Over at the Atlantic, Robert Wright is being sacrilegious. He says he’s unhappy with the trend–seen in phones, laptops, and other products–to make gadgets as thin as possible:

Remember when Jobs first unveiled the Macbook Air? I do, because I had long been a fan of the small, lightweight computers that had until then been available only on the Windows platform. Jobs brought the machine onstage in a manila envelope, because the thing he wanted to wow the audience with was its thinness.

I thought: Who cares how thin it is? Thickness isn’t the dimension that really matters when you have to fit a computer into a tiny backpack or use it in a coach seat on an airplane. And, anyway, more important than any spatial dimension is weight. Sure, to the extent that thinner means lighter, thinness is good, but if you make thinness an end in itself, you start compromising functionality.

Bob has several specific beefs with whisper-thin gizmos. He points out that all things being equal, a thin case leaves less room for the battery, thereby leading to shorter battery life. He says that overly svelte devices are harder to hold and easier to drop. With laptops, he says, engineering for thinness leads to compromises in keyboard quality.

If you’re down on thin, you could point out other problems which Bob doesn’t mention–for instance, thin laptops and tablets often don’t have room for useful ports. (I might own an 11″ MacBook Air if it had an SD slot, but Apple jettisoned it.)

I’ve been trying to figure out how I feel about Bob’s argument, and it’s been surprisingly tough. In some instances, I know I like thin: I’m certainly happier carrying a MacBook Air than a MacBook Pro, and it’s not just because of the weight difference. Skinnier notebooks are easier to hold; that matters to me, because I’m out and about a lot, and have been known to attend cocktail parties with my laptop tucked under an arm that’s also holding a glass of wine.

But am I subconsciously buying into the thinness fetish which Bob derides? If you carry a MacBook Air or a thin Windows machine, you might impress other people who equate thin with good. But nobody ever increased his or her social standing by lugging a particularly chunky notebook. Maybe that unspoken truth influences my purchasing decisions without me even understanding it.

With phones, I don’t feel quite the same impulse to defend thinness. My favorite phone of the pre-iPhone era was my Treo 650, was 23mm thick. The iPhone 4S is 9.3mm thick. And yet, if I made a list of the 20 top ways in which the iPhone 4S improves on the Treo, its dimensions probably wouldn’t make the cut.

At least Apple, through clever engineering and a willingness to postpone 4G, manages to give the iPhone decent battery life by current standards. (Even then, lots of people buy Mophie cases for their iPhones–effectively opting for a portlier, longer-running iPhone.) Numerous makers of 4G Android phones have released skinny phones with dismal battery life; in these cases, it’s painfully obvious that consumers would have been better served if the phones had sported thicker cases that had room for bigger batteries.

The thing is, phone makers are stuck in their usual war of numerical specsmanship. After awhile, it doesn’t matter whether thinner is better or not. Bob heralds the arrival of Motorola’s Droid Razr Maxx, a thicker, bigger-battery version of the Droid Razr. I’m glad Motorola is giving it a try, but I also worry that if the Maxx isn’t a hit, it’ll make phone manufacturers even more thick-averse.

And then there are HDTVs, a product category that Bob doesn’t mention. They too are obsessed with thinness as a marketing talking point. That really confuses me: Why should anyone care much about the one dimension you can’t see when you’re watching TV?

(Yes, I speak as someone who owns an aging Vizio LCD set that is, compared to current models, laughably thick. Sorry if I sound defensive.)

The bottom line here is actually pretty straightforward. Every gadget represents a series of design tradeoffs. Every gadget buyer has a different comfort zone when it comes to the balance of thinness-vs.-other-stuff. If Bob doesn’t want a super-thin notebook–and is willing to use Windows–it’s okay, because he still has plenty of choices. But if he doesn’t want a super-thin phone, his options are surprisingly limited. That’s a shame.

Do you think today’s tech products are inappropriately fixated on thinness, not thin enough–or just right?

