Passionate Phone People

[Andy Sjostrom]

I just got back from Mobius 2003. Microsoft had invited about twenty passionate PDA and mobile phone people to listen to and talk about what's going on with Microsoft products and in the market in general. The participants were all involved in running sites related to everything from Symbian, cell phones, PDAs, to Pocket PCs. (No particular order!)<br /><br />Pocket PC Thoughts was represented by myself and Jason Dunn. The conference was held just outside Disneyland, Paris, at <a href="http://www.dlp-guidebook.de/Hotels/Disney/Hotels_Newport.htm">Disney's Newport Bay Club Hotel</a>. The event was non-NDA, so there was no information given regarding future Pocket PCs or Smartphones. From my perspective, the real value was meeting with everyone and the discussions we had. It's really interesting to see the faces "behind the web sites" and interact in real life. We got a bag of goodies which contained an Orange SPV Smartphone, keyboard and camera to the Orange SPV, an empty 128 MB SD card, a 64 MB SD card with Smartphone software and a few more smaller items. I hadn't planned on getting a Smartphone 2002 since I am waiting for the next version which will come with .NET Compact Framework in ROM. But now I feel it is great having one now so I can get up to speed faster on the next Smartphone. I have actually retired my Pocket PC Phone Edition!<br /><br />I know Jason has an extensive (!) trip report cooking, so I will let him talk more about the contents of the conference. At times like this, it is easy to sum up things. So, here are two lists that I feel talks about what Microsoft has done well as well as needs to do.<br /><br />Done well:<br />1. Began its entrance into the mobile phone market<br />2. Aligned mobile device software across PDA style, hybrid and mobile phone devices<br />3. Attracted a large number of mobile network operators<br /><br />Needs to do:<br />1. Increase speed of hardware design and innovation (fund projects, if nescessary)<br />2. Get either Motorola (likely), Nokia (fat chance) or Sony Ericsson (if they were smart) to adopt their software<br />3. Make sure they are in the 3G spotlights that are being rigged as we speak

[srider]

Andy, hope you like your SPV. I've had mine since December and love it. If MS continue their development push, Smartphone 2003 should be stunning.

One thing the SPV has made me realise is I'll never buy a portable device without wireless internet again.

[mv]

Needs to do:
2. Get either Motorola (likely), Nokia (fat chance) or Sony Ericsson (if they were smart) to adopt their software



Well, the OS used by motorola is not good anyway. But SonyEricsson? No thanks, they are fine with symbian. Do you want a SE P800 with the pocket pc OS? Get a thera or something like that. Symbian is pretty good, and differents OS allow people to make choices, and the OS makers compete with each other. Innovation stops when there is no competition anymore.
0X

[Peter Foot]

We got a bag of goodies which contained an Orange SPV Smartphone, keyboard and camera to the Orange SPV, an empty 128 MB SD card, a 64 MB SD card with Smartphone software and a few more smaller items.

Is that the squashy roll up keyboard?, I was surprised how easy it was to type on. The problem with smart phone is that you can get too carried away trying to tap the screen if you are used to the pocket pc!

Orange had a big presence at MDC too, they are really expecting the SPV to take off! and at last have set up a developer program, something sadly lacking at the beginning...

[krisbrown]

Hmm, good luck with yours.

Unfortunately, my experience is a device with all the bad features of MS operating system trying to be a mobile phone, it's now in the top drawer and my trusty T68i is being used again, it's a dream to use compared to the SPV.
This is an area where MS is actually up against an operating system they just can't squash by bruteforce, this could be the undoing of them.

[Ben]

Andy Sjostrom wrote:

Needs to do:
2. Get either Motorola (likely), Nokia (fat chance) or Sony Ericsson (if they were smart) to adopt their software




Well, the OS used by motorola is not good anyway. But SonyEricsson? No thanks, they are fine with symbian. Do you want a SE P800 with the pocket pc OS? Get a thera or something like that. Symbian is pretty good, and differents OS allow people to make choices, and the OS makers compete with each other. Innovation stops when there is no competition anymore.

Completely agree there, I think the only one of those three Phone manufactures who may just possibly adopt smartphone is Motorola since their current choice of phones that cater for that area of the market is negligible (non-existant?). Both Nokia and SE have developed there own software based on Symbian and IMHO both Series 60 (Nokia) and UIQ (SE) do an extremely good job. The Symbian 'backbone' has also had far more development time put into than smartphone (since it was originally based on EPOC). Purely from experimenting with the phones in a shop both the SE P800 and Nokia 7650/3650 seem to run much faster than an SPV and are much more capable.

[Andy Sjostrom]

Andy, hope you like your SPV. I've had mine since December and love it. If MS continue their development push, Smartphone 2003 should be stunning.

One thing the SPV has made me realise is I'll never buy a portable device without wireless internet again.

