Smartphones aren’t getting any smarter

As an Android and mobile web developer, I feel compelled asking people I know or meet a lot of questions about their phones. One trend I’ve been seeing is feedback that smartphones, themselves, aren’t really getting any smarter. The ironman/crossfit marathon to add new features at warp speed has left behind a trail of cool phones that have some fundamental issues. So, I’m going to take a look at some of these here.

To put things in perspective, at Google I/O 2013, Sundar Pichai announced that there have now been 900 million Android activations world-wide to date. That’s not including iPhone activations, of course. But, Yeow, that’s a lot of phones! So, let’s look at some things that haven’t improved much. It’s almost like Newton’s Third Law of Motion can be applied to smartphones: while some things improve, other things must take a back seat.

Security. I can say this with certainty – I have yet to see or hear about a smartphone advertisement that says something such as “we’re striving to make this phone the most secure phone yet.” One thing is clear that Apple’s app vetting process helps reduce the level of malware compared to Google Play. Sure I understand that nothing is 100% secure, but the operating system vendors and the handset vendors could at least talk about it.  And, why don’t smartphones come with built-in, optimized versions of virus checkers and anti-malware tools like Windows PCs and laptops?

Most people’s lives could be seriously disrupted by the data stored on your typical smartphone, and we lose these and leave them behind accidentally by the thousands, and we inadvertently install malware.

Case in point – do a search on Google or bing using the term “smartphone security”, and see how many articles are published by the major phone vendors about security and securing your phone. The top result is by the FCC about their Smartphone Security Checker.

Restoring an Android phone. If you reset your droid or buy a new one, restoring everything back to the way it was and in it’s exact place, well…a very manual process. This is not very user friendly. Hey Android vendors, you should take a lesson from Apple on this one.

Display brightness and energy consumption. Phone displays appear to continue to be the “number one” draw on battery life. I’ve started to think most (many?) like their screens really bright. I mean realllly bright. It’s funny, I keep mine pretty dim to squeeze as much life out of the battery as possible, and I’ve lost count of the number of times people have said something like “how can even you see what you are doing??”

GPS energy consumption. My Garmin GPS lasts over 17 hours of continuous usage with two AA batteries. The battery on a typical smartphone has much greater storage capacity, but in actual field tests I’ve killed smartphone batteries in as little as 4 -5 hours of continuous GPS usage. GPS used wrong is a huge draw on the devices battery. Sure, a smartphone is doing a lot more work than a typical, single purpose GPS. But, my point is why hasn’t GPS battery consumption improved over five generations of smartphones? Those of us who build GPS-based native and web apps have to jump through hoops to optimize battery life in applications that do more than take a snapshot of the users current location. Some of the algorithms we write should simply be built-in to the firmware.

Charging times. Now I admit this varies from phone-to-phone but it’s still not very fast in general. I know I have said before that many people are never more than 10 feet from a charger, but for those of us who aren’t that attentive to charging I can say charging times can be an issue. For example, my iPad (okay it’s more of a tablet than a smartphone) is the slowest charging device on the planet compared to my original Google Ion which charged from dead to full in about an hour and a half. Sure, I understand there is a huge difference in battery size, but my point still stands. The cute, itty-bitty charger for iPad is way under-powered for the needs of charging a larger battery.  And, maybe some people are okay with that?

Planned Obsolescence.  This one is totally on Android. I’ve lost track of the number of Android phones that I have sitting around that have been rendered obsolete because the handset manufacturer provided one or maybe even two OS updates to the phone, and then they stopped. They become obsolete in the sense that some apps don’t run on older versions of the operating system. Sure, the upgrades are enticing (better camera, more memory, faster processors, etc. etc.) but what if someone doesn’t want or need to upgrade?

This may become more of an issue for people as some carriers are stopping their subsidies of phones and pushing users to carry the cost of a new phone directly. And new phones can give you sticker shock. If you have to pony up $350 – $600 for that new phone and all it’s advertised features, you might not be inclined to upgrade phones as often as you used to.

Wrap-up. So, I’ve written a mish-mash of different things that should be improved for both Android and iPhone. What I’d really like to see, and it probably won’t happen, is for Android, Apple and Microsoft to take a step back from the feature/functionality marathon and work on some fundamental issues to build an even stronger foundation for the next generation phones.

 

Migrating from Desktop to Mobile: 6 steps for success

If you have only one web site that is built for desktop browsers then you definately need to read this post. The one-size website-fits-all days are gone along with the AMC Gremlin. Mobile is a much different world than desktop and your visitors, users and customers will know that. This post is based on a presentation that I did at GIS in the Rockies 2012, and another blog post I wrote called 3 Steps for Determining if Your Website is Mobile Ready.

