This is the age of true mobility

I’ve started this site less than a week ago and we just reached 1,000 unique visitors last night. Thanks to everyone for stopping by! As I’ve been cruising the blogs, news releases and forums, deciding what I found interesting and what I wanted to talk about, I’ve been deciding on what I would focus on here.

This site’s main focus is going to be news and information about the world of mobility, more specifically the trends that wireless technology brings to the world, new cool projects and software, as well as new smartphones, mainly in the world of Symbian, Windows Mobile and Blackberry. I’d love to hear any feedback or comments about the site, I left the comment system freely open and hopefully you’ll decide to visit Mobility Now often!

Choosing a phone is usually based on many factors: look, style, type of phone, recommendations from friends, and hopefully features. Many people forget features and go purely for look, but that’s for another time. One thing that the vast majority of consumers forget, is battery life. At most, we see a 4h talk time / 260h stand-by time listed on the box and don’t think twice about it. However, it’s the first thing that comes to haunt us when the phone dies on us while in the middle of a crucial operation.

One myth about batteries is that all phones are pretty much the same, with relatively poor battery life. This is not the case. Most phones will, with typical usage, last a couple of days, but there are extremes. Some will literally not last a single day, and will require charges every couple hours, unless left totally unused. Others will be usable for weeks, where you can actually spend a full 2 weeks without charging it.

There are 2 factors that determine battery life. First is the power of the battery, which is based on the size and the electric charge measured in milliampere-hour (mAh). If the phone is very small or thin, the battery will also be smaller. This means the battery will most likely not last long. If it’s a bigger device, and the manufacturer can put in a bigger battery, then chances are it will be able to power the device for longer. The electric charge of the battery can also vary, usually between 860mAh and 1500mAh for most phones. There is a very big difference between one extremity and the next. Also sometimes the manufacturer will offer a “standard” and an “extended” battery of the same size, and if you look at the specs, what changes is the electric charge.

So now that we know what the battery is capable of, the second factor to look at is the power consumption of the phone. Again, it varies greatly from one feature to the next. The operating system on the phone will take power, and having a smartphone with multiple applications running will of course drain the battery faster. Being connected to a GSM or CDMA cellular network takes very little power, but 3G requires slightly more. Using wi-fi, if your device handles it, will take a lot of power. Using built-in GPS is even worse. The screen is another thing that takes power, and as the screens get better, bigger and with higher resolutions, they require more power. Using a screen saver in this case is actually a bad idea because animating it takes power. The best thing is if the phone can shut down the screen after a few minutes of inactivity.

There are things that can be done to save battery life. If you only have access to a GSM or CDMA network and your phone supports 3G, going in the setting and turning 3G off is a good idea, because switching from 2G to 3G takes a lot of power. Switching wi-fi scanning off is also very good, because scanning using the wi-fi antenna every 15mins will drain the battery in no time. The same is true for GPS. Also any extra screen saver, animation or background application running will take more power.

Battery power is one thing everyone wishes would improve on mobile devices. For me it’s an important part of why I select a device, and on my Nokia E61i (with 3G off but using wi-fi) I can get a full week of battery life using it moderately, or a full 8h of browsing / messaging, because it has a large 1500mAh battery. Many older black and white phones also gave similar performances even with lower batteries simply because of the low demands of the phone. On the other hand, reading user comments from say the Nokia 6300 or Samsung X820, their latest thin phones, some people are reporting less than a single day of battery life when using it moderately, and only 4h of usage time. Some will say that battery life is not a huge issue, simply not using any of the phone features will solve the problem. I think that’s a fallacy since there’s no use paying for a high end phone with lots of features if the battery doesn’t support them.

There are a few questions that come up time and time again on smartphone forums, and one of them is “how can I use Instant Messaging on my device”. As people get more mobile, after SMS and email, the next thing they want to do is IM. As I said in a previous post, right now the mobile IM world is a mess. There are tons of products, more appearing all the time, and they are all evolving very fast. Unfortunately there is not one answer to this question, and they all have strengths and weaknesses. Here I will simply list some popular ones with the various features they have.

