Things are changing

After a long and carefully thought process. I decided it was time to mix things up a little. And got my first android phone. An old (by today standards of course) Motorola Milestone. To be honest it is truly a completely different experience compared to Symbian. It is my first Superphone (thanks Steve Litchfield ) and many differences stand out at first. The main one being battery life, it is understandable that a large screen touch device consumes much more battery. But the integration of Android to us google app users is just great, not to mention that the tweetdeck client is every bit as good as the desktop version. Being a linux user for over 4 years, helps to appreciate the openness of Android, I mean you can do anything you want with it (it is not Meego or Maemo I know). And I am thinking about keeping it as my main phone. What really got me thinking yesterday was how my habits have changed with this new phone. For example I carry around the usb cable along with my glasses so I can charge it wherever I go, whenever I am expecting a call I try to avoid getting my hands dirty so I can answer right away ( no need to do this on a qwerty phone). But in general all of my needs are being satisfied by this phone. Here is my first impression on must have apps.
1. Skype
2. Tweetdeck
3. Shazam


I will not include my mail client since it is lotus traveler but only cause I have to use Lotus Notes as my work email. But even the Android version is way friendlier than the Symbian version.


I have not tested the camera for the occasional photo but the outcome looked good on my first 2 or 3 shots indoor. I even had my first outdoor experience and the battery was able to put up with it until I got back home to charge it.


I will try to post an app recommendation and an app review within the next 3 weeks. 

There is an App for it..

It all started a few years back with my Nokia 6620 and it's limited email capabilities. I started browsing for email clients and I found that the only one that did the job more than right was Profimail. But what a problem it was a licensed product.So I opted to keep my crappy email client instead of paying a few dollars for the one I needed.
Then it was music player for my E71. Same thing I found out that the LCG Jukebox was better than my Nokia player every day of the week but did not pay for it and kept my below standard player.
So this last week I did a test run of a series of Twitter clients for S60 3rd Ed FP2 (E72 and family) and guess what I tried Socially,Snaptu(as you read some time ago),Thrill,TweetS60 and Gravity. The main difference between all and Gravity is that when you use Gravity you realize why it is a paid product. You do not get that feeling of Beta or Amateur software. It looks finished and professional. Snaptu was great in this sense but it is a bit limited it is more of a multipurpose app, I will call it the social army knife. Long Story I know but honestly people why do we have to fight so hard to put down a few bucks for a product that is worth a whole lot more.
I am buying Gravity 10 U$S is not going to kill me and I will get my customizable Twitter client.
So I am just saying before you discard a product just because you have to pay for it. Give it a try (all serious software vendors offer demos) and then make an educated decision. I know it feels bad to spend money on software that does the same thing you get for free. But if it does it perfect versus "just OK" guess what , then the price is right.
My comments on Gravity it is just like having your desktop client. Options for looks,Options for retweets,options for Timeline,Options for autoupdate and notification. So you can go from a die hard hyperconnected update me every minute to update it once a day. And get notified with a ringtone and vibration. It does twitpic. So again as I have been saying for a while if you like what you see put down your money and make sure you keep seeing something from those guys that make great software.

As usual any questions or comments leave them here or at http://twitter.com/cmanko74

Confused or What?

After careful consideration I thought that I had to expand my horizons a little bit ( at least phone wise) and started digging for data on my chances of living with an Android o any other "trendy" phone. But I found out that 2010 sucks as the year to innovate. As stated on Maemo Fanatics by Kiron (http://www.maemofanatics.com/meego-what-it-is-and-what-it-isnt/) there is no choice but to wait and hopefully see. I mean Nokia has a huge market share but lately they are not having ideas and rather have turned into natural followers. The fruit company has been repeating the same approach over and over and we all know what is the defined by doing the same thing and expecting different results. As I discussed yesterday with my brother a BB user by habit and not by choice. We the users that really want our smartphones to be smart and not just a technological display of power. We are out of luck this year because all companies are reshaping their strategies to try to grab it's competitor's nest. But ultimately what they have achieved is to discourage people from moving forward. Honestly moves such as a Linux Based Handset that is super powerful but does not have 3G capability for one of the largest phone carriers in the US(AT&T) shows that not many Companies think about their products. Now hearing that Android is thinking about a new flavor of their OS that would leave 2.X as the OS for the lower spec phones only confirms that nowadays the strategy is to launch, sell all you can and then abandon the product. With that being said I think I will stick to my trusty (yes trusty I hardly ever reboot it) E72. And wait until someone remembers that consumers tend to be more loyal if the Company that built the product shows some loyalty too.

Too much Too late

Well it took a month not a day to write my update. And man I am happy. Snaptu has been saving my life daily. From Twitter to Weather I trust this little app to do everything I need. But as usual not every app is the right thing for everyone. Today one of my friends asked me if I had a replacement for the facebook app that Nokia provides on the E series, I obviously recommended my trusty partner app. But what a surprise he wanted to do something I never do, simply chat with his on line facebook friends. I ended up digging from the past another keeper for the chat freaks Nimbuzz. To be honest I am a long time fan of FRING. But you have to give Nimbuzz credit for the way it handles chat. So I finally ask myself is it that hard to combine everything into 1 functional app that does not crash or eat up the entire phone memory? Come on NOKIA I know you can please listen to the public and come up with a stable social network client or if any dev out there is reading this I will be more than happy to help you produce that app.
Cheers

Amazed

Today, after a very long time waiting got my hands on the "Beta" Version of Communities. Nokia's take on social networks integration. Sadly the only experience I got was an unreliable and slow app. But as they say not everything is bad. This crappy app made me search for the same kind of app but fully functional and that is how I came across SNAPTU. Man what a joy. It runs smoothly, seamlessly and not to mention it has a tiny footprint. I am still testing it but the initial results tell me it rocks. I will write the follow up tomorrow.

First Post

OK so here it goes. After careful considering what to talk about I figured out that my mobile experience is enough to actually add something to the ton of existing blogs on the subject. So with almost 6 years of different experiences I decided to base my first post on how people has gotten so lazy about their hi tech toys. I have read at least 100 people complaining about their phones not being capable of doing podcast downloading or internet radio for example. It took me only 25 seconds to get a decent application on my phone ( the very same one these folks were complaining about) so I asked myself are we already at the point where the phones are smarter than their users?. Anyway with this very unfriendly start I will be reviewing different applications and different phones (hopefully) specially their performance on the business environment.