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.

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.

Goodbye Desire Z - And the death of the QWERTY Smartphone

Lenovo LePhone was one example, we will see more of this in the future

I have finally put my trusted HTC Desire Z back in its box for good. It’s been there before, while I was testing other phones, but it always came back out when I was done. I've had the Desire Z for almost a year now, that is a long time for me, and I have loved using it. Typing on a touch screen have never been for me, I got more words wrong than right. The spell checker on most phones are good, but even that would not put my typing on the right track. Because of that I have always been drawn to QWERTY phones, and the HTC Desire Z has been my favorite of them all. So why am I retiring it now?

Over the last couple of moths I have been testing phones with 4” screen and above. That has changed my view on touch typing and not least the weight of a phone. I have never minded carrying a heavy phone before. The Desire Z checks in at 180g, but I knew that it was the priced you paid for the QWERTY keyboard. It was a productivity choice and I fairly quickly got used to the weight of it. The first 4” phone I tested was the LG Optimus 2X, and even if I never came to enjoy using the LG user interface, it was the turning point for me. The extra 0.3” made all the difference. It sounds strange that, this small amount of extra space can change the experience that much, but trust me it does. The size of the touch keys get just big enough that I actually god most words right. Now the spell checker more and more turned in to a problem for me, but that is whole other store. The Optimus 2X weighs 139g and is still a fairly heavy phone, but it’s a lot better and a lot thinner than the Desire Z. After the Optimus 2X, I tested the Motorola Atrix, and just recently the Samsung Galaxy Note. The Galaxy Note weights 168g so it’s still a heavy phone but with a screen at 5.3" it’s well worth it.

The QWERTY Smartphone has always been a niche product. Not many made it; HTC, Samsung and Motorola all have one or two models. Nokia had more, but focused on the same form factor as RIM (Blackberry). Both Nokia and RIM have lost a lot of ground the last year and HTC have no replacement for the Desire Z planed. Motorola still have QWERTY Smartphones, both in the Blackberry form factor and the slide out versions. Samsung also have some left in their lineup, but the numbers of models are fading. Everybody is focusing on touch screen Smartphones, and the size of those screens seems to grow every year. Google and Samsung just lunched the Google Nexus Prime, a 4.6” Android phone. HTC has the Sensation XL at 4.3” and the Titan at 4.6”. Samsung have them all beat with the Galaxy Note at 5.3”. So with the size of the touch screen growing and more and more consumers getting used to typing on the screen instead of on a hardware keyboard, the QWERTY Smartphone is dying.

At the same time, on the tablet market, we are seeing a movement in the opposite direction. One of the more prominent Android tablets the Transformer is build to dock with a keyboard. The next Android tablet from Asus the Transformer Prime, have the same dock. Even the iPad seems to be getting a hardware keyboard now. I’m not talking about the iPad 3, but about all the wireless keyboard docks being offered and sold for the iPad. The tablet offers ease of use and transportability, but at the price of no keyboard. To be productive on a tablet you need a keyboard. The iPad have been around for more than 2 years, but it’s only in the last 6 - 8 months the keyboard dock sales really have gone up. The honeymoon period of the tablet is over and now they have to prove them self's as real business tools. I predict the same thing is going to happend with large screen Smartphones.

The 4” Smartphones have been around for less than 12 months and the larger ones are just coming out now. As Smartphones with screens at and above 4.6” starts to enter the business arena, they will slowly move in on the tablet domain, since most people do not want to carry around 3 devices (phone, tablet, notebook) all the time. Large screen Smartphones can replace tablets for most tasks. They offer the same screen resolution, and with Android 4, will be running the same OS. At the same time the tablet with its keyboard dock will move in on the notebook domain. They will be running iOS, Android or most likely Windows 8. This move up the hierarchy will create a need for keyboard docks for the large screen Smartphone. Wireless keyboard for Smartphones is no news. They have been around for some time, but have spent 2 - 3 years in hibernation with the rise of the QWERTY Smartphones. Now the QWERTY Smartphone is fading away and I foresee a bright future for the foldable wireless keyboard. Add a MHL to HDMI link cable (or netbook dock) to the mix and the large screen Smartphone suddenly can morph from a phone, to a tablet, to a netbook type device for use on travel and vacation.

The QWERTY Smartphone might be dying, but I believe we have not seen the last of the hardware keyboard for Smartphones yet.

