Zune HD vs Rumored iPod Touch with Camera
Oh how I remember the good ol’ days. In those times of listening to hacky MP3s on my laptop and then cellphone, the iPod was nary a wee twinkle in main street’s starry night dreams. Fast forward to 2009 and the iPod skipped over the original MP3 pioneers to become THE portable media platform. What iPod says goes.
Meanwhile the Zune family has been making the chase at least interesting and at best competitive. The Zune HD is raising the technical bar with its Tegra processor and 720p-capable screen. Does that mean anything? On a 40 inch screen, yes. On a 4 inch screen, no most consumers wouldn’t care for the difference in quality. Remember one of the reasons Sony’s MiniDisc format failed was that most consumers were happy with cassette tape recording quality. The iPhone’s technically poor camera is now the most popular on flickr.
Back at Cupertino, if the rumors come true then a new iPod is coming to the Christmas Tree this year and it will take video of you opening the rest of your gifts. This of course you will probably be able to upload to YouTube with a couple of gestures. Someone with the Zune HD will be pointing out how much more detailed their screen is compared to other players, and the person he’s talking to won’t be able to perceive the difference on the tiny screen.
This is one of the reasons why Apple’s iPod family consistently bests the competition on main street, and if the rumors are true then I think the camera-equipped iPod Touch would bury the Zune HD in sales figures. A Tegra powered 720p capable portable media device is a technical masterpiece and I’m full of admiration for that accomplishment. An affordable quality media player with a video camera and YouTube upload capability would simply be instant fun though. I’m thinking of trading in my video camera already…and this thing’s only a rumor!
Neil Berman
The App Store Shenanigans Continue…
Another day, another hilarious Apple App Store Story. This time it’s a censored dictionary.
I say keep ‘em coming, the most talented comedian couldn’t write this stuff.
Neil Berman
Neil Berman published by PMI
So my recent lacks of posts can be explained by:
a) An unhealthy addiction to Halo 3, tinkering with the Windows 7 Beta and wondering whether the BSG finale would be lame or earth shattering finding – we now know
b) Feeling 24/7 ecstatic that the iPhone & iPod Touch will be getting stereo bluetooth. Praise be! Can’t wait to see the wireless cans Apple will hopefully release…where will all those soon-to-be-unwanted white wires go?
c) Writing a Project Management paper which PMI published today
The correct answer is the absent d) All of the above.
Today PMI (Project Management Institute) published my paper entitled “The Project Manager’s Three Critical Factors in Career Development” on their website at www.pmi.org. The paper can be found in the Resources section in the Library under Leadership. Hope you enjoy reading it.
With that said I have been spending an unreasonable amount of time tinkering with the Windows 7 Beta and will post soon about the mainly good and not very much bad. Darn it I can’t believe BSG is over…bring on Caprica!
Neil Berman
AT&T Fuze / HTC Touch Pro P4600 hands-on review
Last year I wrote about the HTC TyTN, which was later superceded by the TyTN II (AT&T Tilt) as the daddy of all productivity smartphones. Since then HTC has moved on with its Touch range which aim to turn up the style, which was a bit lacking in the TyTN series.
Of the three new Touch models (Diamond, Pro and HD) the Pro is the closest successor to the TyTN range with its slide out keyboard. I will make comparisons along the way to the Samsung Epix, which does a similar job in a very different style.
Picking up the Fuze is an altogether different experience to the Tilt it replaced. HTC has taken everything good about the TyTN range and made it sleeker. The all glass look is smart and the back cover has the beautiful angled surface first seen on the Touch Diamond.
One backwards step compared to the Tilt is the reduced number of buttons on the front of the Fuze. Whilst instant access application buttons are present on the keyboard like the Samsung Epix, the Fuze makes you either slide out the keyboard or use screen presses like the iPhone. Whilst this is not a huge problem it does make the Epix feel like a quicker phone to navigate.
The other significant change from the Tilt is that the Fuze loses the tilting screen, which seemed like a fragile but useful feature on its predecessor.
The Fuze feels mightily more petite to hold than the Tilt, but still a tad chunky in its depth to accommodate the keyboard. Overall it looks smaller than the Blackberry Bold or the Samsung Epix but the Fuze’s 6oz weight makes the 4.4oz Epix less bulky in a pocket.
The Fuze has a more useful keyboard than the TyTN series and most other smartphones. There are now five rows of keys, which reduces combination presses to a minimum. The keys also have a positive feel, which aids typing speed.
For those who like to work outdoors, the Fuze’s screen is far brighter than the Tilt’s. I’m writing this outside in full-on New York bright winter sunshine. You don’t get much color contrast, but at least you can see what you’re doing.
The Fuze’s big screen advance is its resolution which, at 640×480, is simply spectacular. The only comparison worth making is to the Blackberry Bold, whose screen is of similar quality.