Yes, I like it very much so far. The user interface is great and the color screen stunning. My only concern so far is that it feels somewhat sluggish. I would like to see performance improve in the next version!

[Andy Sjostrom]

We got a bag of goodies which contained an Orange SPV Smartphone, keyboard and camera to the Orange SPV, an empty 128 MB SD card, a 64 MB SD card with Smartphone software and a few more smaller items.

Is that the squashy roll up keyboard?, I was surprised how easy it was to type on. The problem with smart phone is that you can get too carried away trying to tap the screen if you are used to the pocket pc!

Orange had a big presence at MDC too, they are really expecting the SPV to take off! and at last have set up a developer program, something sadly lacking at the beginning...

Yes it is. The keyboard really works well!

[Peter Foot]

Andy, hope you like your SPV. I've had mine since December and love it. If MS continue their development push, Smartphone 2003 should be stunning.

One thing the SPV has made me realise is I'll never buy a portable device without wireless internet again.

Yes, I like it very much so far. The user interface is great and the color screen stunning. My only concern so far is that it feels somewhat sluggish. I would like to see performance improve in the next version!

Based on what I read at http://www.robertlevy.net there should be noticable performance increases with XScale powered Smartphone devices over the current Texas OMAP powered devices. Presumably we will see these with Smartphone 2003 devices.

[srider]

Andy, hope you like your SPV. I've had mine since December and love it. If MS continue their development push, Smartphone 2003 should be stunning.

One thing the SPV has made me realise is I'll never buy a portable device without wireless internet again.

Yes, I like it very much so far. The user interface is great and the color screen stunning. My only concern so far is that it feels somewhat sluggish. I would like to see performance improve in the next version!

The recent UK update improved performance hugely. Might be worth checking yours is up to date.

[Paul]

"At times like this, it is easy to things sum up."

I think you need to move 2 of those words around.

[Wuss912]

Based on what I read at http://www.robertlevy.net there should be noticable performance increases with XScale powered Smartphone devices over the current Texas OMAP powered devices. Presumably we will see these with Smartphone 2003 devices.

any ideas when the 2003 devices will be launching?

[Peter Foot]

Based on what I read at http://www.robertlevy.net there should be noticable performance increases with XScale powered Smartphone devices over the current Texas OMAP powered devices. Presumably we will see these with Smartphone 2003 devices.

any ideas when the 2003 devices will be launching?

I don't know we weren't told at MDC but they had a couple of devices running early versions of the OS which were used in a couple of the demonstrations.

[Robert Levy]

HUGE performance increase on the Smarphone devices that Intel was showing at the US MDC. Did Intel not have a booth at the Euro MDC?


Based on what I read at http://www.robertlevy.net there should be noticable performance increases with XScale powered Smartphone devices over the current Texas OMAP powered devices. Presumably we will see these with Smartphone 2003 devices.

[Peter Foot]

HUGE performance increase on the Smarphone devices that Intel was showing at the US MDC. Did Intel not have a booth at the Euro MDC?

Yes they did. Personally I've not had hands-on experience of a Smartphone to be able to give an opinion on how snappy the UI is in comparison, hence my quoting your existing report from MDC New Orleans. Before going to MDC I knew relatively little about the Smartphone or its capabilities, I think there is real potential in the platform however I think like many Microsoft products often version 1.0's have many issues. However there has certainly been a lot of work from both Microsoft and Orange to deal with any teething problems from the developers stand-point.

[David McNamee]

any ideas when the 2003 devices will be launching?

The rumor-mill currently puts it at 2004. :cry:

Edit: BTW, those are European sources I'm getting that from - who knows when it will hit the Americas.

[Jonathan1]

[personal opinion]
No touchscreen and such a small screen makes these devices next to useless to me. And I'm not the only one who feels this way. Doing a poll at our Pocket PC user group there weren't many that cared for the smartphone. Most were more interested in the PPC phone edition.
I'm of the opinion that if you are going to stuff two devices together it should be a shoving a phone into a PPC rather then a PPCish device into a phone. You guys should do a poll as to how many people out there have both a cell phone and PPC on them all day long. PPCThoughts already has determined that a vast majority of people keep their PPC on them all day long. It seems like a more natural progression to have a phone in a PPC rather then having some wanna be PDA device in a phone. *shrugs* Just my .00002 cents.

[/personal opinion]

[David McNamee]

I'm of the opinion that if you are going to stuff two devices together it should be a shoving a phone into a PPC rather then a PPCish device into a phone.

Which is just what they did with the Pocket PC Phone Edition devices. Those are great devices that track closely to what you seem to want (touchscreen, bigger screen, I'm sure there are other things, too).

