The Mobile Web Tablet

Been trying out the new Opera Mini beta on my Sony Ericsson M600 today. This is version 4 of the extremely popular java-based (downloadable) web browser for mobile phones.

My first impression was: oh, no, they made the GUI too slow and cumbersome. The clean simplicity of the first versions seemed to be gone. But as I’ve started to use it I got more comfortable with it and I’m beginning to really like it.

The biggest change is that pages are now showed full size (sort of). You navigate around the screen by moving a rectangle over the page. By clicking the square you zoom in to the page and can read it on a tiny mobile phone screen. On an M600 with a pointing device (and fairly large screen) this works really well. Haven’t tried it on a phone without touch screen yet.

Page rendering is also much better than previous versions. Bloglines (the RSS-reader) and Google Mail both worked and Google Calendar seems to have a mobile friendly style sheet which formated the calendar to fit perfectly in to my device.

Bloglines is noteworthy because it uses frames. It has two frames, with the RSS feeds on the left and the posted items on the right. Opera Mini renders the left frame by itself and when I click a link it changes to the right frame. Smooth!

Seems to be a bug in the bookmark manager (the data for the page I was on when clicking “add bookmark” is not filled in to the bookmark manager) but other than that it seems stable.

The Sony Ericsson M600 together with Opera Mini, Google Maps Mobile and Gmail App is a very capable little web tablet. The same applications run on most modern mobile phones – and they’re free. A mobile web tablet experience is only a few joystick clicks away. Download them all! I promise, you won’t look at your phone the same way again.

Updated: major issue: cookies doesn’t work. Oh well, it’s beta…

Popularity: 4% [?]

David Beers runs the blog Software Everywhere and has some really interesting thoughts on the Palm Foleo:

For Hawkins, it’s the smartphone that is the new PC. The Foleo is just the piece that completes the vision.

It’s a long post but well worth the read if you’re interested in the next big paradigm for computing in a post-PC, post-internet, post-mobile world.

I agree with what he writes. There’s something happening in the “black hole” of the market between the laptop and the mobile phone: 5 to 10 inch displays, sub $1000 price (even $500) and full connectivity options.

It’s an extremely interesting battle ground because the winner might very well end up with both sides of the hole under their control.

If, for example, Microsoft and Intel manages to squeeze Windows and x86 into 5 inch notebooks that are fuel cell driven, flash card in stead of hard drive and instant on/off then what we have is the smartphone platform of the future. Bye bye, Symbian.

If, on the other hand, Nokia, Motorola and SEMC manage to upscale their mobile phones to full keyboards and larger screens, then why do I need to buy a Windows laptop?

Definitely an opportunity for new players to take a place. Palm is doing the right thing. It’s a gamble though, but what choice do they have?

Anyway, it’s fun to follow what happens. Can’t wait to get my hands on one of those Foleos.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Two observations that point in the same direction: the OS of your mobile doesn’t matter. It’s the internet compatibility that makes all the difference. First an old post by Nokia Linux web tablet product manager Ari Jaaksi:

“Today, we run Linux, X, Gnome, Flash, and friends on Nokia N800. Our big idea form the start was to run –as closely as possible– a desktop Linux stack. Others will start to do the same and I predict that mobile software will thus eventually die. All we need is software that runs everywhere.”

Then we have the announcement from Apple about how third party applications will be basically mobile widgets running AJAX. Thomas Bailey comments:

“I speculate that the other announcement of Safari coming to Windows and apparent lack of an iPhone SDK may be loosely related – notepad and a browser is all that is required once you move away from using table spaghetti for layout and design. In providing a web runtime which closely reflects the phone and making it available on Windows, a much larger potential developer base can be leveraged – could Safari be the SDK when used in conjunction with an “iPhone profile” ?“

Bailey (and Apple) is on to something here. There will be an application platform that bridges the PC world and the mobile world and a significant part of that platform will be the internet. The question is who will drive this platform? Can many different platforms co-exist? If Apple is to be truly successful, I would have to be able to run their iPhone mobile widgets on other devices as well. The iPhone might be a huge hit, but it will not be that big. So, when will we see the APIs available to javascript on an iPhone publically available and ported to other devices?

Popularity: 7% [?]

Mike Kellett speaks about a new Unify Mobile Platform that so to speak hides the operator from a GSM-phone by creating a virtual GSM network. Quite interesting and worth following.

