The iPhone, Nexus One, N900 Shootout. Part 2

Part 1

Hardware Buttons

iPhone has the least number of hardware buttons which makes it the most easiest to use. Barring the power button and the adjust volume buttons, there is just ONE home button on the main screen which has just one function. It also makes sure that all the app navigation/options be a part of the app UI which makes it more intuitive for a rookie user.

N900 has the maximum number of hardware buttons considering it has a physical QWERTY keyboard. It also has a lock/unlock slider, power button, and an adjust volume button. As I mentioned earlier I found the keyboard unusable. I was not able to hit the keys on the top row of the board. The lock/unlock and power buttons are misplaced and hence unusable too.

Nexus has the 4 Android hardware buttons which I found as an irritant in the beginning but slowly I got used to it. The Back button makes it easy to navigate between multitasking apps. The Options button allows the apps to tuck in some options and nav elements under it so that the UI can be cleaner but the user may take some time to get used to this kind of navigation. Home button of course to go Home at any point of time; long pressing it will also give the last 6 apps I used. Search button is to search Google or do contextual search. I've got used to them now and it works well for me. Of course on Nexus these buttons' touch areas little out of place. I also found that the sequence of placing these buttons on Android phones are not consistent which is bad. Nexus also has a roller ball navigation like Blackberry which is useful only when I'm fine editing text. But I'm a fan of how iPhone handles this; magnifies the cursor position when I long press on text.

Winner: iPhone

Sound/Voice Quality

The speaker of Nexus is not great to listen to music. But it has noise reduction features to make your voice quality better. I did an telephonic interview amidst a lot of noise and when I apologized the candidate said she could barely hear any noise. But of course I was not able to hear her properly coz of the noise.

iPhone of course has an iPod about which I need not talk about here. But again the speaker is just fine. Voice quality on iPhone is also just decent.

N900 wins hands down here. The stereo speakers are superb. It is indeed a multimedia phone. Voice quality is also good.

Winner: N900

Apps/Store

The iPhone app store as everyone knows has all kinds of interesting apps. Again I don't have to talk about it here.

If you are an iPhone fan you will be disappointed by the kind of apps available in the Android market. Android apps are not necessarily like iPhone apps. Android market does have "iPhone type" apps (which are not as good) to "just services" which run in the background to do specific tasks. If you want to change or add some functionality on to your phone, just search in the market and i'm sure you are going to find it. I've downloaded quite a lot of utilities which are useful. Like the flip and shake service - it runs in the background and allows my phone to go to silent mode when flip it when it rings, shake to make the phone screen change to a flash light. I have another small service called "car mode" when activated will switch on the speaker phone whenever I get a call. Android apps also talk to other apps and share tasks which is a great relief for developers as they can focus on the app's core features. The back button makes sure that you navigate to and back from one app to another smoothly.

I did find a lot of "iPhone style apps" (mostly games) on Ovi store for N900, but they neither are as good as the iPhone apps nor there are Android kind of "services". Of course usual suspects like Facebook and Qik are there everywhere. I did download Firefox for N900 but found the native browser faster.

Winner: iPhone of course but Android is not behind with a completely different set of capabilities.

To be continued

The iPhone, Nexus One, N900 Shootout. Part 1

Again lemme play safe here - I think these phones are not supposed to be compared with each other. They are made for different people. iPhone as you know is iPHONE. A Nokia should be compared to another Nokia or an LG/Samsung with similar capabilities. An Android phone should only be compared with another Android. Said that; recently I had the privilege of using an N900 (Thanks to the nice guys at Nokia Womworld) and the Nexus One (We got it for the design team at work). I have already used an iPhone before so I thought it would be nice to jot down a quick list of points that came to my mind when I used them. Also Nexus is the first Android phone I'm using (I've looked at the Droid and Motorola Cliq previously) so most of the features I'm talking about might be an Android feature and not necessarily a Nexus feature.



