When I first saw the antenna band completely surrounding the iPhone 4 during Steve Jobs’ initial presentation, I recalled a comment made to me by RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaradis after a RIM Annual General meeting a few years ago. And I should also mention that I personally have a history of dealing with rf and associated antennae during my days working as a physicist in the Magnetic Resonance (“MR”) research and commercial space where all MR spectrometers and imaging systems are embedded with what amounts to enclosed radio stations operating in the FM radio and conventional television channel frequency ranges.

So I was skeptical about how that iPhone 4 antenna would work from the time of the initial announcement. And when fellow blogger and Twitter aficionado Luca Filigheddu took a poll earlier this week as to whether one would prefer a BlackBerry 9800 (the model that’s heavily speculated but not yet announced) or an iPhone 4 I could not resist the opportunity to  respond as shown above.

Three points:

• Mike’s comment when he saw me holding a BlackBerry 8700 a few years ago with my hand wrapped around the upper left corner was to the effect that I should avoid having my hand around that area as that is where the rf antennae are located. But it’s pretty easy to hold your BlackBerry while avoiding one corner of the device. Yesterday to check out the “Jobs test” I took up the “death grip” challenge presented by CrackBerry.com’s Kevin Michaluk and found “if I death grip my Bold 9700 the bars stay no matter what”. Seems like the rf engineering has improved going from the 8700 to 9700.
• From the rf physics point of view: Mike spent a lot of time at last year’s annual shareholders meeting (2009) talking about how RIM relies on internal basic physics research to assist in the design of BlackBerries, including an extensive discussion about their rf technology research. He is, after all, the energizer around the establishment of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics; while its researchers are free to pursue whatever research they see appropriate this investment is probably not totally altruism when it comes to understanding the physics behind wireless smartphones.
• In my fifteen years’ experience with Magnetic Resonance instrumentation, perhaps the most frustrating aspect was to get the rf engineering right. You can get there (or we would not have the high quality images we see with today’s MRI studies) but you need to understand the physics behind it and have lots of patience.

After drafting the above commentary yesterday afternoon very late Friday CrackBerry.com put out a rather strongly worded statement from RIM co-CEO’s Jim Ballsille and Mike Lazaradis:

“Apple’s attempt to draw RIM into Apple’s self-made debacle is unacceptable. Apple’s claims about RIM products appear to be deliberate attempts to distort the public’s understanding of an antenna design issue and to deflect attention from Apple’s difficult situation. RIM is a global leader in antenna design and has been successfully designing industry-leading wireless data products with efficient and effective radio performance for over 20 years. During that time, RIM has avoided designs like the one Apple used in the iPhone 4 and instead has used innovative designs which reduce the risk for dropped calls, especially in areas of lower coverage. One thing is for certain, RIM’s customers don’t need to use a case for their BlackBerry smartphone to maintain proper connectivity. Apple clearly made certain design decisions and it should take responsibility for these decisions rather than trying to draw RIM and others into a situation that relates specifically to Apple.” [Author's bold]

Bottom line: Steve Jobs may be a marketing genius but he ain’t no rf engineer or Ph.D. physicist. It’s all coming out in the iPhone 4. But even his marketing genius is degraded when he endeavors to justify the iPhone 4’s current problem by attempting to demonstrate rf issues with competitor products. “Bumper physics” does not solve the problem; not to ignore the resulting degradation of the overall appearance. It’s time for Apple to do their own antenna research, Steve.

Once iPhone 4 is finally available in Canada I don’t know that I’ll be rushing out for any special upgrade offer Rogers may come up with. And by then, maybe we’ll be seeing some new BlackBerry models, including those that are the subject of speculation.

P.S. –“Sans” – the French expression for “without”.

Full disclosure: Both Kevin Michaluk and I are on Rogers for our wireless carrier which offers a highly reliable 3G/HSPA+ service. Is there also an AT&T infrastructure issue involved here? We’ll only find out when iPhone 4 launches in Canada July 30. For completeness, the author has been the owner of a minuscule number of RIM shares since 1998.

