Technologizer

Rumor: Google’s Nexus One “superphone” will hit Verizon Wireless on March 23rd--which happens to be the first day of the big CTIA wireless show…

The way in which we interact with technology has changed dramatically over the past few years. The era of light computing has begun, and social media is big enough that the average person can shape perceptions. A Web site is no longer the most meaningful way for us to interact to tell companies about their products or to use online services.

Smartphones are selling in droves, and people are using apps rather than visiting Web sites for everything from buying movie tickets to checking stocks. At any given time, it is likely that conversations about big businesses are happening on Facebook, Twitter and other social media, and those conversations can be initiated by anyone from anywhere.

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Gizmodo has reviewed Motorola’s Devour, an Android handset that runs version 1.6 of the OS even though the current one is 2.1. In other words, the darn thing is shipping as a loaf of day-old bread…

Everyone knows OLED screens look amazing, right? Well, everybody is wrong, or at least that’s not the whole story. My old friend Dr. Ray Soneira of DisplayMate, who’s been testing screens of all types for years, compared the OLED display of Google’s Nexus One to the iPhone 3GS’s LCD screen, and found that while the Nexus One’s icons, text, and menus looked terrific, images suffered from artifacts, banding, and inaccurate colors. (It didn’t help that the Nexus One only does 16-bit color.)

Ray’s testing is so thorough that it’s a multi-part story; even if you’re ultimately happy trusting your own eyes to judge if you’re happy with a display, his examination of the two phones makes for fascinating reading.

Wasn’t there a time when Verizon’s Droid was the hottest Android phone in the nation? Sure–but it ended on January 5th, when Google launched the Nexus One. The Droid runs Android 2.0.1; the Nexus One packs Android 2.1 and some custom Google tweaks. And the difference is more than a minor technical matter.

Yesterday, Google announced Google Earth for Android. It looks neat–and it requires Android 2.1, so it won’t run on the less-than-four-months-old Droid. That’ll get fixed when Verizon rolls out an update for the Droid, which may happen soon. But it points out frustrating, potentially crippling issues with Android: The platform is splintering, and it’s changing so rapidly that the majority of Android handsets feel stale. Even the Droid–I’m not sure if it’s a coincidence that Amazon is selling it for fifty bucks, or one-quarter of Verizon’s original after-rebate price.

Over at InfoWorld, Galen Gruman has a good post with more evidence of Android’s fractured nature. There are multiple, incompatible versions of the OS out there, and I don’t know of any good reason to think the situation’s going to get better rather than worse. Google surely isn’t setting a good example by releasing an Android version of Google Earth which won’t run on most Android phones.

Do I need to recap the situation with Apple’s iPhone OS? It gets only one major upgrade a year, instantly available to all owners of existing devices, and all software works on any iPhone OS gizmo that has the proper hardware.

Android will never be like that, of course: It’s an open-source product that runs on an array of gadgets with varying hardware specs and capabilities. But how big a bummer is it going to be if it takes a nerdish interest in version numbers to determine if a given app works on your phone? Isn’t it a problem if the hot Android phone of the 2009 holiday season feels stale by February, even if the situation is somewhat temporary?

In short, wouldn’t it be healthy for Android if it evolved a little more slowly, and everyone responsible for its fate agreed that compatibility is a key goal?

Engadget’s Thomas Ricker is in Barcelona for Mobile World Congress. He got a preview of Opera’s Opera Mini browser for the iPhone and was impressed by its speed. He was also confused by Opera’s unwillingness to let him share any images of it in action. And of course, there’s no guarantee that it’ll ever be available in Apple’s iPhone App Store. (Actually, the odds seem against it.)

Please, Apple, surprise us by promptly approving this app so we don’t need to waste any time or brain cells squawking about it…

Windows Phone 7 Series superguide.

The FCC’s National Broadband Plan.

Apple fixes busted Macbook drives.

Microsoft’s anti-Google YouTube videos.

Adobe CTO on Flash, iPad.

The Canadians: disgruntled over Buzz.

Use Buzz on WebOS phones.

You can’t force-feed users.

Redbox delays Warner DVD releases.

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I’m not sure if this is just an intriguing partnership or a major moment in phone history. But at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, Verizon Wireless and Skype announced that they’re working together to bring Skype to nine BlackBerry and Android phones on the Verizon network. A version of Skype Mobile will be available next month, permitting free Skype-to-Skype calls, chatting, and Skype Out calls to any phone number, including cheap international rates. And it’ll all be done using flat-rate data plans rather than phone minutes.

There’s nothing inherently historic about Skype being available on phones–it’s on the iPhone (albeit over Wi-Fi only right now) and I first used the service on a Windows Mobile handset years ago. (Only briefly, though–it taxed the phone to the breaking point, and voice quality was pretty miserable.)

But a major carrier such as Verizon not only grudgingly permitting Skype but buddying up with it as a selling point for its phones is an interesting twist. I look forward to trying Skype Mobile on my Droid when it’s available. And I have a few questions in the meantime…

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I’ve given up making fun of Microsoft’s product-naming habits–oddly-clunky, frequently-changing monikers are just part of what makes Microsoft Microsoft. The company knows its branding practices are fodder for humor (here’s a famous self-parodying video it made) and yet it doesn’t change them. Either it likes it this way, or can’t help itself, or both.

