The Internet is Changing

Time for a New Phone

It all started when my 2-year commitment to my cell phone carrier ended.  Cell phones in 2010 are like wrist watches were in the '90s.  Everyone had one, but the choice of watch told you something about the person wearing it.  Some were inexpensive but did the job fairly accurately.  Some were precision mechanics that were handcrafted for accuracy.  Some were fashioned to be elegant with precious materials.  Some were gaudy having unreliable functionality, but, to some, looked almost as good as their very expensive counterparts.  Some incorporated the latest in digital technology with timers, alarms, multiple time zones, and, of course, somewhere in there, the time.  Some were rugged, some were delicate.  Well, you get the picture.

I currently have a Blackberry Curve (8300 series).  It's about 2 1/2 years old.  I really like it.  First and foremost, it makes phone calls and does so very well with very clear sound and a reasonalbe speaker phoone.  It synchs my contacts, calendar, tasks, and messages in Outlook.  The screen is small but workable and the keyboard is excellent.  It's small enough to wear on a belt clip.  The only issues that I have with the phone are:

1. The media player is lame.
2. The browser is sub-standard by today's standards.
3. It runs on the slower end of the 3G network (faster than edge but slower than today's 3G)

But, most important of all (at least to me) is the fact that the battery lasts longer than any cell phone I've ever owned.  I'm a pretty heavy use with lots of calls, SMS/MMS messages, web browsing, and GPS.  I unplug it in around 7:30am and when I plug it in late at night, I always have at least 2 battery bars left.

The Search Begins

What should I get?  I'm tied to Sprint because I can't manage to synchronize my family's commitment end dates, so I'm in a perpetual carrier prison.  But Sprint has been good the past few years.  Given that I need my family plan to include pretty much unlimited SMS and data, they're the best price.  I recently had to replace 2 phones for my kids.  One got a Blackberry 9650 and the other a Samsung Intercept. 

The Blackberry 9650 replaced a Curve.  It's basically the old Tour with Wifi and 512mb RAM.  It's not cutting edge by any of today's standars, but it works and it is slated to be updated to Blackberry's new OS 6.  This is the same OS that they include in the Torch (touch-screen slider with a very nice BB slide-out keypoard but only available on AT&T).  Given that the only new Blackberry on the horizen is a clamshell flip phone, this one seems to be the best of what Blackberry has to offer for Sprint.  One nice improvement in the new OS 6 is the inclusion of the new Webkit browser.  I've had a chance to play with it and it's pretty nice.  The only thing it does not do is to render Flash files via a Flash player.  But other than that, it's a world above the old browser.

The other phone is the Samsung Intercept.  This is an entry-level Android phone and looks very interesting as well.  It is replacing the Samsung Moment which was nice but had many problems and bugs.  The Moment is not being supported in any new Android upgrades.  It has a reasonable ~800mhz processor and a slideout querty keyboard.  The screen is around 3 inches (smaller than an iPhone but bigger than a Blackberry).  It also runs on the top end of the 3G network.  The Intercept has very similar specs to the Moment with the following exepctions: 

1. Most of the hardare bugs were worked out.
2. They dropped the higher end 3G radio for a lower end one similar to my Blackberry Curve.

The drop in speed of the radio was a show stopper for me.  I cannot justify upgrading to this phone based on the data transfer speed.  But the notion of an Android phone became appealing to me during the process.

This past summer, The HTC Evo was introduced for Sprint.  This phone looks to be a mobile dynamo!  It's a touch-keyboard-based phone (like the iPod).  Since it's release, an upgrade to Android 2.2 has been released.  The major feature of this release is Flash 10.1.  This brings the browser in this phone up to basically desktop standards.  It's got a huge (like 4.3 inch) screen, and 8 megapixel rear-facing camera with flash as well as a front-facing smaller resolution camera for video chat.  It's got a 1ghz processor and Wifi.  It's also the first phone released to work on the new Sprint 4G network.

This phone was followed by the Samsung Epic 4G.  This is the second phone to work on the new Sprint 4G network.  This phone has a slide-out querty keyboard with a smaller but briliant super AMOLED display.  Awesome!

So why don't I have a new phone right now?

Sprint is just now rolling out their 4G network.  It's available in some area and not available in others.  It appears that I have access to 4G in some places around here.  Whether it's available or not, Sprint requires a $10.00/month premium data charge added to your plan per 4G phone on your plan.  That's an additional $120.00 per year per phone.  Given that the phones (with upgrade eligibility) cost $200.00 and $250.00 respctively, this becomes a very expensive toy (on top of the current family plan).

