Category: End User

End User

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Nokia Lumia 920, Windows 8 compared to the Samsung Galaxy S3 when using social media

windows phone 8 screenshotsMy next observation on my play with the Lumia 920 relates to the user interface. It’s a very smooth phone for moving around mechanically. A swipe of the finger take you to another relevant screen – more so than the S3 which feels as if you have to return to the main screen more often.

I use Tweetdeck on the GalaxyS3. Since using the Lumia 920 I’ve grown to realise the things that are particularly good about Tweetdeck.

Tweetdeck lets me easily move between my stream, mentions and DMs and when I read a tweet it shows the conversation trail.

The Nokia Lumia 920 is organised differently and I’ve not found it easy to remember my way around. The tweet stream is shown in “People” but my own tweets and mentions are shown in “Me” which is a completely different tile. I can’t therefore flick easily between them as I can with Tweetdeck.

Tweetdeck doesn’t seem to be supported on Windows 8 yet.

The same me/people split seems to apply for Facebook. The concept is good but the reality is that I personally want to look at all my Twitter stuff in one place and all Facebook in another. Ok so I can just use Twitter directly using the browser. I sometimes have to do this even when I am using Tweetdeck – Tweetdeck doesn’t let me easily see who is following me & who I am following.

Perhaps where I am getting to is that everyone has their own preference for UI and the Lumia 920 / Windows 8 is being constantly relegated to second choice whilst I have the Galaxy S3 as an option.

I’m not giving up though. The Office suite is more important for work that is all this social media stuff and that may be where the Lumia 920 finds it’s niche. It’s probably not where Microsoft and Nokia want it to be though. More in good time…

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End User phones

Nokia Lumia 920 camera compared with Samsung Galaxy S3

snow on railway lines taken with Nokia Lumia 920I’m not going to go into a detailed comparison/review of the Nokia Lumia 920 camera compared with Samsung Galaxy S3 camera but I will share a few observations.

First two photos:

Alex Whitworth taken with Lumia 920Alex Whitworth taken by Galaxy S3

 

 

 

 

 

The one on the left was taken with the Nokia Lumia 920 and the one on the right with the Samsung Galaxy S3. I have no complaints about the photo quality of either camera but you do have to say that they look different. They were both taken at the same time – the Lumia in my left hand and the S3 in my right. I personally think the Galaxy S3 looks more natural.

The  S3 camera definitely has more functionality out of the box. For example panorama mode is an additional app download for the Nokia and the S3 has far more variables that can be modified in its settings. Having said that I guess the Nokia stance is that the simpler the camera, ie the fewer settings you have to play with, the less likely things are to go wrong.

I don’t feel that the increased functionality of the S3 has been detrimental to my photo taking though. The Lumia 920 is a lot faster in bringing up a photo on screen once you have taken the picture. It’s just a sideways swipe of the finger. I’m wondering whether the reaction time of the S3 is because I’ve got a lot more running on it. It’s something I’ve begun to notice recently. Both camera apps  take the same amount of time to fire up which is important because I often find myself wanting to take a quick photo of something – Lancaster bomber flying by etc1.

The header photo is “snow on the line at Newark Northgate train station” taken with the Nokia. You will be relieved to know that this light dusting was not enough to cause railway chaos though it did mean we were slightly late into Kings Cross as the driver was taking a tad more care than he normally would – good to know we were in safe hands. Arrive alive and all that!

Alex Whitworth, the model shown sitting down is one of our excellent product managers. Which photo do you prefer? The people shall have their say!

1 I should point out that I don’t often take photos of low flying Lancaster bombers. I was merely using that situation as an illustration of the kind of scenario that demands quick reaction time with the camera. I could have used a low flying spitfire as an alternative. That of course would have required even faster reaction time being a fighter and therefore designed for speed and agility instead of bomb carrying capacity and range.

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End User phones

A stroll through the Lincolnshire countryside with Nokia Lumia 920 and Samsung Galaxy S3

Drive Carefully Sign at North GreetwellI’m just doing a lot of work with Microsoft Windows 8 at the moment and am running it on the desktop and on the Nokia Lumia 920. It is taking me a while to get into the OS but it is going to be on the menu on trefor.net for the next few weeks.

