Mobile Industry Insider's Opinon of the Smartphone and Mobile Platform Landscape

This opinion written by Abdi  Zadeh, former REGARD VP of Professional Services...and redistributed here with his permission.  So, these are not my opinions, however, Abdi is spot on for the most part here...
Steve Beauregard
For the past 6 weeks, I’ve gone through an array of smartphones and tablets. I thought I’d share my experience:


Smartphone Landscape:

BlackBerry Torch: This is the phone that RIM should had come out with 12 months earlier than they did. Nice display, form-factor, and great battery life. This device won’t win any non-BlackBerry user over, but provides a nice stop-gap for existing BlackBerry users.

iPhone 4: This is great phone. Easy to use, good battery life, and nice form-factor. In fact, the only flaw is the lack of Flash support, which is quickly becoming a non-issue with the adoption of HTML 5

HP Veer: This is a cute phone, but definitely not for power-users. The form-factor is weird and the screen is too small. This runs on WebOS 2.0, which lacks quantity of apps. I’d wait for next generation devices from HP supporting WebOS 3.0

Samsung Galaxy 2 – Epic 4G: I really liked this Android 2.2 phone. Very nice touch display and full qwerty keyboard is nice for those of us that can’t type on screen displays. Battery life is definitely an issue, especially when the 4G, Wi-fi, or or GPS toggles are active. Also – the qwerty keyboard is too wide, making text-entry difficult with 2 thumbs (even for my long fingers). The accelerometer, which monitors device orientation and directional-navigation, seems to have some quirks as well.

Samsung Droid Charge: This is my current phone and I LOVE it. Incredibly fast 4G LTE with surprisingly sufficient battery-life. The Charge runs on Android 2.2, has a large touch display, and is extremely light in weight. The front facing camera is pretty cool too. My only issues with this phone are that main nav keys are hard buttons as opposed to screen-displays, which makes it a weird experience going back/forth from screen to buttons. Also – there’s no toggle between 3G and 4G. You have to use 4G where available.

HTC Thunderbolt: Hate it! Horribly outdated form-factor. It feels like a clunky PDA from Palm-4 days (late 90s). Battery life sucked

Samsung Focus: LOVE IT! I can’t believe Microsoft finally delivered a solid Mobile Platform. Running Windows Mobile 7, which introduces some new interactions with the finger gestures, the Focus provides new intuitive ways of navigating through apps and content. The battery life is on par with iPhone. The only negative is the lack of apps. The question is… can Microsoft win over consumers after so many horrible mobile platforms in the last 10 years?

Tablet Landscape:
iPad: This is still the best tablet out in the market. Best display, weight, form-factor.

BlackBerry Playbook: In my opinion, Playbook is the only device that comes close to iPad. Great hardware and experience. There’s a slight learning curve for new users, but once you get over it – you realize its brilliant design. What I don’t like; at 7”, I wish it were bigger. I also wish they would have launched with Android App support, which is expected in early Q4.

Motorala Xoom: A ridiculously overpriced paper-weight! The display is visibly cheap. When you hold it up to your phone or other tablets, it’s visibly less bright and sharp. It’s extremely heavy in weight and the power button is hidden on the back of the device (stupid). The processor chokes on interactive content, such as AJAX features.

Mobile Platform Landscape:

Apple’s iOS: Still the best, but others are catching up quickly. I believed that lack of Flash support would be their downfall, but with the growing adoption of HTML 5, Apple may have killed Flash. The only negative - for PC users, it sucks to be forced into using iTunes to sync/transfer content.

RIM’s BlackBerry: As a longtime advocate of the BlackBerry platform, all I can say now is that RIM’s days are numbered. RIM is so infused into corporate culture that it will be a slow death (ala Novel). They are trying to retain users with a big push in Latin America and Asia, but are hemorrhaging U.S. market-share. The Torch and Playbook are OK, but too little, too late.

Google’s Android 2.2 and 2.3: I’m a big fan, but they need to figure out their battery-management issues. They have the advantage of having multiple Manufacturers building hardware and interfaces for this platform, creating competition - which is always better for consumers. The funny thing about this is… Google’s Android Apps (e.g., Gmail and Google Docs) are really poorly designed.

Microsoft's Mobile 7: They finally did it! They finally put out an platform that wasn't ridiculously bad. In fact, it's pretty good. They introduce some new gesture interactions that allow for both vertical and horizontal navigation of content. The biggest challenge for this platform is the bad reputation Microsoft has in this space.

HP’s WebOS: I’m a fan, but have never seen any strong push or implementation of this platform. Since HP acquired Palm over a year ago – they’ve gone into hibernation. In Q4 of this year – we can expect new HP phones and tablets using a new WebOS 3.0 (with improved gestures for touch-screens). I’m sure HP will have a marketing blitz for developers and consumers. This is a very enticing platform for developers, as all you need to know is Javascript (even the native device APIs).

Qualcomm’s BrewMP: Stick to your hardware, chipsets, and Snapdragon Qualcomm! Mobile o/s is not your game! For a long time, I have predicted that this platform will die soon. I have inside info that suggests the time has finally come. It looks like Android will be the sole platform for Snapdragon devices.

Operation Chokehold Highlights the Wrong Pain

The CRN article last week by Kevin McLaughlin, "AT&T Faces Potential 'Operation Chokehold'" discusses Dan Lyons' (a.k.a. the fake Steve Jobs) AT&T customer "call to action" asking they simultaneously launch data hungry mobile apps to overwhelm the NYC AT&T network.  The goal was to shame the carrier into building more capacity.

As McLaughlin quoted me in the 5th paragraph of his article, Lyons displays a fundamental lack of network infrastructure understanding.  I believe, however, with this charade, he is entirely on the wrong side of the chokehold problem.

In my opinion, Apple has created the "chokehold," not the greedy carrier (Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of the carriers, I could go on for pages about their sins, but not my focus here.)  I blame the Apple campaign "There is an app for that!"  While brilliant marketing, the pressure to have the largest number apps in one's app store was the net result and thus the race to the bottom on quality. 

In general, the best written mobile apps utilize the network the least. Understanding, when and how to use the transport is the "Black Magic" of mobile app development.  The shear number of mobile app suddenly available on the iPhone App Store (now in excess of 100,000) tells me that the vast majority do not uphold any quality standard of performance. 


The carriers have gotten so fat on overpriced all-you-can-eat unlimited data plans, that the heavy usage apps are their comeuppance!  You can be sure the price of these plans will adjust to pass the costs along to the consumer.