JasonMonty.com

The recent Samsung Galaxy S2 Ice cream sandwich (ICS) upgrade debacle highlighted to me just how short off the mark Android remains as a genuine rival to iOS. I am a big supporter of Android and really want to see a decent rival to Apple. But this upgrade experience has reminded me yet again that the lack of integration between hardware and software leaves the end user disappointed, frustrated and confused. 

I’m not clear anymore, whether the competition is Android verses iOS. Or whether it’s actually the hardware ie HTC, Samsung, Motorola, LG (to name a few) verses Apple. And therein lies the problem. Fragmentation. As a user of a Samsung phone – who do I call to complain? Android – perhaps? But who? Google? Doubt it. It’s an open source project with hundreds of developers out there. And besides they’ll blame the hardware manufacturer. So I could speak to Samsung….try getting through to them. I have – and it’s futile. 

I am convinced that Samsung and all the other manufactures of Android handsets view their products merely as commodity items. Just another product line ready to off load to a faceless consumer who they don’t particularly care much for. Take Samsung as an example. How can you really expect a manufacture of products as diverse as televisions through to tractors to genuinely care about the consumer experience of a handset?

ICS on-board

I should have seen the warning signs from the start of the ICS upgrade. It took 4 attempts to finally convince the handset that it should at least attempt to connect to the Samsung mother ship for the 260mb upgrade. Several aborted attempts later it finally downloaded the file.

The overall ‘improvements’ are barely noticeable. Blink – and you might literally miss any of the changes. Such a disappointment. On the positives – the new multi-tasking menu is pretty useful. The menus seem marginally more user-friendly – but that’s about it. The new default fonts are hideous and much worse than on gingerbread. The Samsung proprietary TouchWiz UI sits over the top and so any decent ICS improvements are masked by an almost identical TouchWiz UI to the previous version.

Perhaps the only saving grace is that I can finally use the Chrome browser (which was only ever released for ICS) Android purists will argue – I could root my phone and install a dedicated ICS rom. But why should I? Why should an end user have to do this for a better Android experience? Besides, doing so can affect core app functionality (for example it kills Google video DRM).

But perhaps the biggest issue to be concerned about is performance. ICS seems to have significantly slowed down overall performance. For example, opening apps takes noticeably longer now. Plus scrolling seems less fluid. I have also noticed that Wi-Fi has become unreliable. It will routinely disconnect from the network and frequently drops its signal.

To be frank -it’s become unusable for me on a daily basis. I simply cannot rely on it as my primary handset anymore. The painful truth I have come to realise is that Android is merely a utility to get a handset functioning. Upgrade paths, product life cycles, maintenance and ultimately consumer experience are not priorities for Android handset manufactures. By all means buy a handset – but don’t expect future software improvements and performance optimisation. Ironically, I think Windows Mobile may be able to achieve some of this. I have read that Microsoft have much tighter hardware requirements for their OS. Time will tell – but for now on I’m sticking to my iPhone.

It’s often difficult not to be accused of being an Apple fanboy. I’m not – honest. I just love tech. But occasionally Apple do things that just blow me away. And they did just that today. It was understated, low key and subtle. Yet what they announced gave us a real insight into the future of just where OSX and iOS are heading. That small announcement today was the developers preview of OS X Mountain Lion. From what I have seen, it pulls together some of the best UI features from iOS and combines it with the maturity of the OSX platform. That combination is almost the perfect storm, bringing both operating systems much closer together – for the better (okay technically iOS is a version of OSX but you get my point).

Take the beta of the new ‘messages’ app for OS X which launched today. For months now, we have all been speculating about the future of iChat. Now it is clear where it is heading. In one small stroke of genius, Apple have given iOS users (many of whom are not OS X users) one of the biggest insentives to switch. The ability to send iMessages to iOS devices from your desktop mac or macbook is a game changer. That combined with the integration of FaceTime really completes the puzzle.

Okay – all this may seem insignificant. But look at the competition. Microsoft have bet their future on fragmentation . Their announcement last week revealed there will be a Windows 8 version for ARM (AKA WOA) based architecture (tablets) and a version for x86 (laptops/desktops) plus Windows Mobile 8 (smartphones). In a world of cloud services, integration and messaging I can’t help but think Microsoft have taken a huge step backwards. Love them or hate them. Microsoft have always been excellent at supporting legacy apps. In one foul-swoop they have potentially alienated millions of users who want to use shiny new Windows based ARM tablets – but can’t due to incompatibility.

I predict that the new incentives on offer in MountainLion, combined with the iPhone and iPad halo affect may just be the tipping point for Apple to take the lions share (no pun intended) of the ailing but still significant traditional computer market.

