Where's Smartphone Nation?

[Eric Lin]

Something about the Smartphone has been plaguing me lately. Everything is working perfectly, don't get me wrong. I don't suffer from crashes, freezes or anything ugly. I check my email, use pIE to find things to do and use the phone to its fullest, except.... Except I don't really use my Smartphone to compose emails. Don't get me wrong, I send SMS all day long, and every once in a while I'll reply to an email real quick, but i rarely consider actually just composing an email on my Tanager. It might be that I find the idea of composing a full email in T9 intimidating, or it might be that after I hit "Send" then I have to be sure to hit Menu > Send / Receive. Either way, I read more than I write on my Smartphone.

Most people view a Smartphone like an early Palm Pilot- a device used to access data, not really to create it. Sure we fire off SMS, but most of us don't create much more than that on our Smartphones. This shouldn't really be a problem for anyone, but for me it is. See, I'm obsessed with moblogging- making blog entries, either text or pictures from mobile devices. To do this requires sending email out from my Smartphone and sometimes a picture. While both of these tasks are truly possible on a Smartphone, they are not particularly easy- especially emailing a picture, or even getting a decent picture from the HTC camera accessory.

I hope Microsoft streamlines tasks like emailing attachments as well as others because I'd love to see communities grow up around the Smartphone like Hiptop Nation (http://www.hiptop.bedope.com) has grown up around the Hiptop or Text America (http://www.textamerica.com) seems to have sprung up with the Nokia 3650. Sure this site is a great community for users, as are other great discussion boards like MoDaCo, and we all have mobile versions of our forums, but those mobile version are just desktop applications squeezed into a phone. Moblogs are a community optimized for mobile devices, not just appropriated for them.

What will it take to get you, to get me, to moblog from our Smartphones?

[encece]

Funny that you wrote this today. I was testing my camera today and was going to send a pic to my textamerica page.

But I decided to wait 10 minutes, sync the photos to my pc and post from outlook instead....it's just easier.

My biggest holdup is the text. The smartphone is the first phone I've ever used for text functions...I always had a PPC for that. I hate tap-typing. T9 is good but not that good. I miss a keyboard or stylus entry. But I'm trying to get the hang of it...I really am. :)

[lmtuxinc]

First, I would need a microsoft smartphone that works on Sprint PCS...

[rbrome]

For me, better text handling would be helpful. I have both a Nokia 3650 and a Tanager. I have to admit that I carry my Nokia more than my Tanger, and one of the main reasons is text handling.

First of all, the Nokia has a decent Notes application built-in, which I use constantly.

But also, Series 60 devices have a dedicated "text" key that I find extremely useful. It lets you switch text-entry modes without holding-and-waiting, and it lets you select, cut, copy, and paste text easily.

Of course the 3650 has that God-awful circular keypad... so if I could just combine my Tanager keypad with the Series 60 text features, I'd be a happy man.

As for moblogging, (I know I've said the before,) I think someone should create a Smartphone app that lets people upload photos via Nokia's Image Server API. It's a simple HTTP-based protocol that's absolutely perfect for mobloging. The basic API is partially implemented in the 3650, but the full spec adds all sorts of cool possibilities, like attaching titles and long-text captions to photos, browsing thumbnail galleries remotely, and "closing the loop" by downloading full-res pics to a phone.

It would be interesting if the best mobile platform for using Nokia's mobile photo API was MS Smartphone...

[Eric Lin]

rich, what then do you think of the 6600? it has all the benefits of the 3650 and includes a normal keypad. of all the symbian phones, it is the first one that makes me jealous. i long for it's swanky camera and reasonable shape/size.

i had not heard of nokia mobile photo api before, but it sounds fantastic. is this the feature that kodak implemented with their application? i haven't seen it in action, but it sounds great.