A short encounter with the Microsoft Surface RT

I had a chance over the last two days to spend some real life time with the Microsoft Surface RT. I got a good feel for the product and pairing that with what I know about Windows 8 I feel confident enough to write up some impressions.

The Surface is a PC, which is impressive considering what is inside. It’s definitely not any normal PC, but a Windows PC nonetheless. On top of that I must say it is the best notebook I have ever used. It’s light, it has a touch screen, it makes no noise and it runs for about 10 hours, what more can you ask for. Oh, and it runs the latest version of Windows.

Playing around with the Surface I find myself seeing Windows 8 in a new light. I have been using Windows 8 primary with a mouse and no touch screen. I had an idea of what Windows 8 would feel like on a touch screen, since I have had short encounters with other Windows 8 touch units. The Surface makes it all come together, and on it Windows 8 just makes perfect sense.

The Surface I had access to came with the TouchCover. The TouchCover is the perfect accessory for the Surface. I found myself using it just as much for typing as flipped to the back, using the Surface in stable mode. Coming from the iPad with the Ultra-thin Logitech keyboard, that is a new feeling. I almost never unhook the iPad from the keyboard, but leave it connected and docked. Using the Surface, the fact that the TouchCover is connected in the way it is, turning from PC mode to tablet mode is so easy that I find myself doing it constantly with no effort.

Talking about the TouchCover, it is surprisingly good to type on. I had feared that it would be too close to typing on a screen and that I would just hate it. It’s not. It’s no way as good as a real keyboard, but so much better than typing on the screen. I have not tried the TypeCover, but I’m sure I would like that a lot better. I’m not sure that I would welcome the added weight and thickness. The Surface is no lightweight. It feels heavier than the iPad, because the unit is long and not square as the iPad. This does change when adding the TouchCover because the Ultra-thin keyboard is heavy compared to the TouchCover.

I have used Windows 8 on Atom and Core2 Duo platforms and the ‘Metro’ apps an equally slow on Windows RT as well. It seems somehow that apps built for Windows 8 UI are just slow. Slow to start, slow to refresh, slow to draw information from the net, slow to reload when left for some other app, and so on. The processor running the show seems to make no difference. Tegra3, Atom, Core none of them does the job very well. The only processor type I have not tried for a longer time period I the Core iX series, but it seems excessive that basic apps like the Windows 8 apps should need that much power to run well.

All in all I came away very impressed by the Surface. I truly love the form factor, the screen, the TouchCover and Windows RT is impressive. I would, if I had more time with the Surface, find the current lack of apps annoying, but I know that it’s just a question of time. There is lots of new apps in the Windows Store every day, and more and more big apps are getting Windows 8 versions. The Surface has a lot to offer, and it does many of the things that the iPad does not, but for me it does offer up one major problem.

I would feel just weird dragging along both a work notebook and a Surface. They are just too similar that it would seems pointless. Carrying an iPad along with a work PC seems okay, since they solve very different tasks. If I ever got myself a Surface I would want to use as my only PC. It’s powerful enough to do the tasks, it’s flexible enough to play the role, and it has Office to back it all up. I truly want the Microsoft Surface RT.


P.S. This post in typed out on the TouchCover and the experience is really okay.

Smartphone future - mobile OS or mobile manufacturer

Looking at what has been going on over the last 6 to 8 months, a picture seems to be forming about the smartphone markets future. Just a year ago everybody where talking about the three part mobile OS race, it now seem that everybody should be talking about the three part phone manufacture race. A year ago there was Apple on the one side and Samsung, Motorola, HTC, LG and ZTE on the other side. This is changing and changing rapidly. Motorola, HTC, LG and ZTE are not gone, but on the other side they do not sell anything like the units of Apple and Samsung.

Motorola never really got into the smartphone race. They had every chance. First they got a deal with Google to launch Google’s tablet series, and later when Google ended up buying them. Google decision not to build on the Motorola potential, will be the death of them.