Google Android 4 - A bit of a cold shower

Expectations were high when I sat down to watch Google’s presentation of Android 4, Ice Cream Sandwich. The rumor mill has been going wild with thoughts on what Google had decided to include in this latest update. I for one was hoping for most of the ideas to come true. And it was a very impressing presentation Google did, with Samsung and the Samsung build Nexus Prime Galaxy Nexus. There has obviously been put a big effort in to enhancing the overall usability of Android, for the mobile user. All of the new features made perfect sense when one thinks about it. None the less I felt more than a little cheated. Google had used all it effort to build the perfect Smartphone OS, but left tablet users out to dry. I will agree that Honeycomb (Android 3.x) is an okay platform for a tablet OS, and with the added features and the streamlining of the UI in Android 4, Google has a pretty decent tablet OS. I just expected so much more, both on the phone and for the tablet.


Nexus Prime Galaxy Nexus will set the standard for all coming Smartphones, with its 4.6" screen and 1280x720 resolution. On top of that it packs a dual-core 1.5 GHz CPU. The screen resolution is on par with an average 15" notebook and even if the ARM processor is not as powerful as your average netbook, it's damn close. Asus just pulled the covers of its successor to the EeePad Transformer, the Transformer Prime. It's build on the Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core chipset. It’s a chipset with processing power equal to Intel's Atom series. The Transformer Prime is going to be thinner than the iPad 2 and come with a keyboard docking option like the original Transformer. I think that clearly shows where the tables are going and type of scenarios they will be used in. It's my believe that the mobile phone is slowly working its way into the tablet space and that tablets will turn into ultra-flexible notebooks. I had expected Google to be more aware of this and to support this, a lot more in Android 4.


Android as we know it today, Gingerbread (2.x) for mobile and Honeycomb (3.x) for tablets, is primary a consuming OS. With that I mean that it does best is to show you something. Show you movies, pictures, websites, social networks, news, book and play some music. If you want to create anything, that being anything from small tasks like writing an email or bigger things like editing a movie, Android often falls short. There are simple apps that help you do something’s, but the limitations in the touch interface, and the lack of professional apps, does make it real hard to be creative on Android.


So what is it I’m looking for? Google seems to think that there is no need for tablet centric apps for their own services, and they keep putting out HTML5 frontends for us to use. With that in mind the least Google could have done was to give the user access to a full browser. When future Smartphones will have screen resolutions like a notebook and tablets more and more will be used docked to some kind of keyboard and have the processing power of a notebook, including a full Internet browser based on Chrome, in Android 4, seems like an obvious choice. Secondly I had expected that a phone running Android 4, would have behaved a lot more like Honeycomb when used in landscape mode. I had hoped for a more tablet centric versions of Gmail, Calendar and Contacts, on phones used in landscape. The resolution is there for it. Lastly I was waiting for a way better use of the MHL port, and an adjustable UI based the use of that port. I’m sure we do not have to wait long before we see the first phone based on a quad-core CPU, and with that we will be carrying around PC processing power in our pockets. Connect a phone like that to an external monitor and a wireless keyboard, and you have a full blown notebook. Android should be able to support this scenario. The need to make the UI bigger as the screen resolution goes up is obvious, but it’s just too bad that this nice high resolution cannot be utilized when connected to a bigger screen.


So does that mean that Android 4 is a total disappointment? No that not the way I see it, but I could be afraid of that Google, with their focus on the mobile part of the market, will end up cutting them self out of from the very lucrative business market, and there by leaving the door wide open for Microsoft and Windows 8. It would be too bad, since Google fairly easy could set Android up as real opponent to Windows 8 on the coming business minded tablets, and a little competition is never a bad thing. Windows 8 is not due until sometime next year, and Google, of course have time to release a new version of Android to address all this.


For the time being we can look forward to our new Android Smartphone being even smarter, and hope that Google sees the opportunity of growing far beyond the mobile market, by merging Android a lot more with ChromeOS.

Samsung Galaxy Note - What makes this Galaxy different

Samsung Galaxy Note

As some of you might have noticed, I have gotten my hands on a Samsung Galaxy Note, and have been using it for some days now. This post will not be a real review, the reason being that the unit I’m testing is a sample and the software is not a final version. I will instead take a look at what makes the Galaxy Note different from the rest out there and talk about different usages scenarios. That said, I must say that for a sample the build quality is impressing, and the same goes for the software. There is things that need to be fixed, but all things considered its surprisingly close to, what I would suspect is, the final experience.