The argument that iOS is a much more stable operating system than Android has been repeated on the blogs and even in the comment threads of stories about the two operating systems. There’s a problem, though: the data indicates that is untrue.

Mobile app monitoring company Crittercism released data Friday on crash reports from the period December 1 through December 15, and saying iOS has stability issues is putting it nicely. By a 2-to-1 margin, iOS crashes much more frequently than Android, according to Crittercism’s report. The biggest offender is iOS 5.0.1, accounting for 28.64 percent of all crashes.

By comparison, the most crash-prone Android operating system is 2.3.3, accounting for 3.86 percent of reports. That’s a huge difference and is sure to get the Apple blogosphere in an uproar over the survey’s methodology.

Yes, the firm’s work did have a disproportionate number of iOS devices in the test (162 million to 52 million for Android). However, to blunt that criticism, Crittercism split the data into quartiles, and looked at the crashes as a percentage of app launches.

The story is the same. In the top quartile, iOS apps crashed .51 percent of the time versus .15 percent for Android; in the second quartile 1.47 percent to .73 percent; and in the bottom quartile 3.66 percent to 2.97 percent. The data favors Android once again.

What’s causing the instability in iOS? It’s a good question without an easy answer. Apple’s walled garden approach in the App Store could leave a disproportionate number of users with outdated and buggy apps. Developers must wait to get updates approved by Apple just like the first time they submitted their apps; Android developers can choose to allow for auto-updating without any need for the Android market.

Even Apple’s iAd is at fault: Crittercism received reports that the Cupertino, Calif. company’s advertising platform at times does not play nice with developers’ ads, causing instability.

One caveat: Crittercism’s data period is early enough that Ice Cream Sandwich crash data may not be accurately reflected. The firm says it expects the percentages of crashes on the newest version to increase significantly in future data sets.

Either way, the data puts to bed a misconception over the stability of Android, and raises new questions about iOS. Does Android have better quality developers, then? You might be able to argue yes.

[Hat tip: Forbes]

While the first ads featured the Galaxy S II phone, a direct competitor of the iPhone 4S, this one is for the Galaxy Note. With its huge screen and pen, it’s both an anti-iPhone and one of the most distinctive phones on the market. So the gag feels a little muffled, and the Note doesn’t get enough explanation.

I’m still curious how the Galaxy Note will do–it strikes me as neat, but a niche. But the fact that Samsung plowed money into a Super Bowl spot presumably means that it thinks the phone can be a mainstream hit.

Until now, I’ve thought of Foodspotting mostly as an iPhone app which my wife uses to share photos of her meal when we dine out. She loves it. So do enough other people that a million pictures have been uploaded since the app’s launch, making it feel a bit like an Instagram that’s entirely devoted to things you can eat..

But there’s probably a limit to how many folks there are in the world who want to obsessively photograph food. So the new version of Foodspotting that launched this week is designed to broaden the app’s appeal. The photo sharing’s still there–but it feels more like one feature in an app whose primary purpose is to let large numbers of people find and see the best dishes at local restaurants before they place an order.

The new Foodspotting lets you browse popular dishes at nearby restaurants, or pull up a “picture menu” of a specific eatery. Lists of picks from media outlets such as Zagat’s and New York magazine supplement the recommendations from Foodspotting users. And there’s a section of Specials–which consisted of 50% discounts at several restaurants when I checked–which is the start of Foodspotting’s strategy for making money.

With its new emphasis on finding places to go and stuff to eat, Foodspotting feels a bit more like a competitor to traditional sources of restaurant reviews such as Yelp. But the similarities don’t run deep. Foodspotting still focuses on pictures and thumbs-up ratings, not full-blown critiques. And there’s no way to steer other users away from disappointing dishes by giving anything a thumbs down.