WOW Factor

N900 lacks in this dept. There is nothing in the phone which will make you swoon for this phone. The phone looks like a brick and the UI is just a combination of a computer with Nokia's icons with some touch goodness.

iPhone had generated enough wow factor when it was released but later on they just added features into it, not wows.

Whereas Nexus One does have enough scope to make you go WOW. The beautiful hardware, a display that pops, voice input, live wallpaper, the notification panel, Google Skymap and other apps which add on to the oohs and aahs.

Winner: Nexus One

Hardware

N900 loses out completely. Its heavy and clunky. I found it's physical QWERTY keyboard unusable. It has a wrongly placed lock/unlock screen 'hardware slider' and another button when pressed will give a slide to unlock on the screen.... Aaaargh. It has a TV out and a FM transmitter though.

iPhone is the best in this category. Looks hot. It has just one home button. Makes it simple.

Nexus One looks cool and feels good to hold but has no grip. It may easily slip out of your hands. Be careful when you point out your phone to the sky using Google Sky Map. Four hardware buttons and a roller ball makes it look complex. The four hardware buttons have a purpose and it helps a lot once you get used to them, but on Nexus they are not placed well. The touch areas are out of place and they get accidental pressed when I use the phone with one hand.

Winner: iPhone

Screen

All three phones have screens I don't have a crib about. N900 has a resistive touch screen which is very responsive and smooth unlike N97. Has kinetic scrolling, but no flick. Graphics are high end; I really like the way the home screen and menu transitions. Large touch friendly graphics so I dont make mistakes. Only bummer is that the phone is supposed to be used only on landscape mode. It becomes portrait mode only when the phone app opens. Can get really confused.

iPhone has the best responsive screen I've ever used.

However Nexus One has a Mmmuah screen display coz of its high resolution (480 x 800 pixels) AMOLED capacitive touchscreen. You have to see it to understand what I mean by the Mmmuah display. Its that good. But responsiveness is only next to iPhone. Flick scrolling is smoother and better than iPhone. Nexus has multi touch too. Also has long press which simulates the "right click menu" option.

Winner: Again Nexus One. It needs to work on the responsiveness part.

Activation

N900 doesn't need an Activation as such as its not tied in to any online service. But they have Settings all over the place. I got lost at times trying to search for some settings.

iPhone asked me to download iTunes first on my comp and then connect and activate. I dont use iTunes and forcing me to do all that made me really pissed. Think about it, you bought a phone but you need to wait till you download iTunes and then connect to see your phone working. iPhone has the simplest Settings though.

Nexus asked me to login with my google id and tada my contacts, calendar, gmail and everything got synced. Setting up work email was easier with a simple wizard. However work calendar didn't come in which was a bummer. I can get it if I sync my Outlook calendar with Google Calendar; but didnt do it. Nexus has an elaborate Settings screen but quite nicely grouped.

Winner: As a Google fan I will vote for Nexus for making my transition smooth.

To be continued...

Lazy Innovations

On a lazy evening my friend caught me on chat

Friend: Just wondering, have your read 'Ambient Findability'?

Me: Well no. I seldom read books

Friend: :-) Okey actually a friend was asking me about some usability books.

Me: Well, I haven’t read any books on usability. it’s a secret btw. Its not that I don't read at all. I'm an avid reader online. But otherwise I work on a common sense theory.

Friend: Haha :-) guess you don't need any

Me: The only book (if u can call it a book) I have read is ‘Getting Real’

Friend: oh yeah - that’s the only book I bought online

Me: I have bought books online. Just that I didn’t read them. ‘Getting Real’ a friend of mine sent it to me

Friend: Hmmm. I suggested my friend to read 'Dont make me think' - I don’t know any other

Me: I haven’t read it but the title sounds interesting. Something which I say all the time. Recently I read a quote on Twitter saying “Innovation comes from lazy people who try to do things in easier ways”

Friend: Haha true. Actually there is another: “Give the impossible to the laziest. They will find a way out”

Me: Good one. I'm lazy but I dont know if I have done any innovation though :P

Friend: Only problem is sometimes innovation doesn’t come from a problem. It comes from nowhere

Me: Is it? I don’t know. I'm bad at Maths. I can’t remember numbers. Any number. So I find some indigenous way to solve this problem of mine. Simple solutions.