I am also going to be comparing Windows8 with the Google ecosystem – Chrome and Android. This isn’t one big post or article. It’s a series of bite sized chunks discussing specific aspects. I think this whole subject area is important because I see the business customer base polarising between the two. It might take some time for this to be totally apparent but it is happening.

It’s a cloud versus mobility versus desktop play. Whoever gets the mix right will take the top spot and by definition, money. Apple isn’t in this business centric game other than a boutique player.

Nokia Lumia 920 mapsgoogle maps on Samsung Galaxy S3In playing with Windows Phone 8 (or whatever it is specifically called) – I am using the Nokia Lumia 920. Some of my comments may be specific to Nokia rather than Microsoft but for simplification I am going to assume that they are one and the same.

The first opportunity I had to compare the two was last Saturday when my beloved wife and I decided to go for a stroll through the (bitterly cold) flatlands of Lincolnshire. We settled on a walk to the Cherry Tree Cafe, a renowned purveyor of hot drinks and home made cuisine in Sudbrooke.

To figure out how far it was to walk and how long it would take I used Google Maps. 3.5 miles and one hour five minutes. Perfect. We could get there for a cup of tea, walk back and I would be able to sit down and watch Wales wallop Ireland at the rugby. As a cross check I did the same with the Nokia Lumia 920. The answer I got was a slightly longer 3.6 miles but giving me an elapsed time of one hour thirty seven minutes. Oo I thought.

The walk actually took bang on one hour five minutes – it would have been less had my wife who is a bit of a racing ferret not had me in tow slowing her down.

Now it may be that Nokia assumes a slightly older and less mobile demographic as its main customer base but this isn’t a good start. The error of half an hour represented around 50% delta in actual time taken. Not much use if you rely on a service to plan journey times. That’s all for now.

PS note the header photo was a sign we passed in the village of North Greetwell. It should read North Greetwell, Please drive carefully through our village!

PPS Each phone photo taken with the other – review of cameras to follow soon.

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End User phones

Nokia Lumia920 dead on arrival #Windows8 day

image

I’m having a Windows8 day. This means I’ve backed up my laptop and flattened it to install Windows8 Professional.

I tried installing Windows8 & keeping my files last week. After a whole afternoon in which Windows8 “checked my programs for compatibility”, advised me which ones wouldn’t work or were not supported and then went through a whole rigmarole including several restarts only to find at going home time that the install had failed and the PC was restoring Windows7.

I parked it until today and have gone for the complete reinstall. All in all this took a couple of hours including creating a new Microsoft account. I used to have [email protected] but I haven’t used it for years, lost the password and I think at some stage Microsoft might have locked it. Anyway I now have a new one – surprisingly enough [email protected] was already taken:)

In tandem with all this I started up my new Nokia Lumia 920, fully charged last night and ready to rock and roll. Except it isn’t.  An hour into the setup it stopped working. Dead. No life at all. This isn’t a phone you can take the battery out of and put it back in to see what happens. The battery is not removable. Putting in the charger had no effect. It is an ex phone.

The Nokia Lumia 920 has been sent back whence it came. Not a good start. I have another charging up. This is a shame because I have a feeling that, availability of apps aside, the combination of Windows8 desktop and mobile is going to be good.

There are two other issues to consider. Windows8 is very different to everything I have seen before. It’s going to take a while to learn its foibles. The first feel though is that one the intricacies have been sorted it will be fine but this will be a subject for another post in a week or two.

The other issue is disk space. I backed up my Windows7 laptop to a 2Terabyte hard drive. I had around 60Gigs free on the laptop at the time. Restoring the data from the backup is a problem. I have run out of disk space before the job has been finished. I can’t imagine that Windows 8 is 60GB bigger than Windows 7 so something needs sorting out. At the time of writing I haven’t had time to do this.