The battery life in both of these phones is abysmal!  If a phone's battery dies, it doesn't matter how sophisticated its technology is.  A dead battery means a useless phone.

There are threads and threads and threads of tips and tricks which range from altering the Andriod settings to rooting your phone and installing hacks to fix the boatload of bugs identified.  I started looking into different Android distributions that I could use to replace the stock version by rooting the phone.  I came across a security alert that Andriod maintains usernames and passwords in clear text.  This has been reported but will not be resolved.  The statement from Andriod was that the clear text is located in a folder which can only be accessed by a user with root privleges (the system user).  If you root your phone, apps can run with root access and, therefore, rogue apps can compromise the security of your phone.  OK.  So not Android rooting for me.

So What's Coming Down the Road?

It is October right now.  We're quickly approaching the holliday shopping season.  Apple has it's iPhone 4G.  There's new 3G and 4G Android phones on the way too.  Blackberry has a touch slider.  All 3 of these platforms also have 'Pad' products available or available soon.  There's the iPad, Pads with Android, and the Blackberry Play Book.  The iPad is out now, a bunch of different manufacturers' incarnation of an Android Pad are about to launch.  Poor Blackberry is going to miss the Christmas rush and not be able to release a Play Book until Q1 2011 at the earliest.

But wait.  There's someone who has been conspicuously missing during this whole search.  Like a freight train roaring down the tracks at us is Windows Mobile 7.  This one's going to have a lot of interesting widgets, undoubtedly a preference for Bing over Google, Live Spaces over Facebook, and MSN Messenger as the only bug-free chat client.  It's got X-Box Live and Zune.  One pretty cool thing that kinda worked in the online demo I saw was Outlook synch via bluetooth.

My Head is Going to Explode!

Video games, music players, video players, streaming services, cameras, video cameras, messaging, email, web browsing, and apps, apps, and more apps.  Oh.  That's right, there's a phone in there someplace too.  I don't know what phone I'm gonig to get, but there doesn't seem to be, at this point, a phone that does all of this well with a battery life reasonable enough to still call the device a phone.  And all you iPhone fans shouldn't even think about trying to defend this.  I see plenty of iPhone users scurrying for a car charger, a laptop to plug into, or a wall outlet right after lunch.

I need to take a break from this incredible inundation of technology.  So then I decide compare iPhone with Android with Blackberry just in terms of Apps.  And once again, I need the iPhone fans to chill out because once you elininate all of the fart apps, the flashlight apps, the Wifi hotspot locator apps, the syndicate news apps from places you don't ever care to read about, and the look-at-me-i-am-turning-my-phone-upside-down-and-the-screen-is-moving-too-isn't-that-cool apps from the app stores, the count of (meaningful) apps is reasonably close.

To Get to the Point

A phone is not a phone anymore.  It's a sophisticated communication device.  It is also a gateway to the internet.  Some of these phones allow device tethering and other can function as mobile Wifi hotspots.  The issue with the Blackberry browser becomes more significant and the inclusion of Flash in Andriod's browser becomes that much more important because there is very little functionality that people have to go home to do anymore.

A browser is simply another app that resides on your phone.  Some apps run of their own and some call the browser.  Like your desktop in Windows, Mac, or Linux, you have icons for your frequently-used apps and one for your browser to bring you 'everywhere else'.   Companies and products that used to exist simply as sites are, more and more, creating apps to allow users to manage information through the use of gui tools native to the device being used so that the information is presented in a manner consistent with the use of the device.

These apps act as front-end apps which rely on a server to process requests and responses.  Well guess what?  It appears that Drupal can serve as such a server.  Here is a very interesting video about using Drupal as a back-end for iPhone, Android, and Blackberry apps.

Epilogue

If Windows Mobile 7 proves to not be too little too late, then I'm sure that Silverlight can be used to create WinMo7 apps for your Drupal sites as well.  I saw a video of a demo of WinMo7.  It was running on an unbranded phone.  The body of the phone was iight blue plastic.  The screen was not clear though.  I wonder if it was an inside joke that the phone demo-ing the newest Windows Mobile 7 operating system had a screen that was tinted dark blue?

As far as my phone is concerned, I think I'm going to stick with Blackberry and go with the 9650.