Judging from my experience so far, Foodspotting also doesn’t have a Yelplike critical mass of content practically everywhere. At the moment, I’m in Newton Corner, Massachusetts–not exactly a hotbed of fine dining–and only see a few photos from a few restaurants. Yelp, however, has dozens of nearby establishments that have dozens of reviews apiece. (Back home in food-centric San Francisco, Foodspotting is a much richer resource.)

Of course, one of the goals of the new version is to ramp up more quickly. If it works, the app, which was already lots of fun, will be even more fun, and much more useful.

Foodspotting is available for iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry; the iPhone and Android editions are the first two to become available in this updated version.

My Samsung Galaxy S II had been great to me. It’s a thin, light phone with a gorgeous Super AMOLED Plus display and a dual-core processor that handles Android with ease. When people asked me if I’d ever return to an iPhone–my previous handset was an iPhone 3GS–my answer was a cheery “nope!”

That was until last week, when AT&T delivered an Android 2.3.6 update to the Galaxy S II that destroyed its battery life. Before the update, the phone could easily last through a day of moderate use. After the update, the phone would lose about 8 percent of its battery per hour in standby. Even if I rarely touched the phone during the day, it was dead by bedtime.

I’m telling this story not just to rant–although I’m grateful for that opportunity–but to point out a risk that Android users face: An update that’s supposed to deliver nothing but good things could carry unforeseen consequences. Another example of this popped up this week, with users of Asus’ Transformer Prime reporting lock-ups and graphical glitches after updating to Android Ice Cream Sandwich.

I wasn’t alone in my battery drain problem. Similar complaints have appeared in forums on AT&T’s website, XDA-Developers forums and Android Central (where some T-Mobile users are reporting the same issue), but other users said they weren’t having any issues. This is both the best and worst kind of Android bug, because it’s less likely to merit immediate attention from the phone maker and wireless carriers when it doesn’t affect everyone.

When I asked Samsung Support over Twitter what was going on, the support team said it had passed my info on “for further evaluation.” After following up today, I was told to factory reset my phone (more on that shortly).

The Galaxy S II battery drain issue has even stumped the hackers at XDA-Developers, who haven’t been able to come up with a reliable fix. Some people are rooting their phones and rolling back to an earlier version of Android, but that can apparently introduce other problems, such as buggy Wi-Fi. Besides, rooting your phone voids the warranty, which is exactly what you don’t want to do when something goes wrong.

So today, I took Samsung’s advice and went nuclear, backing up all my data and resetting the phone to its factory defaults. Google’s built-in backup only restores apps, system settings, contacts, calendar info and e-mail, so before resetting, I coughed up $5 for MyBackup Pro so I could easily restore my home screen layout, text messages, phone calls, and photos as well. Neither process went smoothly, so I still have to spend a bunch of time tweaking my phone to get it back to its old state.

For now, I’m not quite sure whether the factory reset completely solved the problem. After about two hours of idle time, my phone’s battery is down about 10 percent, which isn’t stellar but seems better than it was before the update. Either way, I shouldn’t have to start from scratch whenever a system update comes around.

In fairness, buggy updates can happen on any smartphone platform. Windows Phone users and iPhone users have been victims too. But Android’s presence on many phones, with many slight variations in software, across several wireless carriers–yes, I’m talking about the dreaded “F” word–makes problems trickier to identify and fix.

If you’re really unlucky, like me, the companies who made your phone won’t be in any rush to help. The best you’ll get is some generic advice that may or may not solve the problem. If it doesn’t, and you don’t want to attempt hacking a fix on your own, getting a new phone under warranty is your only option.

Are my battery woes enough to make me swear off Android when it’s time for a new phone? No, because a lot can happen between now and then. But this is the first issue I’ve had that’s given me second thoughts.

[This post republished from Techland.]

For all that Facebook does to help you organize your online relationships, it doesn’t do much to help you interact with folks in the physical world. Every time you enter a restaurant, conference, or hotel lobby, you’re surrounded by strangers who you might be linked to through mutual friends or shared interests. But it’s hard to know who’s who–and if people you know do happen to be nearby, you might or might not stumble across them.