Okay let’s get to it. I’m sure that there is one or two questions that is on everybody mind, they were on mine anyway. The first one is, is the Galaxy Note a phone or a tablet. The Samsung Galaxy Note is very much a phone. Its build to be used as a phone and Samsung have used a lot of time, I would imagine, to setup the user interface so its looks and feels like what you know from the Galaxy S II, but more on that later. The second question, is it possible to use a unit with a 5,3” screen as a phone. Again, yes the Galaxy Note is a phone and is easily used as one. The design and the thinness of the unit secures that it fits in any pocket I have come across. The large footprint of the screen will make it more noticeable in a pants pocket, but it fits and it’s not uncomfortable to have in the pocket. Secondly its low weight adds to the comfort of carrying it in any pocket. It is a tat big holding to your ear and I’m sure that it looks a little funny, but it holds well in one hand and you can easily use it for this function. So to add it up. The Galaxy Note is a phone, a big phone I agree, but the way its set up, in design and software it definitely not a tablet. But it is definitely not, not a tablet. You can easily use it as a mini tablet, since reading and browsing is easy and comfortable on the large bright screen.


The screen is another thing that is surprising good on the Galaxy Note. The first time I turned it on it felt like it jumped out at me, with all its brightens and amazing colors. It’s actually sad that you get used to it in a day or two, the 5.3” Super AMOLED screen should be admired every day like it was the first time you ever saw it. The brightens of the screen is not all there is to the Galaxy Notes. On top of it, it has a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels. That is a lot more than the Galaxy Tab 7 or the HTC Flyer, and they are both 7” tablets. Considering the very high screen resolution you would think that normal Android 2.x apps would look really bad. But as I said Samsung have been hard at work to compensate for this on the Galaxy Note user interface. As they did with the Galaxy Tab 7, icons, fonts, and everything else in the UI is scaled so they look as they would on a normal resolution phone. This is excellent news as every app, even the ones you get of the Market, look right on the large screen and not like weirdly scaled versions of them self. I looked at this phenomenon in a earlier post, Status på Android som Tablet OS (in Danish). It’s my guess that this problem will be eliminated in Android 4 (Ice Cream Sandwich), but we will have to see. There is one downside to the scaling Samsung have build in to the OS on Galaxy Note, and that shows when you connect the Galaxy Note to a monitor via the MHL (Mobile High-Definition Link) link.

HTC Flyer, Samsung Galaxy Tab and Samsung Galaxy Note running Facebook

Fra 19. okt. 2011

HTC Flyer, Samsung Galaxy Tab and Samsung Galaxy Note running Tweetdeck

Fra 19. okt. 2011

To me the MHL output via the microUSB port is one of the Galaxy Notes most important features. This makes it three for one in possible usages scenarios. The possibility to output HDMI to an external monitor can turn the Galaxy Note into not only a phone or a mini tablet, but also a netbook. Add a wireless keyboard and you have an Android driven 1280x800 netbook up and running. This is where the scaled UI on the Galaxy Note is not really welcome. I tried using it on a 22” monitor and everything looks really big. I had hoped that there was a function to minimize the fonts and icons when using it on a monitor, but no luck. Anyway using Android as the primary OS on a netbook is not perfect, and this is where the Cirtix client comes in handy. I dialed in to my company Citrix server and suddenly things looked a lot different. The Citrix client utilizes the full resolution of the Galaxy Note to give you a ‘normal’ size desktop. This is going to be an important if you aim to carry just one device to meet all your computing needs.

While I worked on this post Google and Samsung revealed Ice Cream Sandwich, and it would be my guess that the Galaxy Note might just end up launching with ICS or getting the upgrade very shortly after it’s launch. ICS could correct some of the things that I have pointed out here and it will surely make Galaxy Note an even better phone. Either way I’m in love with all the Galaxy Note brings to my daily phone use. Having a great screen to read mails, news and generally browse the net on is a blessing. There is no doubt that at 5.3” we are very close to how big a phone can get before it gets ridiculous, but the Galaxy Note pulls it off. The speed of the unit and the UI is almost perfect and the camera produces good quality pictures and video. So if you are looking for a phone that can make carrying around a tablet unnecessary, and that ones in a while can dub as a netbook, the Galaxy Note is very definitely for you.

I would like to thanks Samsung for letting me play around with the Galaxy Note for a couple of days. Its now, sadly, safely returned to Samsung, but if you should have any questions for me, drop them in the comments and I’ll try to answer them for you.

Sample picture taken with Samsung Galaxy Note

Fra 13. okt. 2011