The TyTN series packed a powerful punch for its time and the Fuze hits even harder. The Fuze has a whopping 0.5GB of ROM for Windows Mobile to play around with. Pair that up with a 528MHz processor and you have a device which flies along. At one point I had 15 applications open simultaneously and the Fuze just kept going. Operating system navigation is very responsive and AT&T’s Cellular Video streams well, as long as you have good 3G coverage.
There is also a MicroSD card slot which can handle cards up to 32GB to satisfy your thirst for videos/music/photos/applications. MicroSD cards are now pretty cheap, I saw an 8GB card recently for $18. However the Fuze loses brownie points for hiding it’s card slot under the back cover, unlike the TyTN which had exposed access on the side of the phone like the Samsung Epix.
The Fuze comes with Opera Mobile as the default browser. This does a good job and offers multiple tabs and good finger control, but still plays second fiddle to Safari on the iPhone. This is partly due to the iPhone’s larger screen and also because Safari renders pages better overall in my opinion.
HTC has enhanced its TouchFlo interface to ‘3D’ status with the inclusion of some nice widgets which make navigation very finger-friendly. The email and music screens look good and scrolling through text messages and photos is great as one item is swept away to make room for the next.
Battery life on the Fuze is only average, with a charge required on a nightly basis following moderate usage. Regular video streaming eats battery time, as does constant surfing although I did find that a full day of battery life is realistic with sensible usage.
The Fuze ships with Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, which means you get Office Mobile, Windows Media Player and Windows Live. In addition to Messenger the phones also have IM clients for AIM and Yahoo and you can install third party applications to give access to more services. Google Maps, AvantGo and Skype were one-click installs.
Overall the Fuze is a great smartphone. In day to day usage I can’t decide if I prefer the trick TouchFlo 3D interface, sleek looks and amazing screen of the Fuze over the faster front panel key and mouse navigation of the Samsung Epix. There is a popular perception that touch is the way foward, but if reactions to the iPhone have told us anything it’s that people still want keyboards.
If you’re looking for a Windows Mobile smartphone then the Fuze does a great job, however if you prefer buttons to fingers it’s worth checking out the Samsung Epix too.
Neil Berman
Blackberry Storm Quick Hands-on Review
Reasons to like the Storm:
SurePress screen is 100% better to type on than the iPhone’s static glass
Smaller than the Bold with a great screen size
Decent for the Internet compared to the Bold…
Reasons to wish they’d worked a bit harder:
…as long as you wait a looooong time for the page to complete loading. Storm Internet speed is crushed by iPhone and Opera on WinMo.
SurePress screen is 100% worse to type on than the Bold/Fuze/Epix/most things
Slower than any smartphone I’ve used recently…right up to the moment it crashed
Neil Berman
Thunder to rain down on the cellphone market, iPhone 3G speed could be quicker
As hordes of devotees crowd round the block for the iPhone 3G, competitors are starting to line up to steal it’s thunder. Only this time it’s the thunder which might do the stealing.
Blackberry’s Thunder to be precise. Crackberry has just released the first pics and they look promising, with a screen adorned with haptic technology to give console style force feedback on every key ‘press’. Paired with a horizontal keyboard layout, the Thunder looks ready to battle iPhone in a stormy war.
Can RIM really calm Apple’s tornado? Sounds like an unlikely weather pattern to me, but then who expected Palm’s Centro and others to take 7% of iPhone’s market share earlier this year?
Nokia is also rumored to be preparing haptic screen technology, whilst Samsung’s Instinct (fitted like iPhone with the now-old-skool-non-haptic screen) is rumored to be saving Sprint’s existence at only $129 a pop. The Instinct I tried was pretty sweet and the live TV looked great, although iPhone crushed it on web browsing.
Meanwhile we await HTC’s new Touch series with the Diamond already out in Taiwan to rave reviews of the awesomely groundbreaking 640×480 screen. No date yet on a stateside launch of the Diamond or the keyboard-wielding Pro, but the Tilt has just come down in price by $100 on AT&T’s website so we can’t be too far off now can we…?
As far as rudimentary iPhone 3G speed tests go, I measured 48 seconds to load up the BBC homepage fully, 30 secs for NewEgg and 6 secs for the mobile version of CNN. That compares to my Nokia N810 at a hotspot measuring 7 secs for the BBC, 8 secs for NewEgg and 16 secs for the full size CNN home page. Not a totally fair comparison as the WiFi connection is likely to be quicker than 3G in most cases, but an interesting exercise in mobile internet nonetheless. Will try to do an iPhone EDGE vs 3G comparison at some point.
Neil Berman
Is everyone just buying iPhones now?
So at&t’s recent smartphone sale got me thinking “Is everyone just buying iPhones now?” A couple of weeks on, and a Fortune article rumors that at&t will be slashing the price of the worst-kept-secret-in-history-and-soon-to-be-released 3G iPhone by a mighty $200 suggests the answer is no. The whole smartphone sector is simply in a Great Depression.
