a bunch of Sprint crap to the user interface.)

In contrast, the Android is designed to be open. There are hundreds of programs available for it, most of which are free, and they all play well together by design. You can add and remove them at the touch of a button without ever having to deal with your carrier.

Zillions of Programs

Zillions of Programs
“Who needs zillions of programs on their phone?”, you ask. Well, there’s one that can use the camera to take a picture of a book or a CD and find the lowest prices for that item in nearby stores and on the Internet. Take that, William Shatner!

There’s an augmented reality program that uses the camera to display whatever you are looking at on the screen, drawing labels over the picture in real time to identify what you are seeing. It will point out Angel Island, the Golden Gate Bridge, Coit Tower, San Quentin, and so forth. A similar program identifies the stars and constellations as you point it around the night sky.

Around the house, you can snap pictures of barcodes as you run out of things and it will put them on your shopping list. There’s a compass and a runner’s log and even an audio editing tool to make your own ring tones. It’s a camera and a GPS and a voice recorder, plus email and a web browser. It has visual voicemail, newsreaders and music and podcast players, Skype and Twitter clients. Oh yeah, and it’s a phone!

Plus, if you ever lose it, you can send it a text and it will tell you where it is. There’s also a bunch of games for it, but I’ve been having too much serious fun to play with them.

Why Android and Why Now?
There’s no end to the creativity people are demonstrating with the Android, but why this platform and why now? Because Google and the Open Handset Alliance found a secret formula for harnessing the creativity of developers.

First of all, they built a device that has all the hardware you need to do interesting things. It has a GPS, a 3-axis accelerometer and a magnetic compass, WiFi, 3G networking, and bluetooth, a touch screen and a keyboard, speaker and a processor with video and music capability. If you can’t have fun with all that, then you shouldn’t be programming. It even has a multi-color LED.

Secondly, they created an operating system that works like a Lego set, making it easy to build programs out of pieces of stuff that you and your friends have done before. Need a map of your current location? Just call one up. Need to play an alarm tone at a certain time? There’s a system service for that.

And last, but not least, they made it easy to get your new software creation into the handsets of thousands of grateful users through the Android marketplace. Even if your first creation is free, you can make a ton of money selling the advanced version for $0.99. And the cost to be a developer is just $25.00 (a paltry sum when compared to other developer programs.)

AND it's a Phone

The Future
The Android platform is still in its infancy, but it’s remarkable how quickly the market is maturing. It seems clear that Android’s operating system is going to break out of the phone and spawn a whole new generation of portable computers that will replace the laptops of today. In short, netbooks are going to fall in love with Android, too. Chip manufacturers are already tooling up and companies like HP are making early announcements.

I think Android as a new computing platform makes perfect sense. After living on the Android for a week, my big, fast Windows machine feels clunky and out of date. If the Android had a little bit bigger keyboard and screen, I’d use it for everything, relegating my Windows machine to really big jobs like video editing, 3D modeling, and first-person shooters.

And what about the iPhone? A beautiful product for sure, and a terrific success story for the company, but once again Apple is headed in the wrong direction by vertically integrating. Silly boys, the future is open! But that’s a story for another time.

Links:

Silicon Alley Insider, “HP Considering Android for New Netbooks”
Engaget, “Save us from Apple’s groundbreaking, developer-shackling App Store”
New York Times, “T-Mobile to Use Google Software in Devices for Home”

Who Needs a Phone Company?

Rick — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 13:47:47 +0000

What’s your phone number? Why should that question mean anything at all?

Phone numbers are a holdover from an era of mechanical rotary switches. Each phone connected to your central office (all 9999 of you) was assigned a number. When that got full, we put in a new central office with a three digit prefix (255-9999). And when we ran out of those, we assigned area codes, then country codes.

Today phone calls are processed by silicon rather than iron, phones are mostly computers that can also reproduce sound, and the connections between phones are webs of Internet traffic instead of point-to-point copper. And, since every device can potentially talk to every other device, we don’t need phone numbers anymore or, coincidentally, phone companies either.

In case you don’t follow telephony, a relatively new protocol called DUNDi (Distributed Universal Number Discovery) is being rolled out with new phone systems which enables your phone (you@phonesystem.yourdomain.com) to find me (rick@phonesystem.scherle.com) and call me directly over the Internet.

Of course, the people that argue over standards will continue to argue over this one, so the future might not be exactly DUNDi, but the handwriting is on the wall. After 100 years of phone numbers, things will change slowly so don’t get rid of your coveted (415) number that ends in 0000 just yet, but it’s coming.

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