Official clients

First, there’s the official clients. Both MSN and Yahoo! Messenger have a mobile client. The Yahoo! one comes part of their Yahoo! Go package. That application is massive and includes the IM, as well as local search, news, stocks, mail, search and more. The client works on hundreds of phones, mainly high end and several mainstream ones. Many lower end phones do not support it, as is the case for most of these apps. Yahoo! Go is currently at version 2.0 “Gamma” and is free.

Microsoft has its own client also. Pocket MSN (now renamed to Live Messenger) comes pre-installed on Windows Mobile smartphones and Pocket PCs. You can also buy it from Microsoft if you don’t already have it. They don’t have an official client for any other type of phone, at least not in the US. Interestingly enough it was discovered that the MSN China site has a version for S60 Symbian phones, which I have to admit I think was the best mobile MSN client of them all. I say was because unfortunately that application no longer works outside of China and Taiwan.

As far as I know there is no official mobile IM client from AOL or Google.

Multi-services clients

There are a lot of unofficial clients, and those usually support multiple services. These typically come out of startup companies hoping to be your gateway to all the IMs of the world. Many of them now even support Skype or other types of VOIP.

One of the oldest and most popular choices is Agile. They have had a mobile IM client for a long time now and provide their application for most phones. Agile Messenger supports MSN, Yahoo!, GTalk, AIM, ICQ and XMP. A trial is available but then you need to buy the product.

IM+ is another application which supports MSN, Yahoo!, GTalk, AIM, ICQ and Jabber. It also has a free trial but then needs to be bought.

EQO is a more recent solution that also integrates all of MSN, Yahoo!, GTalk, AIM, ICQ and Jabber, but also includes Skype support. That means you can call other users of Skype, or even phone lines, over 3G or wi-fi, if your device supports it. This application is free and runs on a large number of devices.

Fring is very similar to EQO in features but it’s in beta and available only for some Nokia devices so far. It also supports Skype and comes free.

Then there’s Mig33. It talks to MSN, Yahoo! and AIM, but it also offers profiles, chat rooms and VOIP calls. It runs on most phones and the lite version is free.

The last one I’ll talk about is the IM client which may already be built into your device. Many phones, mainly most Nokia and some Sony Ericsson devices, come with a built in IM client. If the application hasn’t been configured by the provider, it won’t do anything without what’s called a Wireless Village server. That is a fairly old concept that was intended to provide a central service for mobile IM and not much ever came out of it. Fortunately someone recently started a service called Packetbox that aims to make those clients work again. It’s still in testing and not very stable but it may end up being yet another solution.

Lastly a note of caution. These multi-services clients all require you to signup for an account, and then require your login information for the various services you want to connect to, since they act as gateway between you and the official IM services. This is fine as long as they are trustworthy, but it’s something to keep in mind.

Google Maps is one of the most popular mapping web sites online. Google introduced it a few years ago and has added an impressive amount of features to it. Late last year, they released a Java client called Google Maps for Mobile (GMM) which is available for any mobile device supporting Java. It’s one of the mobile applications I have the most fun with, and I feel it’s one of the most useful yet unknown program out there. GMM isn’t exactly new, but Google has continued to update it in the past months, and today it features almost the same abilities and flexibility as the web based version. Here I will describe these features and how this simple app can help so much.

The first thing to do, if you haven’t already, is to install it. Any Java supporting device that has Internet access (or on which you can transfer applications) will work. Simply go to the web site and download it. A word of caution on using this application: loading maps from your mobile will take a lot of data, so unless you have unlimited data from your provider, you need to watch your usage or risk a high bill. Thankfully GMM has a data counter in the top right showing you how much it’s downloading.

The most obvious feature of GMM is of course to browse maps. You can browse using the arrows on your device, and zoom in by pressing the middle select button. The left soft key will zoom out, and the right one will bring up the menu. From the menu, you can toggle between map and satellite mode. From there you can also access the true power behind GMM.

The first really useful feature is the search. You can do either a local search or a business search. Simply bring up the menu and press 1 or 2 then enter either an address or a business name. One neat thing is you can enter a wide range of items in the search box. You can input a zip code and GMM will zoom in to the location of that zip code. You can enter “pizza” and GMM will show you a list of Pizza restaurants in the area you are currently viewing. You can enter a street or city name, or a known place like “sphinx egypt”.