Time will tell – but the post-Steve Jobs era at Apple is going from strength to strength.

An incredible graphic demonstrating the cash reserves of Apple Inc.

Created by: MBA Online

My rant a couple of weeks ago was unduly harsh against Android. I still maintain I was right about the user experience – iOS wins hands down. But I was missing a vital element – flexibility. And that is where Android trumps iOS. So by way of an apology here are three features (well two really) that really make Android worthwhile…

1. PortableWifi hotspot

I had another ADSL web outage a few days ago. Nothing too drastic – but down for a few hours. I was working on the show at the time – so needed a decent connection. With a couple of finger swipes,  my Samsung s2 turned itself into a handy wifi hotspot. And not the tightly controlled carrier approved bluetooth only approach that iPhone offers up. No, I’m taking a full access point that supports multiple devices. With a decent HSDPA connection through my carrier,  I was clocking in at around  3.3mbps down and 0.52mbps up. Not the quickest out there – sure. But more than enough to FTP the show up to our server.

2. Share via

The second neat little feature is often hidden and not always obvious across all apps. By selecting the menu option (will vary across handsets), you can quickly send a file (such as an image, audio or video file) to pretty much anywhere you want. Again, simple but highly flexible.

3. Pocket casts

Not strictly speaking a feature – but I wanted to plug this incredible app. Pocket Casts is a paid for app on Android markplace. Produced by Australian developers, Shiftjelly. I should add that this is also available on iphone – but the screen real estate on the S2 makes this far more elegant…

I’ve been a podcast fan for years, but have always been frustrated by the inability to subscribe to shows on the fly in iOS. I also think third party apps such as Stitcher and others fall short as most require you to stream and listen. But not Pocket Casts  - it is feature packed. You can pretty much do what you want when you want. Way too many features to list but the highlights include; 1) the ability to download on 3g or wifi only. 2) a flexible schedule to have the shows download at particular times of the day and 3) the ability to set a notification in the notification bar when a show arrives.  In a nutshell – it is the best podcast catcher I have ever used.

For all its faults, Android does have an appeal. But frustratingly most of these useful features are layers deep within the OS. To really maximise the value of Android you do need a willingness to experiment and play. But hey – that’s what geeks love right? So – I got it wrong. Android isn’t as bad as I thought….

I’ve been using the Android based Samsung Galaxy S2 as my primary mobile phone now since May this year.

In a nutshell – the experience sucks. And make no mistake – this model is currently tipped as one of the best Android smartphones on the market right now. Pundits will talk about the incredible display, the speedy dual core processor and the excellent camera. Some will sight the flexibility of the microsSD expansion slot or the option to swap out the battery. Geeks will say that the multiple widgets and access to the underlying file structure gives you flexibility and freedom. But I think there in lies the rub. Smartphones are more that just the sum of their parts – it’s the user experience that really matters. And Android doesn’t get anywhere close to iOS.

I am sure that if iOS didn’t exist Android would rule. But that’s just about the biggest complement I can give Android.  The painful truth for Google is that iOS does exist, and there is no way that Android is even remotely close to the user experience of Apple.

The open model doesn’t work
Some will sight the open model verses the closed Apple model. Sure open is better right?! Not necessarily and certainly not in the case of Android. Ultimately it compromises and fails to standardise any form of experience for the end user. The Android market place (the app store equivalent) is awash with sub-par applications. Most pay little attention to UI and the framented range of supported Android devices means that some apps only work on particular hardware. That doesn’t strike me as consumer choice. I think that is why Android is such an odd and inconsistent experience for users. The choice for Android users is not only about hardware and screen real estate but also about what user interface works best. Should a user go for HTC sense? Or should the user go for Samsung’s touch-wiz? Or what about Motorola’s front end ?? Sure Android is open source, but how many manufactures actually ship Android in its vanilla flavour? None. (With the exception of Google’s own line of handsets).

This fragmentation is bad for the user – because it complicates their lives. Sure there is choice – but that choice comes at a cost. Most users don’t have the time or inclination to be their own IT support. Why spend your time trying to work out how to integrate your Android device into your ecosystem? Just buy an iOS device – it is the result of some very smart people who have figured that stuff out for you.

As a young boy I remember regularly driving past a local Apple Macintosh store in Kenley, Surrey. I use to frequently travel up to London with my family in the car.  I must have been about 12 or 13 at the time. I use to make a point of looking at the shop every time I passed it. That distinct rainbow coloured Apple logo outside, and those Macintosh computers in the shop window. In those days they were expensive. Very expensive. But I g0t it then and I get it now. There was a distinctiveness and elegance about those computers – way before Apple became a household name. There was some kind of unique culture around them even then. I instantly became an Apple fan at that early age.  I followed Apple obsessively in those days. It was before the web so I use to save my pocket money for all the computer magazines I could get my hands on – just to read up on Apple.

