mobile

technorati tags:text mark

Back in April, I made a post about my new Cingular 8125. I had owned the phone for a day and had gotten off to a rocky, yet still promising start. I have now had 5 months to play with it, so I've collected my thoughts on the experience:

The good (or not so bad):

• "Available" list of features still better (more comprehensive) than other PDA options out there
  
• Wifi makes for a fairly speedy Internet connection
• As a cell phone, the call quality is not bad. The speaker phone is just ok, but it does the trick.
  
• Contacts and Calendar sync with Outlook. While I don't use Outlook for anything more than a conduit to sync up my contacts and calendar with Yahoo! and GMail (albeit, a cumbersome process), it does get the job done.
• Touch screen: While there is a QWERTY key board, I find I use the touchscreen and stylus a lot of the time (especially for dialing the phone and browsing the Internet).
  
• The screen: The screen resolution is great. Crisp and clear.
  

The bad (or not so good):

technorati tags:mobile, dictionary

Telephia recently released a report on mobile Internet usage. While the subscriber rate is increasing, the access and experience still lags far behind Internet browsing via the computer. According to their research, 34.6m mobile subscribers (presumably just in Europe, US and Canada?) accessed the Internet on their mobile device in June 2006 - up about 6 percent from January 2006 according to a PC World analysis of the Telephia report. Sites geared to quick hit lookup searches for e-mail, weather, maps and sports stats dominate the Top 10 visited sites during the month, including sites that have done a good job of optimizing their content and display for the mobile browser:

I have tried what seems like a million RSS aggregators and keep coming back to Bloglines. It has proven to be an efficient web based solution when I'm on my laptop (that I can also access from any computer when I'm away from home), but it is by far the best option I have come across for use on my mobile device (Cingular 8125). The content is formatted perfectly for reading on the small mobile browser screen and it loads extremely fast. I have hundreds of feeds in various categories in Bloglines, yet I can load updated feed content in a matter of seconds - far faster than when I log into my Google or Yahoo accounts on my mobile browser.

The buzz today is that Sony is ready to introduce the new $350 mylo (short for my life online), a wi-fi enabled "broadband communicator" that doesn't have a cell phone (hence, no cell carrier Internet access). While the lack of a phone avoids the relatively high monthly data plans from a cell carrier, it would seem to severely limit where you can use this device (and the mobile VOIP), as well as the number of consumers who would be interested in buying it. Also, it is no iPod replacement with only 4GB of storage available with the optional (i.e. additional cost) flash memory. As I have reviewed in prior posts, I have a Cingular 8125 that does everything the $350 mylo will do, plus it is a phone and I can access the Internet via wi-fi or the Cingular wireless network (where I do 99% of my Internet surfing from the device). I guess the target market for the mylo is kids using wi-fi access at home, a wi-fi hot spot (usually for a fee), or school. However, high schools won't likely allow its use, will they? And how many college kids will want to tote around a cell phone, an iPod and the mylo. At $350 a pop and an anchor tying the device to a wi-fi network, I don't see it competing with the other popular IM "communicators" like the Sidekick 3 which doesn't have wi-fi access, but has a cell phone and can access the Internet via the $39 / month (double checked t-mobile website and verified data pricing when purchased with phone package as noted in post in comments - thanks!) $20/ month t-mobile Sidekick unlimited data package.

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• Mobile Learning: A Handbook for Educators and Trainers (The Open and Flexible Learning Series) (Paperback)
  by Agnes Kukulska-Hulme (Editor), John Traxler (Editor)
  
• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (October 27, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN: 041