HTC had a wonderful run back in the beginning of 2011. But they got greedy and customers jumped ship. They came back in a big way with the One series, but Samsung had had time to scoop up HTC customers and HTC could not get them back. HTC is now in free fall, and trying to regain some momentum by returning to the late 2011 dayes by pumping out new phones. I do not see how that is going to help anything.

LG was on the way out of phones all together, but landed a deal with Google to make it’s latest Nexus phone. LG never had it in them to build a good smartphone, and the first reactions to the Nexus 4 seems to be telling the same story.

ZTE, and Huawei, are still wildcards. They are big in their local markets, but they are having a hard time making it in Europe and the US, mainly due to Samsung’s success. I expect that they will continue to make large dents in the Android market, but only on their home turf.

So where does that leave the Smartphone market? Apple is not moving aside. As long as consumers keep loving the brand and the iOS user experience, Apple will have a long and very profitable run. Samsung seems to be the Android market by now, and the only company that can match Apple in units sold. The huge success of the Galaxy S III and the Note II just seems to have no end.

Is Microsoft a contender? They want and need to make the Windows 8/Windows Phone 8 ecosystem popular. I’m sure that Windows 8 will do okay, but Windows Phone 8 is in trouble even before it’s really launched. Microsoft has HTC, Nokia and Samsung backing WP8. Nokia has the most units out there, with 3 models. HTC has two and Samsung has made one model.

Nokia’s future depends on WP8 taking off, and it’s my personal belief that they are not going to make it. They do have the best WP8 phone out there, in my opinion. Nokia’s problem is that in the most important market, the US, they just do not have the brand to pull through. HTC, by now, is almost as dependent on the success of WP8 as Nokia. They have a brand, also in the US, and very good phones It makes sense for Microsoft to back them as much, or even more, as Nokia. Samsung is in Windows Phone just to be there. They do not need the business in the same way Nokia and HTC does. It also shows on the phone. It’s in no way as innovative as the others.

Microsoft has to make WP8 break into the dual digits market share through the sales of Nokia and HTC. It’s going to be a long and expensive drive. Nokia will not have the money for this, unless Microsoft gives them more or end up buying them. I don’t see that happening. HTC might have the money to do it, but I don’t belive they have the guts to stay in there. They will need to start making money long before WP8 will start bringing it in.

This leaves Microsoft itself. The Nokia/HTC situation I just described above leads me to think that there just might something to the rumors about Microsoft doing a Surface Phone. It makes a lot of sense. Buying Nokia is too much of a hassle and as hard as it might sound I think what Microsoft is planning to do is wait. They will put out it’s own phone and then buy up the bits of Nokia that adds value, ones Nokia files for bankruptcy.

I believe that in another 12 months we will not be talking about a three mobile OS race, but about the Apple, Samsung and Microsoft smartphone race.

Nokia - It's hard to keep smiling

I have always been a huge Nokia fan. The first phone I owned was a Nokia 1011. Nokia simply knew how to build a great phone. They still do. Nokia’s problem has always been in software. That was why I saluted Nokia’s choice to partner up with Microsoft and bringing Windows Phone in as Nokia’s primary smartphone OS. They spend 8 months developing apps, helping Microsoft with maps, and designing a series of groundbreaking phones with the Lumia models.

Sadly Nokia’s Lumia series never gained any real momentum. Why this is I do not have the insights to fully speculate about. My guess is that the Nokia and Microsoft partnership ran into trouble shortly after the Lumia series launch and that whatever the disagreement was about it never got settle. Nokia seemed very alone in pushing Windows Phone. It became clear why Microsoft had held back, when they announced Windows Phone 8. I stayed on Nokia’s side even then and wrote in a comment on Google+ that the platform change would not hurt Nokia’s Windows Phone 7 sales that much. I still do think that it did not hurt them that much. The real damage was that sales were so low that it was hard to tell the difference.

I would love to still be on Nokia’s side. The new Lumia models look to be the best of the new Windows Phone 8 devices out there. But Nokia is in trouble, and in more ways than one. First they lost the full backing of Microsoft. Now they have to sell their headquarters to bring in cash, and on top of that Nokia’s smartphone marketing director is leaving. That is not all – this week it became known that Nokia is being dumped by Denmark’s largest telecom TDC. The reason is said to be Nokia’s lack of marketing funds to push Windows Phone. I know that Denmark is not a very large market, but that just underlines the trouble Nokia is in. A small market like Denmark should not require a very large sum to support.