I took some photos of the Lumia before sending it back. I’ll need to get them off the phone via Google+ for the moment. That brings me to another point. With this Windows8 setup I want to be an all Microsoft user. This means not using Chrome. I’m not sure whether that will work for me but we shall see. I’ll have to switch to SkyDrive for backups and whatever other “apps” that Microsoft brings to the party. I think it’s going to be a tough week or two getting settled with Windows8.

This is the plan. All stuff relating to [email protected] is going to be just Microsoft and all [email protected] stuff is going to be just Google. I’m waiting for the touchscreen Chromebook to come out but may have to bite the bullet before hand.

When I announced this morning on twitter that today was Windows8 day all I got was sympathy. I have to say that so far the sympathy has been justified but I am going to persevere. The biggest issue for Microsoft is whether the general public will persevere. I guess if all new PCs are shipped with Windows8 then eventually people will have no choice but to run with it. I don’t think it is going to go down too well in the corporate world if my own experience is anything to go by.

Watch this space

 

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End User phones

BlackBerry Z10 smartphone comparison with Samsung Galaxy S3 and iPhone

trefor with blackberry10We have a BlackBerry 10 and have put it through some rudimentary comparisons with the Samsung Galaxy S3 and iPhone 4s1. The iPhone5 may perform differently but I don’t think it hugely matters as the comparisons are not particularly scientific.

Bootup

  • iPhone4s 38seconds
  • BlackBerry10 79 seconds
  • Samsung Galaxy S3 26 seconds

Galaxy S3 wins hands down but reality is that most people keep their phones on 24×7 and the BlackBerry has to perform a handshake with the BlackBerry Enterprise server so it is no wonder it takes longer. This test is therefore probably not hugely relevant but seeing as we had done it I’m not going to waste the info.

At this point the iPhone4s left the room and we continued testing:

Web browsing

BlackBerry10 ZThe BlackBerry10  is supposed to major on speed of web access and this would appear to be the case. We tested the BB10 versus the SGS3 on two websites. Initially we chose a random site europafastenings.co.uk – speciality fasteners and screws – you know it makes sense. Both devices loaded this site in around 6 seconds though there is a lot of room for error in the measurement with this method – clicking on start buttons on timers and also trying to ensure that both of us did it simultaneously on two devices.

We moved on to html5test.com which gave us a reading as to the speed of our web access – at least for html5. For good measure we also threw in Google chrome running on my laptop.

  • BlackBerry10 485
  • Samsung Galaxy S3 390
  • Chrome on Windows7 448

Higher is better here so at first glance, and with only a small set of comparison points BB10 is, as it claims to be, a fast device for accessing tinterweb.

Couple of videos for your delight and delectation. Firstly Timico Engineer Dean Asher talking about his first impressions of the BB10 which are very good.

The second vid is Dean showing off BlackBerry Flow which does seem to have some very nifty features in allowing you to switch between applications.

All in all the BlackBerry10 is likely to be a device that corporate IT managers can give to their staff that won’t make them complain about its functionality. To a large extent it is going to be all about the timely availability of apps. Time will tell whether the BB10 turns around RIM’s fortunes but it looks like it could give them a sporting chance.

1 I couldn’t find an iPhone5 around the office and not being an Apple fan I don’t care if someone comes along whinging saying that the iPhone5 is much better than the iPhone4s. iPhone5 sales are disappointing the markets anyway and it’s no wonder I couldn’t find anyone with one 😉

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End User social networking

twitter follower building strategies

Follow tref on Twitterfwiw I have at the time of writing 2,271 followers and am followedTrefor Davies by 1,388. The reason that I have more followers than I follow is that I only follow back real people with something to say or a business that is in my area of interest where I think I might learn something. I also follow back businesses local to where I live unless their tweets just focus on saying “buy my left handed widget” on a repetitive basis. I’ve blogged all this before so nothing new here for regular readers.

Last week I was sat at my desk trying to upgrade to Widows8 and whilst the machine was doing its stuff I gave our IT guy Jared a driving lesson on Twitter. I had a new follower! Oo 🙂

Looking at this follower I noted that he had 9,000 followers but only followed less than 1,000 himself (actually it wasn’t a he it was a company). This was very suspicious. I could understand if it was a celebrity account. I had never heard of this company before, had no reason to engage with them but they had followed me. I was unlikely that they were particularly interested in me. Their intent was almost certainly for me to follow then back and very likely, having gained a new follower, proceed to unfollow me. That could be the only reason they had a 9:1 ratio of followers to follows.

