MobileViews Blog

The Bloomberg app for the iPhone 3G is much nicer and has more functionality than I expected. Thumbs up for this app.

Yet another major website created a site optimized for the iPhone. This time it is USA Today at…

iphone.usatoday.com

WordPress for iPhone works great. Wish typing was easier and faster on my iPod touch.

Sigh, here’s another example of Apple showing Microsoft “how to do it right.” The new iPhone 3G (and updated iPhone and iPod touch) got an enhancement to the original simple 4 function calculator. If you hold the iPhone/iPod touch in portrait mode, you see the simple calculator.

However, if you turn it to landscape orientation, you see the new scientific calculator.

Meanwhile, the calculator on Windows Mobile Pocket PCs has not changed since 1996 (see below).

The freeware version of Calc98 looks ok in portrait mode (see below). However, it does not rescale for landscape view. Apparently, the for-fee version does this correctly. Microsoft should just buy the rights to Calc98 and use it to replace the outdated calculator in Windows Mobile.

I’ve been using my iPod touch (upgraded to the 2.0 firmware) at a number of hotspots during the past week. I’ve also been carrying a variety of Windows Mobile WiFi enabled devices. One of the things that has become very clear to me is that the iPod touch acquires access points much much faster than any WiMo device I’ve tried. I’d say that that the iPod touch is generally ready to roll in under 10 seconds. WiMo devices seem to take 30 to 60 seconds just to acquire an access point and then be ready to use (browse, email, etc.). That, of course, is when a WiMo device acquires any signal at all. I’ve run into several public access points where the WiMo Pocket PC (Professional Edition) could not even lock into the WAP. The iPod touch, on the other hand, was working within seconds.

Since the Safari web-browser on the iPod touch is so much better than Internet Explorer on the Pocket PC or Smartphone, it is a no-brainer decision to use the iPod touch when wandering about hot spot areas.

If you head over to a LockerGnome web page at…

http://iphone.lockergnome.com/

…you can (after registering) vote iPhone apps up or down Digg-style.

NBC’s mobile portal provides streaming video (including full episodes of some shows) on both Windows Mobile devices and the iPhone (and iPod touch). Head over to…

m.nbc.com

…to see the site and videos. If you use an iPhone or iPod touch, you’ll be redirected to a site specific for them (see the screenshot above). You need to be patient with the video streams even when using a wireless LAN. It took about 30 seconds for it to buffer on my HTC Advantage. Then, the audio stream started without video for another 10 seconds or so.

I updated my iPod touch to 2.0 this morning. The process (which cost $9.95 + applicable taxes) was relatively smooth though it took a long time because of the steps to restore the touch to factory conditions before flashing it to 2.0. This was all automated, however. So, the process was not painful except for watching all this happen. The update file was a 222.6MB download.

You can see from the screencap above that I’ve already added a few of the free apps from the iTunes App Store. BTW, the screen capture procedure (press and hold Home button, then press the Power/Sleep button procedure courtesy of Gizmodo) works on the iPod touch as well as the iPhone 3G.

All my media files (podcasts, etc.) were wiped out during the upgrade process. But, various settings like my WiFi and mail setting were preserved. So, I was back in the wireless LAN as soon the upgrade finished. Moving media back to the iPod touch took a while. So, make sure you have 30 to 60 free for the process of buying/performing the upgrade.

According to various blog posts, the iPod touch 2.0 upgrade is finally available for purchase (US$9.95) and download. But, I learned my lesson from the first iPod touch 1st day download fiasco when the site balked, charged me twice, and didn’t actually update anything for a while. I’m going to sit and wait for a little while before updating my touch this time.

The Apple App Store for the iPhone (and eventually the upgraded iPod touch) IS the killer app. It has an easy to use an familiar user interface. It has a bunch of cool looking apps (many free). And, the for-fee apps look reasonably priced (may at $9.95).

More importantly, according to this info item on the Ilium Software site…

iPhone Software – Coming Soon

…the one must-gotta-have application in my mobile toolkit, eWallet, will be available for the Apple iPhone and iPod touch. I’m hoping to try it on my iPod touch when the 2.0 upgrade becomes available for it.

There are still three problems with the iPhone 2.0 for me personally:

1. AT&T Wireless (don’t want to switch carriers)
2. No physical QWERTY keyboard
3. No user replaceable battery

This is more of a note-to-self than anything else. I have an iPod touch and haven’t even checked to see if the 2.0 firmware upgrade is available for it as it is for iPhone 1.x users. Here’s a support item from Apple…

Updating and restoring iPhone and iPod touch software

I guess I should check to see if an upgrade is available for the touch now

Just for fun I decided to score my iPod touch, TyTn Windows Mobile 6 Pocket PC, and Dash Windows Mobile 6 Smartphone on 10 features. The highest possible score is 3 and the lowest is 1. So, a higher total is theoretically better than a lower one.

If you look at the scores, you might guess that I carry the TyTn Pocket PC around most of the time. Unfortunately, that guess would be wrong. I always take my Dash Smartphone out with me if I am only carrying one device. And, if watched me wander around my home, you would probably see me using the iPod touch.

The reason is that the my unscientific scorecard did not place weights on the ranked features. When, I am running around town, the most important features to me around the voice phone, one-handed use, RSS reader, PIM, and Email. When I am at home the most important features are web browsing and reading (but not writing/responding to) email. Email is a tricky one because when outside of the home I want one device that I can use for both reading and writing email. On the other hand, when I am at home, I just need to be aware of email and can wander over to a desktop or notebook computer to actually compose a response.

The Pocket PC (touch screen) probably trumps the Smartphone (non-touchscreen) with its unweighted score when outside of the home. But, once weight is placed on one-handed use and (a feature I did not rank) durability, the non-touchscreen Smartphone wins. I hated using my phone in the rain when I used a Pocket PC Phone Edition device. I felt that the touch screen technology was just too fragile. The Smartphone, on the other hand, seems to be tough enough for most outdoor weather conditions.

The big problem with the iPod touch and iPhone for my personal use is that they don’t have a physical thumb keyboard. As, I’ve mentioned many times before here, I still can’t type comfortably on iPod touch’s screen keyboard. That is why I never use it to reply to email or tweet on Twitter.

There is no perfect mobile device for me yet. So, I’ll continue to use a couple of best-of-breed devices in different situations for now.