Like I always give the same number of clothes to the laundry. So that I don’t have to remember different numbers every time. The laundry guy is also happy. The number and the money is always the same. No calculations needed :P

Friend: Haha thats cool

I'm an innovator yay :P

The Social Brand Ambassador

The other day I posted a message on Yammer

I think social media ads will work in an entirely new way where we users will become the brand ambassadors. The future wont be CPMs, CPCs and CPLs based on irritating banners.

The reason for me saying this was coz I think the best way of promotion is through word of mouth. No ad on any medium can ever bring in the trust factor which your word of mouth brings in to your network of friends. I have a set of friends who share the same taste of mine in movies. I normally ask them before going for a new movie and I only go if any of them say its a good watch.


Now a days, even before someone asks, I share on Twitter and Facebook that I'm watching this movie and right after the show I say whether I liked it or not. This broadcast of mine is actually helping some friend of mine in my list to decide on whether to watch this movie or not and then pass it on to his friends. The same happens before buying a soap, a car or an apartment.

The day brands wake up to social media they will get to do dirt cheap but effective promotion to a targeted group of people who has more chances of buying their products. Its good for us too as they will not only be forced to sell good quality products but also good after sales service fearing negative comments just like how the good word spread like wild fire. Ref: The Kiruba incident

To make this work, the brands just need to make sure that I tweet about the product; good or bad; just to broadcast which may also start a conversation.

How?

For Online purchases


Obviously by providing a "Tweet this" button

For real world store purchases

1. May be using Blippy. Blippy is a service which reads my credit card transactions in real time and broadcasts it; it can Tweet and post to Facebook too. Brilliant but very controversial idea coz of security and privacy issues. Like my Who's that girl app!!

2. May be when I check in my location using the Google local store QR code, Foursquare, Gowalla, and Loopt. The moment I check in my store presence it tweets. The QR code can also be on the bill so pointing at it can tweet that I have bought something.

3. May be I can have a SocialMedia card, when swiped at the point of sales would tweet my purchase details. The same way I do with my store/brand membership cards. I will have a lot of control over my broadcast this way and its simpler.



Why should I tweet about my purchase?

Coz someone will reward me for doing this. But who? The brand of course or the network depending upon the model. All brands reward their ambassadors but in this case it will be peanuts compared to the money they pay celebrity endorsers.

In the above SocialMedia card model, the brand can give me loyalty points when I swipe my card which I can redeem at my future purchases. This way the brand also makes sure that I come back and use whatever they have given me to again buy things from them.

In the Google QR code check in model Google can pay me per check-in (CPCI). Every check in means that I have visited the store and I have tweeted about it.

What happens after that?

My friends who trust my views, see my tweet/facebook post and strike an opinion about the product which will then influence their purchases.

The brand can now advertise their products on Twitter/Facebook to a highly targeted group of people, in this case my friends, who now are more likely to buy their products. It can also work more like a personalized recommendation engine instead of mindless irritating banners.

Three of your close friends watched 3 Idiots and loved the movie. Book your tickets now!!

We all make money!!

Social media advertising model is good coz everyone gains

1. Me: Get paid or gain reward points for broadcasting my usage/purchase.
2. My friends: Get trust worthy opinions from me before buying something.
3. Twitter/Facebook: Will make money as highly targeted and effective advertising platform.
4. Brands: Spend less money in effective promotion. Make more money by selling more products.

Gyan Droid

Caught hold of my ever busy Android expert friend to clear some doubts

Me: Are you there?

Friend: Hellons

Me: I have a doubt

Friend: Shoot

Me: Say I bought an HTC Magic which runs on Android 1.5. How easy is it for me to upgrade the firmware to Android 2.0 and further?