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The past six months, with three trips to Europe, have given me the opportunity not only to experience roaming on European 3G wireless services but also the strategies and alternatives that allow me to minimize roaming charges while traveling with both a BlackBerry and iPhone. A key to the achieving this goal lies in the support available for WiFi access points in hotels, restaurants, airports and at conferences that provide robust, scalable WiFi support. But the question outstanding is why would I use both devices? The answer lies in the applications and content.

While one can theorize academically about various low cost scenarios and one attempts to use WiFi wherever feasible, in actual travel, you need access to some form of wireless service wherever you may be. For instance, if lost in a city where you don’t speak the language, Google Maps can often help get you sorted out quickly. Or find the nearest restaurant district (was a big help in Paris, for instance). But you need wireless carrier access to use these services.

So what measures can I recommend?

First step: buy an International roaming package from the home wireless carrier. Over the summer Rogers introduced European roaming packages; here’s the comparison:

The good news about these packages is that the per MB and per minute charges remain the same for any overage over the minimum expenditures. The bad news is that roaming charges are still “huge” compared to the $0.03/MB or approximately $0.10 per minute paid when on my home Rogers network. U.S.-based users should check with their “home” carriers to see if similar plans are available. Rule of thumb and current reality, however: roaming charges remain the last ultra-high margin service for wireless carriers.

So, while relatively expensive, these packages are helpful when away from a WiFi access point; however, as mentioned above, the real saving comes when you set up for using WiFi wherever possible. (In addition I encountered a couple of situations where 3G coverage was weak or non-existent; in these cases access to WiFi became essential.)

Second step: ensure you have installed both Skype and Truphone on your iPhone; you can then make voice calls from WiFi access points at prevailing Skype or Truphone rates. For instance, Skype-to-Skype calls are free while SkypeOut calls are based on using either a Skype Calling Plan subscription or Skype credits.

Third step: buy, at a minimum, a Boingo Global Mobile plan; while WiFi in hotels and restaurants is usually free or has a daily charge, Boingo Global Mobile provides access in over 70 countries at airports and often at hotels where, otherwise, you would pay a daily fee that is usually more than Boingo Global Mobile’s monthly charge.

Fourth step: put the iPhone in Airplane mode but with WiFi access turned on. In this way, no voice calls are received via a wireless carrier; also the iPhone specifically requires proactive user permission to roam on data – leave this turned off. But the iPhone applications, including Skype and Truphone, can all be used when attached to a WiFi access point. (Note: I do not give out my iPhone voice number but do use it for various tests; Google Voice is not yet available in Canada to provide multi-smartphone calling.)

So here is where I use each device:

BlackBerry Bold 9000: email (both BlackBerry email and GMail), BlackBerry Messenger 5.0, Google Maps, SocialScope – still the most comprehensive Twitter application on a smartphone; SlingPlayer Mobile for BlackBerry. Keep in mind that BlackBerry is overall more efficient for handling data due to the data compression provided by the BlackBerry Network Operations Centre architecture for managing data traffic. This ongoing wireless data compression feature is a major reason why I prefer BlackBerry for services such as Google Maps or downloading/uploading pictures in SocialScope as opposed to the iPhone when on a 3G wireless carrier network.

iPhone: main application is Skype, followed by Truphone. Very handy for making calls back to North America from hotel rooms or lobbies, restaurants as well as offices and conferences supported with WiFi access. (But you must have the relevant application open to receive calls and receive/send chat messages.) Other preferred applications include the Safari web browser (faster and more versatile than BlackBerry’s) and Facebook (which has a richer user experience than on BlackBerry) and a few applications that are unique to iPhone. Also comes in handy if the BlackBerry battery has died and I need immediate access to, say, GMail or a browser.

Bottom line: the feature that continues to dominate my preference for BlackBerry over iPhone is the keyboard; it’s a real time two-way communications device whereas the iPhone, with its superior browser capability, continues to be an information delivery device but works best for one way communication. My use of its touch screen keyboard tends to be limited to entering user names and passwords.