Whenever you search for something, one or more points will appear on the map. Simply browse through them by using the keypad with the 1, 2 and 3 keys. Also, any time you have a point selected on the map, you can press * to bring up the favorites menu. You can save up to 9 favorites, and those can be either map locations, search results or directions.

The next feature that is very useful is to get directions. By pressing 3 in the menu, you can select 2 points, and Google will display step by step directions. This is very precise and the results will go through every step between those 2 points, telling you which roads to take including exits and road names. Use 1, 2 and 3 to scroll from the start position to the end. One fun thing to try is to get directions to go across the Atlantic ocean.

A recent feature they added is the traffic reports. In several major US cities, pressing # in the menu will bring up the current traffic maps, showing which roads have heavy traffic. Green roads have light traffic while red ones are congested. As Google rolls out this information to more cities, GMM will be able to access this new data.

Lastly, there’s also a more advanced feature known as KML files. A KML file is a list of points on Google Maps, originally created for the Google Earth desktop application, which shows information for each point on the map. For example, someone could create a KML file that shows each Pizza restaurant in Paris, with a short description, picture and link for each. External links will load in the phone’s browser. The way to load the KML file is to do a business search from the menu, and in the search box, enter the URL of the file. GMM will load the file and display each point on the map. Simply use 1, 2 and 3 to scroll between each of them. You can find a list of files people made public on the Google Earth forum. Note that not all KML features are supported.

Google Maps for Mobile is really a cool application, mainly because being Java based, it’s so universal and lightweight, and provides access to all of the Google Maps data in real time. Google keeps updating it and they recently released versions for Windows Mobile and Blackberry, as well as GPS support for a handful of devices.

I try to limit my new mobile purchases to one device a year. I follow new releases very closely, and try to spot that gem which will do everything I need it to do well. The Nokia E61i, released last month, caught my attention as a potential gem.

I’ve been using my N73 since last summer (you can see my review on HoFo), so I’ll obviously compare my experience with this device with it. The main reason to buy an E61i was that I wanted to try out wifi and qwerty, which are critical for a true convergence device. I did not need GPS so I felt the ridiculous price of the N95 was not for me, and I don’t like sliders.

The box came with the following: phone, manual, CD, charger, USB cable, headset, 256m memory card.

This is the firmware information: 1.0633.22.05 15-02-07 RM-227

Hardware
As seen in pictures, this device is very nice looking and thin. It’s obviously wider because it’s a qwerty device, and you get a large screen. It feels a lot more solid and better built than even my N73 which wasn’t that bad. The back cover and front is all aluminum with plastic around the edges. The screen is very big and of excellent quality. The loud speaker is pretty standard compared with past phones, and the notification light is useful and customizable.

The keyboard is very nice. I have to get used to qwerty since I’m used to the normal phone keypad, but the keys are nice and the D-pad is such an improvement over a joystick. I find it weird that the side buttons are on the left side instead of the right side which would seem more intuitive for using it with the right hand, but the buttons are fine and easily usable.

Battery
Battery life is very good. The day I got it, I spent hours at 1 bar left and it never gave me a battery low warning. After charging in once overnight I have yet to drain the battery with heavy use. This is one of the major reasons for getting this device, as I really didn’t feel like charging a phone every night. This thing will probably be charged once a week and never come close to running out.

Software
This is where I think the E61i really shows what kind of device it is. The OS is S60v3, and does not include FP1. The UI (so far) is very stable and hasn’t crashed or given me a memory error at all. While FP1 would have been nice, I also see the N95 bug threads pop up and am glad they play guinea pig. Although stable, I did find the menu browsing to be slightly slower than my N73, but not enough to be annoying. I installed all my usual (GMail, Google Maps, etc) without any problem. As a test, I loaded the device manual in the PDF reader. On my N73 any time I tried to do that, I could not zoom in or browse it without crashing with an out of memory error. I was pleased that the E61i could view it with no error.