Many would say that the signs have been there for a very long time, but even I am now beginning to believe that this might not end well. Nokia is in trouble, and I believe from what I’m seeing that they are in the kind of trouble that you do not survive. There is nothing that I would like more than to see Nokia pull through this, but without the full backing and marketing machine of Microsoft, I just do not see that happening.

Who is to blame for this? I’m not sure. I believe that both Nokia and Microsoft have a part in this. It’s just very hard to blame Microsoft for wanting to secure the success of Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. Nokia did not deliver on Windows Phone 7. They did not sell the number of phones Microsoft needed and because of that Microsoft partner up with HTC, who also badly needed a strong partner. So even if the Nokia Microsoft marriage seems like a deal made in heaven, it just wasn’t meant to be. Nokia it’s been great knowing you.


Post referenced above (all in Danish)
Microsoft og Nokia samarbejdet - Det helt rigtige valg
Nokia og Microsoft-samarbejdet fejrer 1 års dag – et kig på hvad der er sket
Er Nokia døende, eller er der stadig håb?

Galaxy Note ICS upgrade - TouchWiz or CyanogenMod

Galaxy Note running CyanogenMod

We finally saw what Samsung are going to offer up for their high-end SmartPhones when it comes to Android 4.0 (ICS), last week when they send out the update for Galaxy S II. Even though I’m disappointed I can’t say that I blame them for the way they have gone about incorporating TouchWiz on to ICS. It gives the millions of Galaxy S II users an ICS upgrade without changing the experience they had before. Only a small group of hardcore Android users are going to care, and they are rooting the Galaxy S II and loading CyanogenMod CM9 on it anyway.

As a Galaxy Note user I look at the Galaxy S II ICS update and hope that Samsung are going to stick with what they have say so many times already. The Galaxy Note is not a phone and not a tablet. Personally I don’t like the ‘phablet’ name, but if Samsung is serious about the Galaxy Note being something new, I hope that is reflected in the ICS update coming in just a few weeks. ICS have both a mobile and a tablet mode build in, one could hope that Samsung would take this upgrade just that one step further. If Samsung ends up letting me down on the ICS update, and my money is on that they will, I’m going to be looking hard at what the CyanogenMod team is going to do for the Galaxy Note. I have been using the CM7 version on a HTC Desire and a Release Candidate CM9 on a LG Optimus 2X. Both bring out the absolute best in the two phones, and gives them both new life. I know that CyanogenMod are working on as CM9 port for the Galaxy Note, but it’s still in Alpha, and that got me thinking about what I would really like from ICS on the Galaxy Note.

Back when Android 4 was released I wrote about it, and I had this comment,

“… I had expected that a phone running Android 4, would have behaved a lot more like Honeycomb when used in landscape mode.”

I truly believe that the Galaxy Note have the potential to be the crossover device that bridge the gap between phones and tablets. With ICS the software now support the hardware in a way that makes it even more possible. I would love to be able to use the Galaxy Note as a real tablet when I had that need, and I it would be nice if apps optimized for tablets recognized the Galaxy Note as such.

CyanogenMod team, if you by any chance happen to read this, here is what I hope to get in CM9 for Galaxy Note. Full support for the S-pen in all apps. A custom setting that enables ICS tablet mode, then the Galaxy Note is in landscape mode. Support for external keyboards with selectable language layout. Full support of MHL output for connection of an external monitor. If this happens, either from Samsung or the CyanogenMod team, the Galaxy Note will be the perfect computing companion. A phone then used in one hand, a tablet when used with two hands, and a PC when docked a home or in the office.

Quad-core phones - Time for a paradigm shift

Make a quad-core phone make sense with modular computing

Mobile World Congress 2012 brought us a very large amount of new products. Most of the high-end models were based on a quad-core processor, and all mid-range models used dual-core. The tech press is mostly impressed with the lineup from LG, HTC, Huawei and ZTE and I’m personally looking forward to spending more time with the HTC One X. So all should be well and good, right?