Friend: You can’t do it on your own. The operator has to push…

Me: Huh can’t I do it like how iPhone does?

Friend: No :(

Me: Grr. So I can’t buy any Android phone and install the latest version on it?

Friend: No.... it’s very tightly coupled to specific hardware for each model.
iPhone is a standard hardware. Oh btw HTC Magic is super buggy.

Me: oh

Friend: However you can upgrade a G1 using a computer as its meant for dev purposes.... other than that the operators push the upgrades… many logistics involved with operators pushing firmware… many apps cant work in further versions.... many games included… so they give time to rebuild for further versions… right now only Motorola Droid has 2.0.

Me: oh

Friend: … and HTC Droid has 1.5, rest of them either 1.1 or 1.0

Me: HTC Droid? What phone is that?

Friend: Droid is Verizon’s Android phones. There are 2 droids. One is the Motorola “Milestone” Droid and the other is HTC “Eris” Droid

Me: Oh

Friend: Verizon is the main competitor of AT&T, so they were looking to somehow pitch against AT&T and iPhone and hence the droid lineup

Me: Makes sense

Me: And they are CDMA phones right

Friend: Yeah!! :) But not many got that point. CDMA came with 1.5

Me: Confusing man. Supposedly there is a GSM Hero and a Sprint Hero

Friend: Yeahh!! The Sense UI

Me: Sense UI is a skin on top of some version of Android. Right?

Friend: Yes

Me: So when the Android version changes, will there be changes to the sense skin?

Friend: Not exactly. May be some bug fixes and some sort of enhancements...

Me: So how does that get updated? ie say I'm using Sprint Hero which has sense UI and Android version 1.5. One day I get a push from Sprint to upgrade to 2.0. When I do that will Sense also gets updated?

Friend: Yups correct

Me: HTC and Sprint work together to make this happen…

Friend: Correct

Me: Basically I cant plug in my phone to a comp to upgrade it. Its always over the air.

Friend: Yeahhh. Except for G1 which is the dev phone

Me: OK got it. So I'm always at mercy of my carrier to get OS updates

Friend: Yeahhh

Me: Is this coz there are many manufacturers, skins, GSM / CDMA complications?

Friend: It is becoz there is no standard hardware for Android

Me: Even Symbian has many hardware right? I can update my phone using Nokia PC suite. Another story that I might lose data :P

Friend: Symbian updates might not be a major phone feature update, its mostly bug fixes. Whereas with each Android release there is something major added feature wise. And the apps on a Symbian device aren’t tightly coupled to the database but on Android even the contact app is tightly coupled. It’s each applications responsibility to back up data and restore it again in the backend every time there is an update, which is handled pretty much by all apps in the phone

Me: Database on the phone or on the cloud?

Friend: Phone

Me: But just for argument sake, what if a CD came with my Sprint Hero pack which has something called Android Manager Software, which has a button to check updates, which will update my phone if available. What can go wrong?

Friend: There are multiple dependencies.... Android is trying to keep everything in the phone itself as there are multiple hardware manufacturers, multiple carriers the only stop n shop solution would the device itself

Me: Oh

Friend: Which makes it convenient for every one, most importantly the user. It removes the need for any other mediator system which is a simple and elegant solution :) What do you think?

Me: Fair enough. Sounds complex but great if it works well. I personally don’t like dependencies; be it operator or PC software. It’s sad that I can’t update my E51 over the air. It’s even sadder if I have to wait for the operator to push the upgrades to me. What if he doesn’t? Or is it the manufacturer who is pushing it using the operator infrastructure? I may not be this worried if I'm in the US but what will be the scene in India?

Friend: Sir can we continue this talk later? I have to catch a bus to Coimbatore.

Me: OK man thanks a lot. Please carry on.

May be I will get the answers next time I get hold of him.

What if my door can tweet?

In my last post I talked about how paranoid I'm with door locks. I have many times gone back home half way through going somewhere, to recheck if the door had been locked. The same happens with my car too. Some time back my cousin Nicky and I had even planned to make a smart car lock remote which shows me the lock status; my current remote doesn't show the lock status.