Enter Highlight, a new iPhone app that aims to tell you about the people in your immediate vicinity. Install it on your phone and connect it to your Facebook account, and it’ll begin alerting you to other Highlight users who are within approximately a block and a half of you. You can pull up profiles with information on them from Facebook and send them text messages (such as “where are you, exactly?”). Founder Paul Davison told me that the app is designed to help you meet new people, refresh your memory about people you’ve met before, and alert you to friends who could be lurking right around the corner.

Is there anything creepy about the prospect of random strangers being able to use an iPhone app to determine who you are? Maybe. But people will only show up in Highlight if they’ve joined the service, which should help allay any privacy concerns. And you can choose to be visible only to other Highlight users who you have friends in common with, so you have at least something in common–and can “pause” the app whenever you just don’t want to be identified.

Highlight reminds me of Sonar, an existing iPhone app built around a similar idea. (I stopped using it because it kept notifying me that my wife was nearby–no, really?–and rarely told me about anyone else.) I got to try Highlight a bit yesterday, before it went live to the general public, and it was hard to gauge its usefulness: with only a hundred people using it at the time, it provided only a partial preview of what the experience might be like once thousands or millions of members sign up. But I like the idea behind the app. And if a lot of people start using it, the serendipitious feeling of making new friends and encountering old ones could become an everyday occurrence.

Highlight is currently available in the iTunes App Store; the service part still seems to be invite-only as I write this, but should open up shortly.

Peter Kafka of All Things D reports:

Research In Motion isn’t broken, so no need to break it up. But it needs better internal focus, and better external focus, too.

That’s the takeaway from new RIM CEO Thorsten Heins, who told analysts this morning that he thinks the company is in pretty good shape, all things considered. Sure, in the U.S., it has been roughed up by Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android, but it’s still used by lots of people, has lots of fans in big companies and big government agencies, and lots of users around the world.

Largely based on Nokia’s strong support, Windows Phone is set to regain the No. 2 rank in the smartphone operating system in 2015. Finnish-based Nokia in 2009 lost its second-place worldwide ranking because of rising competition from Google Inc.’s Android and Apple Inc.’s iOS.

In 2015, however, Windows Phone will account for 16.7 percent of the smartphones shipped, up from less than 2 percent in 2011, according to the IHS iSuppli Mobile & Wireless Communications Service at information and analysis provider IHS (NYSE: IHS). This will allow Windows Phone to slightly surpass Apple’s iOS to retake the market’s second rank behind Android, as presented in the table below.

That’s awfully confident-sounding. Windows Phone is “set” to become #2 by 2015 and “will” have market share of 16.7 percent and “will” overtake iOS. And hey, it’s an analyst who knows his stuff doing the talking, so the rest of us should pay attention.

But as Todd Bishop of GeekWire points out, iSuppli also released smartphone projections in 2009. Back then, it thought that the operating system then known as Windows Mobile would hit the #2 position by 2013, not 2015. And the #1 operating system in 2013? Why, that was, um, set to be Symbian. An operating system which is already so moribund in early 2012 that iSuppli no longer bothers to break it out into its own line.

A reasonable and well-informed person might express opinions about the long-term prospects for various mobile operating systems. Expecting Nokia’s commitment to Windows Phone to result in a substantial spike in sales isn’t the least bit nutty. But making market-share forecasts for 2015–down to the decimal point!–and discussing them as if they were factual is goofy at best and disingenuous at worst.

The only prediction I feel safe making about smartphones in 2015 is that it will be startling if nothing disruptive has happened in the category by then…and once a category gets disrupted, all bets are off. (Strangely enough, this 2006 story about phone market share in 2010 doesn’t mention the iPhone or Android.)

Really, making forecasts about mobile devices for 2015 is a little like predicting the results of the 2016 New Hampshire presidential primary today. And nobody is silly enough to do that.