No, there is a large problem. The mobile tech world is more and more about specs. This has been coming for some time. When the dual-cores CPU for mobile was introduced nobody asked how it should be used. Everybody just loved the fact that their mobile now could have a dual-cores processor. Now we have quad-core processors, and still nobody is trying to explain to the customers what it supposed to do for them.

The evolution of the mobile market the last 1 - 2 years is starting to look a lot like the PC market did 4 years ago. The high-en models are so powerful that only games can manage to utilize all that power. No normal app has the need for quad-core processing power, and the manufactures have a hard time explaining to the customer why they should buy high-end model. The reaction from the customers back then was to buy Netbooks in large amounts.

If this is not too happen in mobile, company's like Samsung, HTC and LG needs to very quickly come up with something that make sense to the customer. Games are all well and good, but it’s not enough. There needs to be some type of app or user scenario that validates the quad-cores phones in the market place. It’s not something they have the time to figure out over the next 1 - 2 years. No, these very powerful phones are coming to a store near you in 2 - 4 months.

Last year I did a post on what I expected the processing power of a quad-core processor would be used for in a phone. I only did the post in Danish so I’ll list the highlights here.

• Games
• User interface enhancements
• Video, photo and sound editing
• Improved voice control
• Modular computing

Some of these things need apps from third party developers and some relies on Google and improvements in Android. The last thing, modular computing, will only happened if somebody educates the customers and shows them how it’s done.

I’m not sure who that someone should be, but manufactures are going to lose the ability to sell high-end phones in maybe 1 - 2 years if the other things on my list do not succeed to move the market. I believe that the manufactures of Android phones are in a unique position to do something very different right now. Apple owns the tablet market, and Microsoft is about to eat up what is left of it. Microsoft and Apple is the only contenders in the desktop OS world and no new OS is about to change that. Android is growing in the mobile space and needs to do something new to keep growing.

Google should stop trying to make Android a tablet OS, if they really ever started, and focus on mobile. Introduce either a dual-boot system in Android, or use Chrome as a springboard to improve the modular computing experience. Google also need to work with accessory manufactures to build docks and keyboard/mouse solutions that make the transformation of your phone to a computer easy and not too expensive. This way Google with Android and the manufactures building the phones can look to expand where there is no competition. Make modular computing popular and quad-core phone will seem like a logic choice to the customers, and keep them asking for more.

Android and external keyboards - No luck if you are not from the US

Google added the ability to connect a USB or Bluetooth keyboard to an Android device some versions back. They decided to include one and only one keyboard layout, the US QWERTY layout. It was up to the OEM’s to add more if they found it necessary. Not many did. This means that if you live outside the US and maybe Great Brittan, you are out of luck if you want to connect a local keyboard to your Android phone or tablet. Sure it will work, but none of the local characters will be there.

Asus did a lot of work to correct this on their Transformer and Transformer Prime. Samsung have local keyboard docks for their latest Galaxy Tab range, so they must have done some of the same work. Samsung did not decide to include that work on any of their phones, so if you own one of them, you again are out of luck. HTC have not included any local keyboard layouts in either their phones or the Flyer.

I do see, to some extent, the logic in leaving it to the OEM’s to include different keyboard layouts, that way they can make them fit only their own accessories and make more money. That does not explain why Google did not include sort of standard layout for the country's that's already supported by the standard touch keyboard. I’m not knowledgeable enough to know if this is hard to do, but I don’t see why it should be. This way Google would make sure that everybody that wanted an external keyboard would get at least a decent experience.

Android devices are very versatile devices, and can be put to use in a lot of different scenarios. This is what Android is all about. Leaving out the productivity scenario by not giving everybody who buys an Android device the possibility to connect their local keyboard seem just plain dumb. As the phone screen grows bigger and tablets finally get some traction, the need for an external keyboard will grow. Today if you want to use your latest Android Smartphone as your primary computing unit, and live outside the US, there is no option that I know of. There are some apps in the Market that does some of the work, and there is descriptions online on how to make your own keyboard map on a rooted phone or tablet, but it’s all way to much work for anybody normal. I just want to get myself a nice compact Bluetooth keyboard with my local characters, connect it and get to work.