That makes me think, can there be something using which I can talk to my doors or for that matter to my car as a whole, lights, AC and gas supply at home to know their status? Can they tweet? Can they all be connected to small systems which can keep track of their status, receive tweets, understand the instructions, act on them and reply? Its quite possible. There are already automated systems or robots which can tweet; used for many reasons like 'to do reminders', 'dictionaries' etc. But mostly they are all just computer programs. What if the computer programs are connected to real things? Thats the idea.

Why Twitter? Well Twitter is not the only way this can be implemented. It can also be done using email, chat or SMS. Twitter coz there are multiple ways of tweeting and for all of them you need to know only one address. You can use SMS, your Twitter app on you phone, twitter.com, email, other twitter clients the options are many.

So next time when I'm half way through to work, and if I get doubts about if have locked the doors, I just tweet or DM

ooomz: @ooomzdoor status

ooomzdoor: @ooomz open

ooomz: @ooomzdoor Lock Sesame

ooomzdoor: @ooomz door locked

I can then sigh in relief and continue walking to work; may be praying that Twitter should be up all day :)

The dead lock

Do you think usability and user experience are the same?

Its true that usability or 'ease of use' leads to good user experience but just that doesn't cut it. To achieve good user experience there is still more work left.

The door knob shown here is super usable and also follows the first rule of heuristics - visibility of system status. You press a button and the door is locked. To open the door you don't even have to "unlock" it. Just turn the knob and it automatically unlocks and opens the door.

Whats the problem now?

It doesn't "really" make me feel secure. It actually makes me feel stupid and thats bad.

After locking a door by whatever mechanism I usually recheck it by trying to open it again, just to be sure. I'll only be satisfied if the door refuses to open. This lock doesn't allow me to do that. If I try to recheck, the door opens. Once my dad was trying to lock his hotel room door with a similar door knob from inside and he kept on opening it again and again and started complaining that it was not working. In the end I had to give him an assurance that once the button is pushed, no one can open it from outside. He was half convinced even then.

User experience is a combination of many design aspects like info architecture, user interaction, usability and visual design. The right balance of all the them is what creates a good user experience.

My bet is on Android

First things first; I think the iPhone is an amazing piece of gadgetery. There is no doubt that the iPhone clubbed with the app store phenomenon has just changed the smartphone landscape overnight and forced every other device manufacturer go back to the drawing board. I do agree that the iPhone has the best touch friendly OS and superior hardware to any other phone in the market today, but I somehow would like to place my bet on Android. Here are 5 reasons why...

1. I'm a Google fan

I'm a blind Google fan and I would like to be a part of their products. I know there are Apple fans who swear by Apple products. Some how I was never attracted to using Apple products just for the fact that the whole world goes gaga over it. I like the underdog.

2. I don't like restrictions

Just let me do my own stuff and make it easy boss. Dont make me "jailbreak" my phone or make me look for a paper clip if I want to take out the SIM card. Let me have Google voice on my phone. Let me choose my own device brand which allows me to change the battery myself, if it conks off. Let me watch flash movies...

3. I want physical keypad

I don't mind a virtual keypad but for better control and speed, I think I will need a physical keypad. I know the physical keypad makes the phone bulky and clunky, but I also know that better product designs can overcome that and it will definitely happen.

4. I want more choices

At the time of writing this there are 10 device manufacturer brands as a part of the Open Handset Alliance, the group committed to commercially deploy handsets and services using the Android Platform. There are 23 phones already announced and more will follow. I have more choices of brands, capabilities and price to choose from. Android phones will be cheaper as the OS is free for use for the device manufacturers (Please correct me if I'm wrong). The manufacturers can also customize the UI to bring in their own unique experiences on the phones like the MotoBlur™ and HTC Sense™. I think Motorola Cliq is the best of the lot I have seen till now but I'm also waiting for the stunning Sony Ericsson 'Rachael'. I did like the Nokia's Maemo phone N900 but I seriously think that even Nokia should join the Open handset alliance so that we will have superior Android phones. Who can beat Nokia in making mobile phones?