The presentation mentions GIS, or Geographic Information Systems, however it applies to anyone considering mobile.

Why care about mobile? For once the internet analyst firms are clear on one thing: mobile device sales have  surpassed desktop sales world-wide, yep I mean not just in the good ol’ U.S.A, around January’ish 2012. There are more than 835 million mobile users now, and studies show that people are spending the majority of their free time using their devices. And the patterns they use to interact with the devices are becoming ingrained and, for better or for worse, expected. And that expectation has reached a fervored pitch as the iPhone fanboys (and fangirls) demonstrated when the iPhone 5 launched. Everyone wants the latest and greatest even if it’s not all that different.

What about mobile user expectations? Mobile users have significantly different expectations on performance, look-and-feel, and capabilities. There are also differences between devices, for example as you may already know an Android user interface is fairly different from iPhone. Catering to those needs will boost your chances of success. So, here’s just a sampling:

  • Many different screen sizes. Typically smaller screen sizes and a wide vareity of screen pixel densities.
  • The mouse is gone. Navigation is done using fingers for gestures such as pinch and swipe. Greasy, french fry picking fingers are much less precise than any computer mouse.
  • Less memory. Phones have less memory and they can be slower than your high-powered laptop.
  • Poor internet connection. There are no gaurantees on a mobile internet connection, unless you happen to be dragging a CAT6 ethernet cable with you everwhere you go. Connections can be spotty and 4G connections can be inconsistent.
  • Battery life is awful. If you are at a conference, for example, using the phone heavily may kill the battery in  4 – 5 hours. Tablets are typically a bit better. In comparison, desktop computers are always plugged in.
  • Not all mobile devices are the same. iPhone and iPad run a different operating system from Android. Not only are the platforms completely different underneath, but users have different expectations of each platform. You can’t share the same code between iOS and Android, or even Windows Phone.

How about those six steps you mentioned? It’s these differences that really drive the six migration steps. And, these suggestions apply to all the different approaches to mobile whether you are building for mobile web, hybrid, native or responsive*:

  1. Start prototyping today. Let your developers loose to start playing and to get an idea the capabilities of different devices and operating systems. Have them use your existing web site content.
  2. Analyze your existing website usage. Use analytics tools such as Google Analytics to analyze what browser and operating systems your visitors are using. Look to see if there are any trends related to mobile usage. If you don’t use online analytics, there are also tools that can examine your existing web site logs.
  3. Reevalute all use cases and workflows. Mobile is so different from desktop. Refresh your approach on how to work your magic in that enviroment by taking into account how people use their smartphone everyday.
  4. Expect that you will need to rewrite code. Don’t try to make the code fit if it doesn’t meet the requirements. Besides, sometimes it’s a good thing to rebuild so that you clean house and bring a fresh perspective.
  5. Buy as many devices as possible. Since all devices are different, the more you can test on the better. For example, have as many types of Android and iOS devices running different OS versions on several different cell providers.
  6. Dig deep into browser differences. All browsers are different, especially mobile browsers. Check out caniuse.com as your next new best friend.

* A short note on Responsive websites. These use CSS3 media queries to detect and control what HTML content is visible to certain devices. CSS3 is generally considered to be one of the three technologies that together make up HTML5. Those three components are HTML (version 5) + Cascading Style Sheets (version 3) +  some new JavaScript APIs. NOTE: all three of these technologies are built into the browser by the browser vendors such as Google, Mozilla, Microsoft and Apple.

What do you really want in a future smartphone?

I’m voting for five simple things. Note, we are talking about smartphones here and not tablets. I look at the patent fights and all the junk functionality that is being crammed into the newest SDKs, and as a consumer all that I really want is all of the following bolted into one phone:

  • Significantly better battery life – My current phone won’t make it through a typical work day.
  • Faster battery charging time – My original Google Ion used to charge in less than an hour, my Atrix takes at least 2 hours and usually much longer.
  • Better default keyboard app – I probably make six mistakes typing one average length sentence because the tiny keys are so close together. Some third party apps have figured this out.
  • Better control over the camera app – I would stop carrying a separate camera if I could simply adjust f-stop and aperture.
  • Ability to read my screen in full sunlight with polarized sunglasses on – No chance of that on my current phone.

I’m fairly happy with the operating system software. And, my phone already has plenty of CPU horsepower and memory. It appears that in five short years the smart phone market has matured and the phone vendors are struggling to differentiate themselves. The current phone wars remind me of car ads on TV. Everyone is claiming incremental improvements that make your life better, easier or faster.  However, I propose there hasn’t really been any ground breaking innovation in smartphones since June 29th, 2007.

Now if there was a press release that said in the next version I could heavily use my phone for 3 days straight without a charge…that would get my attention!

What do you want in the next smartphone?