A few comments:

• There’s one major application missing on the BlackBerry – with its full multi-tasking capability the BlackBerry is ideally suited for Skype as a VoIP client. One can have real time chat sessions continue in background while using other applications; we experienced this with iSkoot but at this point one would expect to have seen the Skype for BlackBerry that was announced by Skype around the time of last spring’s launch of Skype for iPhone. And now that Skype for Symbian beta supports both 3G and WiFi and the FCC is supporting for “net neutrality”, the “carrier-support” argument for avoiding VoIP clients over WiFi on the BlackBerry no longer holds water. In fact, Rogers has made it clear that they have no issue with running Skype over 3G networks. Let’s hope that Skype and RIM can get the act together such that we can see a product introduction early in 2010.
• On my most recent trip I only bought the 15 minute voice package; with BlackBerry Messenger and SocialScope (for Twitter) available I found little need to make voice calls while in 3G only mode. Skype on my PC at hotel rooms and conferences as well as Skype and Truphone over iPhone addressed 95% of my voice calling needs. (Now, if I could just learn how to order a taxi in Spanish!)
• I realize most smartphone users will only have one phone. I present this post simply to provide an overview of my experience using both these devices while optimizing my roaming experience when traveling out of the home country. I need to have both devices due to not only their popularity but also the different content exchanged and user experiences for each smartphone.

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Two announcements yesterday, when meshed together, create the setting for Skype to become, de facto, the ‘”unofficial” personal communications software provider for the 2010 Winter Olympics at Vancouver and Whistler, B.C. next February:

Skype President Josh Silverman today posted: “Good Move AT&T”:

Since launching our iPhone application six months ago, people have downloaded and installed Skype on 10% of all iPhone and iPod touch devices sold – making it clear that people are extremely interested in taking Skype conversations with them on the go.

All of us at Skype applaud today’s announcement by AT&T (in an FCC filing to be published shortly – update, it’s here in PDF format) that it’ll open up its 3G network to Internet calling applications such as Skype. It’s the right step for AT&T, Apple, millions of mobile Skype users and the Internet itself.

Bell Canada’s Mobility service and Telus yesterday announced both the launch of their new joint-venture HSPA+ network across Canada next month and their agreement to be selling Apple’s iPhone amongst other 3G/GSM phones such as Nokia’s line. In fact, as shown on the right, the existence of the new network, with the identifier “302880”, can already be detected via the iPhone’s Carrier settings .

The implications of this announcement:

• Bell Mobility and Telus expect their HSPA+ network to completely replace their current CDMA/EV-DO network within five years.
• Bell Mobility and Telus will be providing direct competition to Rogers who, to date, has been the sole GSM carrier in Canada and will be able to offer a full range of 3G GSM phones – not only the iPhone but also Nokia’s GSM-exclusive line of phones.
• As a benefit of their current monopoly Rogers has also been the only carrier offering Apple’s iPhone since its Canadian launch in July, 2008. Canada now becomes one of the few countries with multiple carriers offering the iPhone.
• As another benefit of their GSM monopoly Rogers has been the sole network available for roaming by visitors from outside the U.S. and Canada as well as AT&T and T-Mobile customers from the U.S. Since athletes and visitors coming to the Vancouver Olympics from outside North America will have GSM phones, Bell Mobility and Telus will now be able to draw away from Rogers a significant portion of the roaming business that otherwise would have accrued by default to Rogers.
• Bell Canada is the “official” communications carrier for the 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympics. Bell Mobility has built out their new HSPA+ network from the Telus network connection in Vancouver along the Sea-to-Sky highway to Whistler, site of the alpine and cross-country skiing events as well as bobsleigh, luge and skeleton “sliding” races.
• Additional communications capacity between Vancouver and Whistler has been built by Bell Canada for Internet communications, the 35 to 40 Mbps voice and data backhaul required for each of the wireless towers and the HD 5.1 surround sound television coverage that will include all events. No doubt a lot of fibre has been installed as BC Highways rebuilt the Sea to Sky Highway over the past few years to meet the Olympics’ inherent demands both additional vehicle capacity and enhanced safety. Being the “official” carrier this will benefit Bell Canada’s revenue stream also.