Those things don't work best for the entire market, though. Take me, for instance. My Pocket PC is with me less than half of the time now, and that's just for light PIM duties, the occasional e-mail from the road, and playing games and media files. A lot of the heavy lifting I used to do awkwardly with my Pocket PC is now done with my Tablet PC. My telephone, however, never leaves my side. Always-on communication through voice and SMS is very, very important to me. If my phone could do PIM as capably as my Pocket PC, and let me at least read my e-mail, I'd be hard pressed to not place my Pocket PC up for sale on eBay. And my phone has to be sturdier than my Pocket PC, too. That means that nice, convenient, large touch-screen has got to go. It wouldn't last very long with the physical abuse my phones go through.

As a consumer, I'm very excited about Smartphone. As an application developer, I'm down-right tingly!

I am in no way trying to attack your position. I'm only trying to build from it. There's going to be a portion of the converged-device market that needs exactly what you're describing should be in a device. There's also going to be a portion that needs what I'm looking for in a device. That's why we need to have both types of devices available. That's why we need to have both devices be first-class citizens in the smart client arena. And that's why we need as much developer support for both device types as there is for any other .NET client technology.

[srider]

I'm of the opinion that if you are going to stuff two devices together it should be a shoving a phone into a PPC rather then a PPCish device into a phone.

Which is just what they did with the Pocket PC Phone Edition devices. Those are great devices that track closely to what you seem to want (touchscreen, bigger screen, I'm sure there are other things, too).

Those things don't work best for the entire market, though. Take me, for instance. My Pocket PC is with me less than half of the time now, and that's just for light PIM duties, the occasional e-mail from the road, and playing games and media files. A lot of the heavy lifting I used to do awkwardly with my Pocket PC is now done with my Tablet PC. My telephone, however, never leaves my side. Always-on communication through voice and SMS is very, very important to me. If my phone could do PIM as capably as my Pocket PC, and let me at least read my e-mail, I'd be hard pressed to not place my Pocket PC up for sale on eBay. And my phone has to be sturdier than my Pocket PC, too. That means that nice, convenient, large touch-screen has got to go. It wouldn't last very long with the physical abuse my phones go through.

As a consumer, I'm very excited about Smartphone. As an application developer, I'm down-right tingly!

I am in no way trying to attack your position. I'm only trying to build from it. There's going to be a portion of the converged-device market that needs exactly what you're describing should be in a device. There's also going to be a portion that needs what I'm looking for in a device. That's why we need to have both types of devices available. That's why we need to have both devices be first-class citizens in the smart client arena. And that's why we need as much developer support for both device types as there is for any other .NET client technology.

I agree with David. Since getting my SPV, it's taken over PIM duties from my PPC. Sure, it's not as poweerful, but it's easily good enough, and since I always carry a phone, there is no extra hassle.

Don't forget, most people here are PPC evangalists, most people aren't. Most people do carry a phone however. I realise that from a functionality point of view PPC Phones are superior, but Smartphones are more practical imho.

[JeZaD]

From what I have read, Symbian now have 75% of all smartphone manufacturers in their camp. Motorola is one of them too guys! Don't think they're going to jump ship - unless MS offer all their services for nothing.

Lets count Symbian OS users:
Nokia, Siemens, Samsung, Sendo, Sony/Ericsson,

So who is playing Microsoft?
Orange. And thats just an OEM phone. Hmm. (I probably forgot someone there)

Before you think I'm just CE bashing/Palm lover:
I love my Dell X5. I have been an MS Windows programmer since '94 and a Windows user since '88. Even In 1988 the OS and apps were more stable than they are under WinCE - Aldus Pagemaker ran in 1MB without crashing (with 1000 more features than PocketWord)! What went wrong Microsoft???

[rlobrecht]

I think there's a market for both PPCPE and SmartPhones, but the SPV market is much bigger. I know a lot of people who have tried PDAs (either palm or PPC) and given up. They just didn't find their use compelling enough to carry something that large all the time. Just about eveyone carries a phone. A phone with a little bit of media, a little bit of email, a little bit of your PIM, and a few simple games is exactly what joe-consumer wants.

[mv]

From what I have read, Symbian now have 75% of all smartphone manufacturers in their camp. Motorola is one of them too guys! Don't think they're going to jump ship - unless MS offer all their services for nothing.

Lets count Symbian OS users:
Nokia, Siemens, Samsung, Sendo, Sony/Ericsson,

So who is playing Microsoft?
Orange. And thats just an OEM phone. Hmm. (I probably forgot someone there)

Before you think I'm just CE bashing/Palm lover:
I love my Dell X5. I have been an MS Windows programmer since '94 and a Windows user since '88. Even In 1988 the OS and apps were more stable than they are under WinCE - Aldus Pagemaker ran in 1MB without crashing (with 1000 more features than PocketWord)! What went wrong Microsoft???


that´s the point. Palm isn´t the only one who offer better sync with ms office files (docs to go), the SE P800 syncs with word, excel, and powerpoint files, and really does a good job. The only thing keeping me from buying it is it´s high price... but that may change.