Surprisingly, I didn’t get to use an Apple Macintosh until I went to university in about 1996. (I was forced to cut my teeth on PCs back then). It was a friends’ Macintosh Performa 6300. I was hooked. Sure it wasn’t as powerful as some of its PC rivals. But the elegance and beauty of the system really got me hooked.  Since then I’ve never looked back. The day I was able to save up and get my own Mac was back in 2001, a gorgeous iBook.

As Apple grew and took over the consumer tech market I don’t think they lost that culture. If anything it suddenly became cool to be part of the gang.

I think my point is that Apple products are far more than just beautifully crafted technology. They are a way of thinking, they inspire users to create and innovate. They taught me that technology is more than just a tool to get something done – it can be art in itself.

All this is down to two men. Steve Wozniak and the late Steve Jobs. Two geeks who came together in their garage and built insanely great products that changed consumer technology for ever. That is how I’ll remember Steve Jobs.

I blogged recently about my plans to move away from the iPhone and switch to an Android smartphone.   I’ve had a second Android smartphone (the HTC Hero) for quite some time, but I wanted a decent powerful alternative that supported the very latest offering from the OS (Gingerbread).

I opted for the Samsung Galaxy S2. The large 4.3” screen, along with its blisteringly fast dual core processor made it very appealing. Plus the ability to shoot video in 1080p and the 8M pixel camera were the other hardware factors that made me curious. By all accounts it has been hailed by many as the best smartphone to date.

The hardware

To put it simply – incredible. The super AMOLED Plus 4.3” screen is exceptionally stunning. Even at half brightness I find myself turning it down – it is super bright, and the colours are clean and rich. Watching videos is fantastic. The size of the phone is just right. Not too big and not too small.

Three things are immediately striking about the form factor:

• Firstly the huge screen size. Way bigger that the iPhone it is the first phone I have used where I actually feel I can surf the net without compromise.
• the weight. It feels super light – but the build quality is still there. It might not appeal to folk who are use to a solid feel, such as the iPhone 4 – but you would never expect a phone this size to be so light.
• the thickness – or perhaps I should say the thinness. At just 8.5mm it has to be one of the thinnest smartphones on the market.

But perhaps the biggest hardware asset is not visible – the dual core processor. Frankly, I have not used any gadget as quick as this thing. The 1.2 GHz dual core enables almost all applications to open instantly. It is perhaps most noticeable when using the web browser. It also renders sites in full, including flash which actually works very well, so much quicker than any iOS device I’ve used.

Cameras

The cameras are both outstanding. A 2m pixel offering for the front facing camera and an 8M pixel camera at the back. The quality of the photographs is excellent too. Far better than most Android phones I have used, and I would argue, superior to the iPhone 4. Shooting video in 1080p is a neat feature too. The dual processor also helps here – kicking in to crank open the camera application very quickly.

It does feel great to be able to access the battery in the back, which also houses a micro-SD slot. My model has 16gb of flash storage – pretty generous. But I have added a 32gb micro-SD. Try doing that on iOS…

Battery life is pretty good. Better than most Android competitors, but on a par with iPhone4 I reckon. I am a heavy user, and after a day of use I find myself down to about 30% by the evening…But hey, at least we get the option to carry a spare battery…

Android as an OS

In my opinion, the UI of Android is by far superior to iOS (which is looking very dated now – but, to be fair,  iOS 5 is round the corner). The widgets, the notifications , live wallpaper all these features and more give Android flexibility to customise, customise and customise. It is a geeks delight.  Samsung’s flavour of Android give you up to 7 home screens to put widgets and apps on. But there are also application screens underneath. The combinations and configurations are almost limitless. A neat feature is the ability to pinch out and view all the screens together, or switch them around as you see fit. Again, speed is the order of the day here . Samsung have done an outstanding job optimising gingerbread for the dual core processor.

I’m not going to get into all the apps. Too many to list. But I want to flag up one that came pre-installed.  ’Kies air’. Simply open it up on your network, it give you an IP address. Then go to that IP on any computer you have and bingo, you are presented with all the media files of the Galaxy. You can then simply drag and drop any videos, music or photos you want…..It works well and is great if you want to quickly share media with friends etc..

I have all my core applications on the phone that I need now. Plus it’s great how Android pulls in your google account data in effortlessly. No need to add accounts like iPhone, just log in and all your google services appear (not surprising given who develop Android).

Voice recognition is everywhere….

Voice talk works a charm. Simply activate car mode and you can give instructions to the phone verbally, send an SMS, make a call, navigation….it works surprisingly well.