This raises the question of whether an HSPA-only service can run on the iPhone or BlackBerry Bold both of which currently only support 3G. The answer is Yes; HSPA will support 3G devices.

However, an HSPA+ network can only fall back to a 3G network capability when full HSPA capability is not supported by a device. But the iPhone and BlackBerry Bold also support 2G/EDGE networks.

As a result should a Bell Mobility or Telus customer leave an HSPA+ coverage area, there is no EDGE available for fall back when outside these areas. For example,when we drive the freeway from Toronto to Ottawa, we see EDGE for most of the trip except near Toronto, Kingston and Ottawa where Rogers 3G coverage exists. Either Bell and Telus will require roaming agreements with Rogers to provide non-urban service or they will not be able to offer as complete coverage to their customers.

Of course, those landlines will be able to support Skype on laptop PC’s using Ethernet or WiFi connections. But combining the two announcements along with Skype for iPhone’s recent availability in Canada, can Skype become the overall de facto “unofficial” personal communications software provider for the 2010 Olympics? Questions to be answered:

• Will Skype release a version of Skype for iPhone that supports both WiFi and 3G as the underlying wireless protocols prior to the Olympics?
• Will Skype finally release Skype for BlackBerry? (to address Phil’s desire for Skype on a multi-tasking smartphone)
• Will we see execution on Skype’s agreement with Nokia?
• Will the various communications and “Internet cafe” rooms for athletes and press be equipped with enough power sources to keep the various smartphones charged conveniently?
• Will Bell Canada have the same policy re Net Neutrality as Rogers who has publicly stated their primary business in providing Internet access and not managing applications or specific customer uses?
• Has Bell Canada signed the appropriate international roaming agreements with carriers around the world?

Certainly it’s within the realm of current technology to support Skype over wireless networks, whether WiFi or wireless carrier. Bell Canada touts their 2010 Olympics commitment as being “The first all-IP Olympics”. The question that remain:

• To what extent will the Skype ecosystem actually be able to execute on, and take full advantage of, this underlying IP-based communications infrastructure?
• Will Skype’s popularity, ease-of-use and combined voice/chat/video feature set make it the de facto “unofficial” voice, chat and video personal communications software provider for the 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympics?

Call it Skype Everywhere by Stealth…. but can Skype execute on the challenge?

Disclaimer: Bell Canada, including its Bell Mobility wireless business unit, is the official communications services provider for the 2010 Winter Olympics. Skype is a software application, with over 500 million registered accounts worldwide, that uses these communications services for the purpose of voice, instant messaging and video conversations; however, Skype is in no way affiliated with, or endorsed, by the 2010 Winter Olympics Committee.

Full disclosure: For over thirty-five years the author has personally observed the growth of Whistler from a small and remote “boutique” ski area with one tragically slow 4-person per cabin gondola lift and a few double chairlifts into North America’s number one rated ski resort covering two mountains and capped off last year by the opening of a 4.4km peak-to-peak gondola that takes riders as high 436m above the valley floor. Concurrently the Sea-to-Sky highway has grown from a twisty, up-and-down adventure (and risky) roadway with some sections on wooden platforms on stilts anchored to rock walls over canyons to a safe multi-lane, yet still scenic, roadway. (I still consider it one of Canada’s most scenic highways.)

• A fully redundant fibre-optic network between Vancouver and Whistler to support essential broadcast traffic. Bell has successfully laid fibre to the front door of every major Olympics and Paralympics venue, and will ultimately connect all of the 130 competition and non-competition venues to our dedicated Olympics network
• Bell’s fibre-optic network will provide all voice, data and broadcast services for fans, media, athletes and officials from around the world, and will be the backbone that enables all Olympics and Paralympics connectivity. This includes 400,000 private radio calls, 10,416 hours of dedicated TV broadcast coverage to more than three billion viewers, timing and scoring results delivered in the blink of an eye, and more
• The highest level of reliability and redundancy and the most up-to-date technology for the full range of Olympics telecommunications services, including voice, data, broadcast video and audio, wireless PCS and private radio
• Provision of all hardware, cabling, logistics and support staff
• An unprecedented level of support to the Rights Holding Broadcasters, in particular the Broadcasting Service for the Olympic Games
• Internet portal services enabling an interactive, multilingual window to Canada and the world
• The first all-IP Olympic Games
• All built to minimize environmental impact by co-locating equipment to minimize footprint, coordinating construction schedules to reduce waste and using IP-based technology to dramatically reduce cabling and infrastructure needs