5. More and better Apps

I'm sure in the coming days there will be more and better Android apps available as there are no restrictions from both the Android Market and the OS level. Android does not differentiate between the phone's core applications and third-party applications. They can all be built to have equal access to a phone's capabilities providing users with a broad spectrum of applications and services. Forget about all that. The fact that all Google apps will definitely be on Android makes it good enough right away. Also as Android net books start coming in, I can even have the same set of apps on my phone and my computer, synced.

All this might not happen overnight. But I'm sure that there is a lot of interesting stuff waiting to happen in the Android space. Just be patient.

The appy fizz

Got my friend's email out of the blue which had a question which was relevant in these times

Friend: Is a company better off building a mobile app for a smartphone or should they optimize their mobile web experience or do both?

Me: The mobile web optimized version is a must. Thats a standard now.

Now the decision to make an app or not.

We get requests for doing both mobile web and app even if there is no much difference between both the experiences. They just want to be a part of the app store euphoria. They just want their presence there among other companies. And there is a lot more advertising money in the app space coz of the hype.

Personally I think if you don't have anything special to offer than the mobile web its good to remain on the web. On the long run its the web which is going to win.

But if you can give more than what the mobile web offers, then yes. Apps can make use of the native capabilities of a phone to give interesting features and experiences using the touch, accelerometer, camera, video/audio recording, geo location, compass, augmented reality, the pinch and zoom on iPhone and other supported gestures, offline access, better animation capabilities etc.

One more thing we have to keep in mind is that the app should be good enough to be used repeatedly.

Friend: Ok Thanks.

Dont just do things just for the sake of it. Do it only if it makes sense.

Somethings should change

My wife who has now become a Facebook addict; constantly using it on her phone, is not very happy about her slightly expensive Airtel data plan.

She: I'm thinking of changing my connection coz I'm not able to afford the internet on Airtel.

Me: So have you looked at the options?

She: Yes. I think Tata Docomo should have cheaper internet.

Me: Oh really? Did you check out the rates?

She: No not yet. I guessed coz their voice plans are anyways cheaper. So its obvious to have a cheaper internet plan

Me: Well you better find out. What about Reliance? Did you check it out?

She: Huh? I'm talking about GSM services

Me: I know. Reliance has also come up with a GSM service

She: Huh?? When??? I didnt know this. Aren't they advertising?

Me: Of course they are. The new Hritik Roshan ads are for their GSM service

She: Oh I just didnt figure out...

Me: Well its not your mistake that you missed it.

She: Then?

Me: Isn't it interesting that you are well aware of Tata Docomo services and you even have a perception about their pricing. At the same time you dont even have a clue that Reliance also came up with a GSM service around the same time and they even have a Bollywood super star endorsing it?

She: Ya right. How did that happen?

Me: Its coz Reliance did nothing to create a strong audio visual distinction for their new service brand. They just added the words GSM and CDMA to their existing brand identity.

Whereas Tata made their GSM brand Docomo look absolutely different from their CDMA brand Indicom. Docomo also has a super cool signature tune which made the brand distinctly recognizable. Their ads are funny, almost in the same lines of the Virgin Mobile (A Tata Indicom joint venture) ads. The teaser ads too helped in creating curiosity and buzz among people prior to the launch. Tata didn't stop there, they also did some fresh innovation in their pricing strategy which made the whole thing a big hit. I'm told that the SIM cards have run out of stock at many places.

She: But Docomo is a Japanese brand right? So may be its their look which Tata used...

Me: No. Ironically Docomo's real logo looks very similar to Indicom. So that says it was a well planned strategy of theirs to come up with a fresh new branding.

She: Wow

In design, being consistent is very important if you don't expect your target audience to behave or react differently. But if you want them to take notice and act accordingly, you need to bring in new elements to break the consistency and familiarity.