Another nice thing I found out is the device comes packed with software. Not only does it have all the usual Nokia stuff like messaging, Web, IM, PTT, WLAN wizard, quickoffice, etc, but it also comes pre-installed with Worldmate which I think is a very nice program, as well as installers for Exchange and Blackberry connect for those who need it, a golf game, Widset, Podcasting, a Reuters news app and even location and positioning software already on the device for use with a bluetooth GPS module. Note that mine came with a 256m memory card and most extra software were on that, so versions in other markets may vary.

As far as connectivity goes, it has everything from GSM, UMTS (which I can’t test here since I live in Canada), bluetooth, ir, wi-fi. The built in WLAN wizard works well and had no issue finding my network. The implementation is good, and it creates an access point so all applications can select to use wifi just as they would use a normal access point. I tried the built in wi-fi telephone app but couldn’t figure it out, I guess you need a SIP service for that. I just installed Friing and Skype was working right away.

Multimedia
The big change over previous messaging handset is the 2MPx camera. From reading comments I feared that this would be a weak spot that couldn’t take pics inside, but it’s not true at all. I found the quality to be quite good for a 2MPx and it works fine indoors and outdoors. The camera does not have auto focus or a flash so obviously sufficient lighting is required.

The gallery app is the standard non-Nseries gallery. It doesn’t have the fancy features, but it’s faster and it’s not buggy. This was the single most buggy area of my N73, and I can’t tell you the number of times my N73 crashed, froze or gave a memory error while using the camera or gallery software. The E61i doesn’t have the enhanced multimedia features of the Nseries such as picture editing but I prefer it to bugginess.

The music player is the same, which I find pretty basic, and it comes with the usual RealPlayer and such.

Conclusion
I think for what it’s purpose is, this is the perfect device for people wanting a well built, stable Internet device. It does everything it supports well, from browsing, messaging, editing documents, doing some basic multimedia and connecting in various ways. When looking at the competition in this area, I think this is a top solution. Over my N73 I gain the qwerty keyboard including a much better D-pad, wi-fi, a more solid build, at the cost of enhanced multimedia features of the Nseries.

Out of all the convergence devices out there (Windows Mobile, Palm, Blackberry, Symbian) I believe right now the E61i is the best choice, at least for me.

Pros:

• Solid build
• Battery life
• Wide range of connections
• Included software

Cons:

• Missing extra Nseries multimedia software

Score: 9.5/10

Nokia site for the E61i: http://europe.nokia.com/A4344018

Mobility Now seemed like an appropriate title. Mobility means many things. Certainly a mobile phone, but true mobility means being able to do things, the things you’re used to be doing, but at any location. Being able to do phone calls while on the road is not new. Early cellphones from the 1980s allowed people to talk while on the road. But that was not true mobility. Phones were huge, they were of low quality, and the calls were restricted to analog signals, and often to specific networks. Every year new features were added. First came SMS messages, where phones would now allow people to type and receive messages. Then technology got better, we saw color screens, and additional functions were added such as a calendar, calculator, a better contact book and much more.

At one point, when connections got fast enough and phones powerful enough, the cellphone world and the Internet world connected for the first time, and this was a revolution. No longer was the cellphone user trapped in the closed world of the network provider. With the early browsers, now all the technologies of the Internet started to open up to mobile users, from web browsing, email and much more. At first this was a very painful experience, because suddenly a device meant to do phone calls was being used to render and display web sites, and accept complex input from the user. More powerful technology, even faster networks, and the introduction of the QWERTY keypad was the second revolution. Phones were powerful enough, input was easy enough, and software was advanced enough to bring raise to the smartphone, not only a phone but one that has all the capacities to be expanded and used for brand new things.

Only a few years ago smartphones were making their entry into the world of mobility, and enthusiasts were seeing the birth of true mobility. Companies were started, web sites appeared, and developers multiplied at a breakneck speed to improve and facilitate this brand new world, a world where anything that can be done on a standard computer was now being translated to the mobile space. Now, we’re in the most exciting era of true mobility. Devices are becoming mature, technologies are being deployed and software developers are out there. Almost every week a new breakthrough appears in the domain. From IM (Instant Messaging) clients, new web browsers, VOIP, 3G, push email, the Internet is full of buzzwords, and interesting solutions are available for all simply by searching for them. This is why I decided to create this site. This is where I will chronicle the changing world of mobility.