But as I mulled over Windows Phone 7 Series–which looks neat–I was moved to try and document the many names Microsoft has given its mobile version of Windows and devices that ran it. It’s not easy, in part because there have been times when the OS and the devices had different names, and times when they shared branding. And Microsoft has wavered between playing up the notion of a distinct mobile version of Windows and treating Windows as one universal platform. But here’s a quick chronology of everything I remember.

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More news from Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress: At a keynote by RIM’s Mike Lazaridis, he says that BlackBerries will get an all-new Web browser based on the same WebKit rendering engine used by the iPhone, Android phones, and Palm’s Web OS. It’s due later this year.

This demo shows both that the new browser looks like giant leap over RIM’s current, rudimentary one–and that the fact that most BlackBerries have small, non-touch screens still impacts the usability of browsing.

This Android phone’s distinctly Macbookesque.

Like Nexus One, only better?

RIM unveils BlackBerry WebKit browser.

Google: Buzz testing was insufficient.

Steve Jobs helps with biography?

Do-it-yourself MiFi alternative.

Hack iPhone, get Apple ban?

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Speaking of phone operating systems getting major makeovers for Mobile World Congress, here’s Nokia’s demo of Symbian 3, due in phones later this year. I want Symbian to flourish–back in the 1990s, I was a fanatical user of the Psion palmtops whose OS evolved into Symbian, which sported features I still miss. This video, however, suggests that the new version may mostly be about catching up with other phone OSes rather than racing ahead of them….

More phone software news from Mobile World Congress: Adobe announced AIR for Android and FlashPlayer 10.1, fleshing out its “everywhere but iPhone” strategy.

It doesn’t look or work like Windows Mobile 6.5. It’s not an iPhone OS knockoff. Instead, Windows Phone 7 Series, which Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer unveiled today at Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress show, looks more like the Zune HD than anything else. And it looks…exciting.

For the first time I can remember, Microsoft is scrapping a major platform and starting from scratch. Windows Phone 7 Series–yes, the name includes a completely superfluous “Series”–isn’t compatible with Windows Mobile. And while Microsoft has always pitched the sheer variety of Windows Mobile phone designs as a primary advantage, Windows Phone 7 devices, which are supposed to show up for the holidays, will apparently be more similar to each other than different. (Microsoft is specifying one CPU, screen resolution, and set of buttons, for instance.)

The 7 interface involves titles that dynamically update themselves with new information, Zune HD-like menus with oversized text, and lots of fluid animation; there are Xbox Live gaming features, and the entertainment capabilities seem to be Zunelike.

It’s dangerous to have your socks knocked off by a demo video, which is all I’ve seen so far, since I’m not in Barcelona. But here is one:

Gizmodo has a good summary of what’s new in the new OS–and like everyone else who’s seen it close-up and blogged about it, Giz is enthusiastic.

Microsoft’s decision to reboot its phone OS was the right one–the only possible one, probably–and if Windows Phone 7’s interface is anywhere near as good as the one on the Zune HD, it’ll be impressive.

I already know I like the fact that it doesn’t look much of anything like Windows 7–for years, Windows Mobile has been inherently hobbled by Microsoft’s insistence that a mobile version of Windows should have a Start Menu and System Tray-like icons and other features which just won’t work well on a teeny-tiny screen.

More thoughts to come…

I’m at Yahoo this morning for a press event the company is holding about its search activities. One overarching goal, clearly, is to make the case that Yahoo intends to remain an innovative force in search even assuming that its deal with Microsoft goes through and Bing’s index winds up as the basis of Yahoo’s search features.

Unlike yesterday’s Google Buzz launch, Yahoo’s event doesn’t involve any major announcement. We’ve seen a few brief recaps of minor recent additions to Yahoo’s search features, and gotten some quick previews of features in the works. The most interesting of the latter demos was of an iPhone app that lets you draw an outline with your fingertip on a map to indicate a geographic area, then get local results–for instance, to find restaurants on the waterfront.

Here’s a lousy photograph of the feature in action:

Yahoo says the goal is to let people search as easily as kids draw with an Etch-a-Sketch–it calls this feature “sketch-a-search.” As someone who spent a lot of time with an Etch-a-Sketch in my youth, the metaphor doesn’t quite make sense: The defining feature of the Etch-a-Sketch is that it’s hard to get a picture out of it that’s anything like the one you might have in your head. (It’s a lot of fun to try, though.)

I do like Sketch-a-Search, though–I’ve certainly spent a lot of time on the iPhone and other phones futzing with maps and having trouble zooming in to the geographical area I care about. I tend to end up either with the entire United States or a one-block radius, when what I really want is a region of half a mile or so.

Yahoo didn’t have anything to say about when or how they’ll make Sketch-a-Search available to consumers.

Can’t we all just admit that we have no idea when or if U.S. carriers other than AT&T will get the iPhone? AT&T may not know. Heck, Steve Jobs may not know.

(Okay, trying to suss this out is irresistible: Seems to me that the window for a Verizon iPhone 3GS has essentially closed, and that the one for a CDMA iPhone on Verizon at all is quickly narrowing, too. With every day that passes with no news, the chances are higher that AT&T will preserve its exclusivity into 2011.)