I wrote about all this last year when IDC released its 2015 forecast, which also had Windows Phone shooting up to the #2 slot. I came back to the topic when Gartner published a tablet forecast. (Since Gartner’s numbers came out, HP canceled its WebOS hardware and Intel discontinued development of Meego, rendering the Gartner forecast for 2015 obsolete four years ahead of time.) I’ll probably write about it again.

Here’s a smartphone-related something I’d like to see happen by 2015: Wouldn’t the quality of discussion about the mobile market improve meaningfully if research companies stopped making these forecasts–or at least if the rest of us stopped taking them seriously?

The company has posted a video in which Heins talks about his new gig:

If Heins isn’t prepared to speak eloquently about the road ahead quite yet, that doesn’t mean that he’s clueless or that he won’t do a good job. I also understand why he might be inclined to say nice things about Lazaridis, Balsillie, and the RIM team. I’ll even cut the company slack for the spin it’s putting on the executive change, which is that it’s happening because RIM is doing so well, not because it’s in trouble.

But if you’re rooting, as I am, for RIM to leave its doldrums behind and make some really great products, there’s nothing in the new CEO’s video to inspire any confidence. He does point out a few areas where the company can improve. (One of them is marketing, which seems to me to be a matter which won’t do a thing to turn around the company, unless it’s marketing for as-yet-unreleased fabulous phones.)

Mostly, though, he seems to say that the last four years have been hunky-dory, that RIM is moving in the right direction, and that it’s a company defined by its commitment to innovation. He also marvels at the upcoming BlackBerry 10 operating system being put together in eighteen months–which is a strange thing to be marveling about given that the first BlackBerry 10 phones have been delayed until late this year, almost six years after the announcement of the iPhone.

As Heins says repeatedly in the video, he’s been at RIM for the past four years. Despite his cheery take, it’s been a bleak period for the company, mostly because it’s released so many half-baked products–the Storm, the Storm 2, the Torch, the PlayBook–and generally behaved like a company that no longer understands the industry it helped to create. He surely helped create this mess, and already, in this video, he sounds like he’s channeling Lazaridis and Balsillie’s blithe attitude towards the company’s existential challenges.

Of course, RIM has dug itself such a deep hole that even the most radical new CEO would have trouble formulating a strategy to set things right. BlackBerry 10 is a horribly overdue response to the iPhone, but Heins isn’t going to be able to switch game plans and get anything out more quickly. At this point, all he can do is to ensure that the first BlackBerry 10 handsets are as good as they can possibly be, and that the company knows what to do after they ship. And even that might not be enough to keep it relevant.

If you’re still holding out hope for a RIM turnaround, you need to concentrate your optimism on two specific areas:

* Maybe BlackBerry 10 and the phones that run it will be so spectacular that they’ll not only convince current RIM customers to stick around but also steal businesses and consumers away from the iPhone and Android;

* Perhaps Heins is a quiet revolutionary who’s going to impose meaningful change on RIM rather than continuing the Lazaridis/Balsillie approach–but he’s just not ready to talk about it yet.

What do you think the odds are that both of these possibilities are true?

Look, it’s Wal-Mart were talking about here. Land of “Always Low Prices, Always.. Something tells me that we shouldn’t make judgements on the success of a device merely on this retailer’s pricing strategy. It could simply be that Wal-Mart wants to sell more phone. Let’s also consider the competitive landscape.

With the absolute glut of Android phones out there, there are quite a few devices on the market at that “free” price point. Wal-Mart has many of these devices because they fit into the demographic of their consumers: budget-conscious. The Lumia 710 is a great midrange phone, and is similar in functionality to those free devices.

Also look at Best Buy and T-Mobile: both still sell the device for $49.99 with a two-year contract. While Wal-Mart’s decision may accelerate their plans to discount the phone, they certainly are in no rush to join Wal-Mart in the race to the bottom. Nokia has only offered that these phones are selling “well”, so we really have no clue how things are going.

So take a breath, and let the market judge whether Nokia’s gamble was a smart one.