As an experiment I followed them back and made a note to check on Monday (today) whether they were still following me. Lo and behold, surprise surprise, knock me down with a feather they weren’t.

I have now unfollowed them – there is no reason for me to stay with them because they aren’t interested in me as a person. They just want me to be interested in them. There is something wrong somewhere with that business model. How can a business succeed if it just wants to take and not give anything back.

Anyway that’s my missive for a Monday morning. Gotta go.  Awards entries to write and customer meetings to prepare for.

Ciao

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End User phones

Android, Windows 8 – Windows 8, Android – just like that!

Samsung Windows8 and Android phonesCars always seem to look the same these days don’t they? That’s because they are all designed with optimum aerodynamic efficiency in mind. The result is a bit boring by and large and very challenging for an advertising industry that has to resort to increasingly off the wall ideas to differentiate their client’s product.

The mobile handset industry has to some extent evolved along similar lines. After years of trial and error there are only a few mechanical designs that make sense, notwithstanding the fact that manufacturers keep suing each other for copying their rounded edge or single button.

Here are two Samsung phones. Clearly one is Windows8 and one is Android. The only real differentiation is in the software running on them. The time can’t be so far off when all phones are pretty much the same, probably made in the same factories and with well established software and from a few global players. The applications sets will be pretty much identical on each platform.

All that will be left will be the challenge of how to differentiate one phone from the other – the pitch for cool factor. I was at a meeting yesterday where one presenter was clearly an Apple and Facebook enthusiast. I am not. I don’t trust either organisation. I am a Google and Twitter fan.

There is no real reason why I should trust Google and Twitter any more than Apple and Facebook or even Microsoft for that matter. They are all after my money one way or another.

So that’s it. The future of the mobile phone. I’d like go fast stripes on mine please…

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Apps Cloud End User mobile apps

Windows8 Windows8 Windows8 Windows8 short review


Trefor DaviesHad my first play with Windows 8 yesterday. I now have two family members with the OS and it is going to be unavoidable. There have been some really scathing reviews and this prompted me to take a look myself. I’m not, btw, going to link to any reviews. A search for Windows8 reviews comes up with, wait for it, 1,120,000,000 results!

Because Windows8 is designed particularly for use with a touch screen I took mine home from the office so that we could see it in its best light. With the billions of people giving Windows8 free publicity there is no need to go into any huge detail.

I liked the User Interface although our feeling was that it was definitely better with a touch screen than without.

I noted the ability to use the PC in either online or offline mode. Good I thought. Then I realised that I would have to sign up for a Microsoft account. Hold on a minute!  Then I thought (I’ve clearly been thinking a lot lately) hey, I’ve got a Google account because I use their services, I have a Samsung account because I use their phones. There is no harm in having a Microsoft account if I am using their kit. Having a Microsoft account will let me synch my settings across all my Microsoft devices (current standing count = 1).

This becomes particularly important as to me the business ecosystem looks increasingly likely to be moving to a fight between Microsoft and Google with Apple playing only a peripheral boutique role, just like it always used to be.

For me to say that the world’s biggest company is not going to have much presence on the business desktop sounds somewhat precocious. When you think about it Apples’ phenomenal growth is centred around iPad and iPhone and not their desktop devices.

Aside from in their traditional media luvvy market and the type of geek community that reads this blog an Apple desktop product is not something that the IT department would normally support. For one thing a Mac is a lot more expensive than a laptop/PC using Micrsosoft software (however much we like to whinge about how expensive that software is).

In fact if I’m going to get the best out of Windows8 I really need to be using it at the desktop and on mobile so watch this space. 2013 is shaping up to be the most interesting yet on the technology front. #techtyrekickersrus

PS If you’re wondering about the title of this post I just thought it sounded good – rolls off the tongue.