Great news though for those in the market for smartphone. at&t’s recent sale offered the usually $299 Tilt for free on a new contract as a refurbished unit. Other free offerings included the ever popular Blackberry Pearl. With my contract ending soon, a free Tilt sounded good to me, but…
Why the price cutting? Media tales of impending economic doom are probably a factor, but beyond that the 2008 lineup of smartphone releases make current offerings seem like they should come free with breakfast cereals.
Apple, Samsung and smartphone superstar HTC are all expected to get fingers tapping on touch screens due in stores soon.
HTC’s eagerly awaited Diamond has now been announced and packs a VGA TouchFlo screen initially praised as an iPhone beater. 
Their soon to follow Raphael will have similar internals adding a five row Qwerty keyboard, and replaces the current Tilt. Both feature a 2.8 inch screen and 528mhz processor.
Samsung announced its CDMA Glyde this week on Verizon. Reviews have been mixed so far.
After a quick Gotham 360 session at Samsung today, there were no real life units on display yet.
Finally Apple is heavily rumored to be prepping a 3G iPhone for release sometime in late June.
I guess the hordes waiting for a piece of soon-to-be-last-gen tech in Apple’s W14th St store recently weren’t quite as clued-in on forthcoming releases. The store was dry of iPhone stock, presumably remaining supply of the current model is dwindling as 3G unit shipments get prepared. Nevertheless the eager folk in the line remained steadfast in their bizarre quest. The Gizmodo conversation with store staff is entertaining.
Of course the fundamental iPhone problem is likely to remain: only Star Fleet academy graduates can type fast on glass, as Data et al have proved on so many occasions. So 3G or no, I still can’t see Apple eating up the Berry’s slice of the corporate market yet. In fact RIM are fighting back with their sleek new 9000
believed to be YouTube compatible., which has apparently already racked up mighty sales volumes of one unit on eBay. Crackberry has details.
Meanwhile finally coming out of its time warp, T-Mobile announced 3G service on May 1st in the US…for voice. Thanks for nothing. Rumors started coming out of NYC that there was data as well. Great, things are looking up. Looking at my TyTN expectantly to see at least a UMTS connection, I’m disappointed to find the Edge network instead. 
Turns out that T-Mobile are sending 3G data over 1700MHz and a non-standard offshoot of 2100MHz, which is a first. Basically you need a new T-Mobile phone with a radio tuned into exactly the right frequencies. Thanks for absolutely nothing!
Back to at&t and iPhone users can now apparently get WiFi access through the carrier’s hotspot network. Nice that a year after its release iPhone gets access to something that Blackjack, Q, Tilt etc customers have enjoyed for a long time already i.e. high speed data on the move. Well, I say ‘on the move’ but that’s only true if the iPhone moves within the confines of the hotspot.
So with the 3G iPhone just around the corner, 1.0 owners can show off their old skool model by standing outside Starbucks to get their iTunes downloads whilst the newbies walk on by. Only kidding, you know I’m just jealous!
Neil Berman
iPhone Exchange Policy
For months iPhone has been the coolest device on the street. Everyone wants one, but so far they have scared corporate IT managers who see them as a security hole in the network. But those IT managers have faced a growing problem over recent times: it’s called user pressure.
That’s because many iPhone owners are well-heeled business types who want to swap out their work Blackberry. However in most enterprises it’s difficult to exchange a Blackberry for a smartphone which doesn’t support Exchange.
Apple’s changed that now and kudos to them for listening to their customers. iPhone now supports push email, calendar and contacts from an Exhange Server via a licensed Microsoft ActiveSync client. iPhone’s user experience remains intact because email is handled by the cellphone’s regular email interface. Many of the industry’s security concerns have been addressed and there’s now a remote wipe facility.
Apple has also opened up the iPhone SDK (Software Development Kit) so third parties can write real applications for it. This means we could see virtual remote access clients from the likes of Citrix, VMWare and other companies to allow users to go straight into their office network. Who knows, maybe Microsoft will even release a version of Office Mobile for iPhone. The operating system is an optimized OS X with Touch enhancements to the Cocoa interface, so ports of regular Mac software could be coming soon.
iPhone is now a real contender in the corporate email battle and it could be the first Apple product to do well in mainstream US companies. Why? Not because it’s good to type on or has an established history (Blackberry and Windows Mobile win easily). No, it’s simply because users will want it. They will demand it, as they have been doing so far…the difference now is that IT departments can actually deliver a solution. Like Windows Mobile, that solution comes right out of the Exchange Server rather than routing through an additional Blackberry message server, so the service delivery has less infrastructure points of failure.
Of course just because the functionality exists doesn’t mean that companies will buy it. But if I was the head of RIM marketing I would be pretty scared right now. Apple clearly means business for the first time, and the users will be on their side. If they can get the pricing right then the competition is in for some tough years ahead.
Now where’s that iPhone drawing I was doing with the slide out keyboard…?
Click here to see if iPhone can survive a Maine Coon mauling.
Neil Berman
www.neilberman.com
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