last night’s rant is today’s old news

I read this post last night and whoever wrote it got all my praise I can possibly give to a blog post (which is not much but hey). There’s something irrationally comforting in the fact that some one, some where understands your point, even if it’s on a topic as obscure as mobile phones features…

Or it might be that at my internet hang-outs (no comments please) I’m surrounded by geeks and these are some bohemian geeks too. And I want them to understand what I mean, because i want them to do well in their business so that they get rich and famous and i can live off selling stories from their pre-celeb past to various dubious-quality papers.

“My viewpoint is, unfortunately, that it’ll be another fake-smile launch. Let’s look at applications. You can actually do a lot with your N95. Order flowers, live-stream with Jaiku, book a flight to Las Vegas with ShopQwik, use maps, stream video — man there are TONS of things you can do with add-on applications.

The problem I’ve got is that *I* can do this. James Whatley can do this. YOU, dear reader, can do this.

My mother can’t.

My friends COULD but can’t be bothered. It’s too sodding difficult. Too annoying.”

I made my point in a jaiku conversation, and being the lazy git that i am i’ll use what i wrote over there to illustrate it over here (that’s the joy of web 2.0, you say something more or less substantial once and then you feed it through everywhere):

The point I’m referring to is not stricte about Nokia, it’s on the nature of mobile features that ‘James Whatley could use but my mother couldn’t’.

What counts to most people (yes, most) is if the whole thing ‘works’ (term used losely) for some one, whether it’s crap in the opinion of advanced users and apps makers. ‘Works’ on whichever level they need it to. There is a market that doesn’t care about brands all that much. Razr was popular when it came out; most of my friends who bought it had no ‘sentiment’ for motorola as such, they thought it looked good (apparently it does to some people)

Most people i know would buy carrier’s phone because it’s cheaper (or seems cheaper than buying sim only and a sim-free handset and not pay in the long run). Even so they have a choice of devices (though as Matthew Stevens pointed out it’s different in States, which to be honest i don’t know much about) - all of which are more less the same though, from lay point of view. I wrote about that some time ago. A lot of options are stuffed in these phones but they don’t work as a whole, they don’t flow, for a lack of better term. This is iPhon’s upper card - it makes (common) sense

Take my k550i, very midrange. The boys at Sony Ericsson are on to something, you can run few apps at once and switch them with one button. Very handy. But only some of them: if i swap from the web browser to the text message editor it closes the browser. Why, SE, why?? So close yet so far. It’s chaotic stash of features, no person in their right mind would open this can of worms. (And yes, there are devices that will do this flawlessly - i don’t have much experience with s60, but I’m guessing it would cope - but we’re talking mid-market, mid-price, mid-geek device.)

I’m just saying if one wants to beat iPhone (good luck to you), or if they want to move the mobile devices forward in innovative way they need to deliver something that a lay could use for all the Whatley-not-mother (sorry James) options. And that for people who might pay something, but they won’t pay what iPhone costs. Whoever gets there first - wins. Similar applies to internet services and mobile applications but it’s a whole different story for another evening, kids.

PS. I saw some leaked photos today. But after second thought I refuse to comment on something called Tube. Feels like shit marketing hurts me personally these days..