UM will unify the world’s existing, confused, global GSM bilateral agreements into one seamless and converged network. With One feel, one tariff,unlimited identities and one handset, users will be able cross borders and move transparently into GSM micro-cells.

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I’m at the Von Europe listening to presentations on fixed mobile convergence (FMC). Current topic is “quad-play”, the new holy grail for operators. Quad-play is what you get when you combine TV, fixed phone, mobile phone and broadband access in one package.

In my world that translates to “internet, internet, wireless internet and – you guessed it – internet”. Voice and TV will be applications running on top of internet. What I need from my operator is a fast and stable IP connection. No more, no less. We’re not there quite yet, though, so in the mean time we will have to pay for different data transportation technologies for different mediums.

FMC is also a way for operators to prevent their customers from switching provider. The more you buy from one vendor, the less likely you are to change.

FMC is not Mobile 2.0. Internet Mobile Convergence is. The telecom world thinks that IMS (as in IP Multimedia System) will provide this bridge. Some other thinks that IMS is a bloated, over designed and unnecessary technology. I think the latter ones are correct.

Never the less, different technology worlds and markets are converging. Internet is the driver and quad-play is a temporary transition stage. No matter what the operators tell you.

Updated: Nicolai was also there.

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Java will be (is) one of the core platforms for mobile applications. MIDP2/CLDC is the current flavor of Java and has been around for a few years but it’s rather restricted. Even though Mobile Service Architecture, JSR 248, will bring more power to the platform in the form of new APIs, there are still fundamental issues that must be resolved. One of those issues is the poor UI-libraries in MIDP2.

The UI library in MIDP2 is basically designed for the lowest common denominator of devices that can run MIDP2. They are very simple (with the possible exception of the powerful CustomItem) and there’s not that many GUI components available for a developer. Add to that the fact that different manufacturers have implemented the library in different ways making it almost impossible to create a MIDP2 application based on the UI libraries in MIDP with a consistent behavior between the devices on the market.

No wonder all of the most successful java applications are written using an empty canvas with home made GUI components on top. That’s also the reason we see great new SDKs and UI libraries such as TWUIK to save developers the effort of writing their own UI classes.

There are a few initiatives on the way to remedy the situation. The successor to MIDP2 is MIDP3 (duh), there’s the Advanced Graphics and UI Optional Package (AGUI, though any API with the word “Advanced” in them should be avoided, the same goes for “Optional”) and there’s the open sourced, Eclipse-based eSWT, one of the components of ERCP.

Now, one should be aware of the fact that the MIDP3 API and the AGUI API are both defined by the Java Community Process (JCP). eSWT, on the other hand, is not. It is an open sourced community effort including IBM and Nokia. Sony Ericsson has always been committed to the JCP, so the silent announcement on the eSWT mailing list is noteworthy for more reasons than one. Gorkem Ercan writes:

Yesterday, we have received the first welcome mail to dsdp-ercp-dev list from SonyEricsson. They are now working to get eSWT to their mobile phones. Moreover, they have started to participate in the project as well.

The path mobile Java takes will have huge consequences for how the mobile web will look in a few years. Remember, this is an application platform that’s already in over a billion mobile devices. Unfortunately it’s a far from optimal ecosystem, making it difficult to distribute applications. There’s just so much creativity waiting to be unleashed the moment this ecosystem becomes more fertile. We will see an explosion of innovation that will mirror how the PC industry boomed during the 80s and the internet during the 90s.

The big difference is that, even though the PC became popular in the 80s, the mobile phone count is approaching 3 billion. This number will make the PC boom of the 80s look like a firecracker next to an atomic bomb. (There were ~48 million IMB/PCs sold during the 80s – the entire decade. That many phones are sold in about 2.5 weeks world wide, assuming a number of ~1 billion/year.)

So, watch history unfold and keep your eyes on where mobile Java is going. MIDP2/CLDC is sort of like MS-DOS was for the IBM/PC. We’re still waiting for Windows to come along. When that happens, the telecom market will be changed forever. The announcement by Sony Ericsson is a small but significant piece of the puzzle in what will become the mobile web framework of the future.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Now I get it. Portfolio, Palm-Foleo. Port, palm. Foleo.

Clever.

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Can you guess who owns the laptop with the stickers? All of them were speakers at Reboot 9.0.

A:

B:

C:

Popularity: 3% [?]