I might be overlooking something and if anybody out there knows a solution to this problem, please do not hesitate to leave info in the comments. I’m interested in both free and commercial solutions.

The battle of the eco-system - The death of Android

Google’s Android seems unstoppable right now. It’s the biggest mobile OS in the US and it just surpassed Symbian in India, a country where Nokia have reigned supreme for many years. It’s hard to imagine that this flight toward total market domination could crash and burn any time soon, but there are indications that Google could lose momentum in its fight to stay on top.

The first indication is the obvious one. Where Apple is keeping its, rather large, share of the mobile market with only three phones, Google has Android on hundreds of phone. So even if Android is the most used mobile OS in the world, it’s only due to the very large support from mobile phone manufacturers right now. Google will have to make sure that they stay happy with their choice of Android, and many of them do manufactur phones with others mobile OS’s.

The next two indications both come from what we have seen and heard about Andorid 4 (ICS). First installment is Android 4 as a mobile OS. Despite the fact that everybody that have tested it says it’s the best version of Android by far, they also state that it’s still not at easy to use as iOS. The learning curve is a lot steeper on Android and will discouraged a lot of users from picking Android as their next Smartphone OS. The other learned fact is that Google with Android 4 decided to focus on the mobile experience and leave the tablet part of the OS mostly like it was on Android 3.2 (Honeycomb). The reason this is bad for Google is because Android 3.2 never gained traction against the iPad, mainly because it’s maybe even harder to learn then Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), and that is not a good place to be. So where Apple is adding important new features in their latest release iOS 5.0. Google is still trying to fix the user experience with their release, Android 4.

Next up is the eco-system Google has to offer. Google has a mobile OS, a tablet OS and a desktop OS, just like Apple and Microsoft has. On top of the important three OS’s Google has an impressive amount of services. So what is wrong?

The OS’s
Microsoft has the biggest desktop OS, Apple has the biggest tablet OS, and Google has the biggest mobile OS. The problem is that Apple’s desktop OS is doing quite well, Microsoft is building its tablet OS on Windows, and nether of Google’s other OS’s is doing any business.

The services
Google has the biggest search engine, Apple has the biggest music and app store and Microsoft has the biggest gaming platform. The problem is that Apple either has, as good a service or hooks into Google’s service better than Google does and Microsoft owns the platform for cooperate use.

The future in the mobile space is going to be all about the eco-system. Not just in app, music, movie and book purchase, but also access to the content you created or bought. Here Google only have Android as a mobile OS to deliver this experience to the costumer. Apple has iOS that are a success on both the mobile and tablet platform, and they have MacOS the desktop OS of the second largest manufacturer of Personal Computers. Microsoft owns the desktop both for the consumer and the business user. They are soon launching Windows 8 that manage to tie together Windows, Xbox Live, Windows Phone and the Windows server platform.

If the future is all about the eco-system, Google is going to have a hard time explaining to their OEM’s why they should stay with Android. Logically none of them can get into the Apple eco-system, but most of them knows the Microsoft eco-system and could easily change. Some of them might even think that it’s better to try something new, and go with WebOS or something else.

The bottom line here is that Google, if they want to stay on top of the mobile OS game, also have to focus on the tablet and desktop experience. They need to get developers to make great apps for tablet Android, kind of like that Google is doing on ChromeOS. I know ChromeOS is dead in the water, but that might just be because it’s a little ahead of its time. They need to make sure that they deliver top-of-class integration into their own services, way better than Apple and Microsoft, and they have to make sure that they or third party developers deliver near perfect integration into the Microsoft server platform. They have to fix the first time user experience and update the UI to better guide the user, and they need to make sure that an Android user can easily get to music, movies and books without having to turn to Amazon and the Kindle Fire. Then Google will be able to stay on as the biggest in the mobile OS arena.