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End User phones

The mobile OS landscape in 2013 #Android, #iOS,#WindowsPhone8,#Ubuntu,#Mozilla,#Tizen

Trefor DaviesI have yet again looked up and this time noticed new stirrings in the mobile world in 2013. We have the usual Android v iOS battles but there are skirmishes at the outer extremities of the mobile universe that we will be able to watch from the comfort of our armchairs and 24×7 media coverage.

First of all the fight for the number 3 mobile OS position. We have all been watching with interest to see if Microsoft can get anywhere. They have spent a lot of money on Windows Phone 8. I have typically poopooed1 Microsoft’s chances especially as there seem to have been a lot of negative reviews for Windows 8 at the desktop. However the Davies family is currently testing Windows 8 on a laptop at home and the first reports are very positive. If further analysis supports this diagnosis then the prognosis could be quite rosy. Microsoft would have to work very hard to get beyond #3 but they have the stamina to play a long game.

Next up is RIM. I have long since written off RIM but I have heard nothing but good about the BlackBerry10 and I actually get to lay my hands on one next week in advance of the launch. This comes with reams of pages of NDA but hands I will indeed lay on (it). The stakes for RIM are massive. Whilst Microsoft has many irons in the fire RIM’s shirt only has BlackBerry written on it and it is very much on the table.

Then we have the new kids on the block. You might think that the block ain’t big enough to accommodate a new kid but these kids come with some attitude2. There’s the Ubuntu for mobile due, we hear in 2014. Building upon an Android base, if Ubuntu for mobile gets attention from the global open source community it could become a real force to be recognised.

Mozilla have announced their intention to move into the mobile OS space with a pitch for standardisation and true portability of apps without being locked in. Then there’s Samsung’s Linux based Tizen. Samsung, if you believe the word on the web, is looking to reduce its reliance on Google and has become a Platinum member of the Linux Foundation with a bung of $500k.

All in all it is going to make for an interesting couple of years ahead. In my mind I was thinking consolidation of the mobile OS market but this is pointing at fragmentation. Whether the new contenders get anywhere beyond throwing the occasional punch remains to be seen but we will all have ringside seats for the big fight3.

That’s all for now. Have a great weekend 🙂 I’ll let you know how we get on with BlackBerry10 and Windows 8. TTFN.

1 doesn’t really look like a word when you see it in print does it but I couldn’t be bothered to think of an alternative and it is in general use.

2 I’m sorry this language is getting even more flowery than normal but it is 4.30 on a Friday afternoon and the chances of anyone reading it are rapidly reducing

3 OK that’s it I promise. I’m off.

PS My New Years resolution is henceforth to not use so many cliches in posts in 2013.

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Cloud End User phones

External SD card or no external SD card – Google Nexus4

Trefor DaviesJust scanned through a review of the Google Nexus 4 Android handset in the Grauniad. One of the things that caught my attention was the decision to not support an external SD card. Apple has lead the way with doing away with SD cards on the basis that they wanted everyone to do everything through the cloud.

The argument for a removable drive is that you can easily move data on and off the handset. My Galaxy S3 does support an external (micro) SD card but I have to say the only time I ever remove it is when I change handsets which, repair jobs aside, is less frequent than once a year.

Proponents of removable storage also remind us that we are using more and more space for photos and games. The former is certainly true for me but my needs would be accommodated with a large enough internal storage in the first place. What currently happens is that I run out of space on the phone (say) and have to adjust the settings to save media to the SD card which is a manual step that should be unnecessary.

All my pics are automatically backed up the the cloud using Instant Upload over WiFi. Once Instant Upload has done its stuff I then also shift them off the phone via USB to my laptop and once a month (ish) back up to one or two external hard drives. I’m not sure I’ll ever rely totally on the cloud for the backup.

So on balance I agree that we no longer need to support external SD cards as long as the phone itself has a suitably large capacity in the first place which, considering the low cost of memory, should not be difficult. Any growth in storage usage is likely to be down to a change in habits that accompany the use of a new handset so I can’t see that running out of space should be a problem – just make sure you have enough from the off.

Whaddaya think?