There is also voice recognition built into the core. So I can open up WhatsApp, for example and dictate a message. Again, surprisingly accurate and fun.

Android Market Place

I can’t lie. It is not as polished as the iOS apps store. But it is close.  All my critical applications are there, and the likes of Foursquare, Twitter, Evernote and Audible look far more elegant than on iOS.

From my perspective there are some frustrations though. Firstly, how the market place operates. Despite having a UK account , Android assumes your account settings based on the sim card you happen to have in. (unlike iOS). This is a unique problem to me, but it does mean that I cannot easily get UK apps being located where I am. Geolocation rearing its ugly head again…

Another issue is that the Amazon app store is not available anywhere else other than the USA. Frustrating, as they have far more paid apps in their offering. But hey, I’m patient….it will arrive soon enough.

Syncing stuff

I’ve already mentioned it’s easy to manually pull stuff in and out via the IP connection app. But obviously, it’s not that quick for heavy duty data on wifi. I use iSyncr for Mac. Far quicker than DoubleTwist and basically enables you to shift media across from iTunes to the S2. Pretty good.

Summary

The best smartphone I have ever used – the hype is spot on. Since getting hold of the Samsung Galaxy S2, I have just not been able to put it down. It’s geeky, elegant, flexible and fast. I genuinely cannot see how Apple’s forthcoming iPhone 4s (or iphone 5) can match it….

If any one has any questions about the S2, please feel free to post and I’ll try my best to answer them.

Heard about this over on TwITs Security Now podcast. Also credit to a colleague, who ran a similar post  on this.It is fascinating and scary at the same time. It has recently been revealed that Apple has been storing a history of your geolocation files from your iPhone and or iPad to your computer.

When you sync and backup your iOS device, an SQL database stores several months of geolocation history on your computer. Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden , discovered it and wrote an application for your Mac to overlay the data on a global map. When you launch the app, it runs through a sequential series of dates of where you and you iphone were at any given time.

I am fairly certain there’s nothing sinister going on here – Apple are not using gps coordinates, rather they are drawing data from cellphone masts. Speculation is that it’s just there to test performance of the iPhone. But it is a bit embarrassing for Apple.

It would be a significant problem if your Mac got into the wrong hands. If it was accessed physically or remotely by someone who then ran the app, they would quite easily be able to plot your location.

So out of curiosity I ran the app this morning….here’s what I discovered :

No major surprises here. But it is clear that the app is fairly fuzzy. There are some specific locations where I have never actually been to.

No doubt Apple will be patching this pretty quickly – an explanation would also be nice too.

In the meantime , I’m patiently waiting for my Samsung Galaxy S2 to turn up….Sure it can run Google Latitude – but the difference is that I can turn it off…

Leaving iPhone
It is my plan to shift away from the iPhone. The decision is not for any trendy political reasons. I have no problems with the closed ‘iOS’ model verses the more open Android model. I am just a tech fan, and I happen to think that Android is far more compelling than iOS right now. 

My choice is also primarily about hardware. I have opted for the Samsung Galaxy S2, which on paper knocks the socks off iPhone 4. To name but a few features, a huge 4.3’’ WVGA super AMOLED Plus display, an 8 mega pixel camera, the ability to shoot video in 1080p but more importantly a dual core processor. 

Apps
Another reason for shifting over is thanks to the maturity of Android Market. All the core apps I require are there now;

• Evernote
• Skype
• What’s App
• Twitter
• FourSquare
• SlingPlayer
• TunedIn

I could go on. Even secondary gaming apps such as X-Plane and WeRule are on the platform now.

Music and iTunes
I was initially worried about the hassle of syncing my iTunes music collection with an Android device on my Mac. Not a problem. DoubleTwist, an elegantly designed OSX app does it all for me such as music, video and podcasts. Besides, it is also possible to do this wirelessly over wifi – something iOS is yet to deliver on.

Compromises
I won’t lie. I am making some minor compromises. First up, the hardware eco-system. iPhone accessories are everywhere, from cases through to battery packs. Because of the variety of Android hardware there is less incentive for third party companies to produce accessories.  That said, the Samsung Galaxy will no doubt be a popular model – so I expect some decent choices.

Apple Airplay – as yet Apple have not officially opened this up to Android. At the moment I do lean  on airplay apps heavily such as Apple Remote and TunedIn to stream across my airport express connected speakers. However, it is no major loss – I still have my iPad.

So in conclusion I think there is more to gain from this new venture into Android. I have dabbled before with the HTC Hero – but it was very much early days for Android and it fell short. But I do think I’ve found a winner in the Samsung Galaxy S2. If reports are accurate – it just might be the best Smartphone on the market today.