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Over the past two months you may have noticed that my blogging activity has not had the usual frequency of at least one post every day or two. And during the past three weeks it really amounted to reporting on the launch of client In Store Solutions’ FREETALK Everyman headset. Have I lost interest in other activity in the IP-based communications space? Not really, there are times that mother nature issues disruptive  challenges and I have had more than my share of them over the past month.

About four weeks ago I came home in the late afternoon from an event only to hear the drip, drip, drip of water on a document on a table beside my desktop PC. Looked up to find a massive water stain in the ceiling of my office. Needless to say, I had to remove all the contents along that side of my office before the ceiling crashed in on my desktop PC and other contents related to my business activity. Within a day I was learning about “restoration” services companies; three huge blowers and a dehumidifier spent three days in my office drying out the drywall. As shown a section of the ceiling could not be saved. A pinhole leak had developed in the solder at an elbow joint after 25 years of holding the pressure (the office is under two bathrooms with lots of plumbing in the ceiling). Last week contractors were here for four days stripping wallpaper, patching the ceiling and painting the walls. Hopefully I should have all my office items restored (or sent to the garbage) within the next couple of days. And the best news: the expense was fully covered by insurance.

But just to complicate life – and, in the process, give me some material for comparing servicing of landline phone services – our return home from a five day trip a week ago Saturday night resulted in finding the security alarm operating when it should not have, both my Bell Canada business phone lines and my Rogers Home Phone line dead and no cable Internet connection operating. (It did not help that my iPhone battery died two minutes into my first service call to the alarm company with the alarm’s piercing sound probably doing infinite damage to my hearing; my BlackBerry Bold finally came to the rescue in calling the various services technical support operations.)

To cut to the chase, my home had been hit by a surge resulting from a very violent electrical storm (that included a couple of much more damaging tornados within 10 km) a week ago Thursday evening. I later found the need to replace a central vac electronic relay board, repair a garage door opener and replace a light timer. It took six days to get these services all restored with visits by various service personnel or to service operations. But I’ll also be publishing a story as to how infrastructure-associated servicing costs may kill Bell Canada’s PSTN operations. And I have to thank my ex-Bell Canada engineer neighbour for sorting out internal phone wiring issues.

Points to note:

1. In spite of having an APC UPS with surge protection for my Internet cable modem, router, 5-port switch and another device to be introduced later this week, only the WRT54GS wireless 4-port router survived.
2. On Sunday I obtained a new cable Internet modem at a Rogers store; as a result for the next three days, Skype was my only landline service available until the Home Phone service person arrived. And, more ironically, during the same period, Skype was the only service available to use on my dual mode (PSTN/Skype) Philips VoIP841 cordless phones. I still had e911 service available via my BlackBerry and iPhone.

Bottom line: now that my office has been restored and reorganized and my services are mostly restored, it’s time to get back to blogging regularly. So I have set a goal for this week to publish one post per day not only to discuss some news announcements and product reviews but also to comment on some industry issues that have arisen recently.

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On a recent trip to Spain, where I turned off my BlackBerry Bold’s and iPhone’s  mobile carrier network connection except when really required, I was able to use WiFi connections at my various hotels quite effectively to keep up with my “data” activities on these devices. (Except in a situation mentioned below I used Skype on my PC for voice calls.) But there were two situations I encountered during this trip which really hit home the message that WiFi is becoming as important as mobile carrier offerings for wireless smartphone communications:

• In one instance, two Canadians, who had stealthed Skype for iPhone onto their iPhones, used a Spanish hotel’s WiFi service to make Skype voice calls between each other, almost as if their iPhones were “walkie-talkies” while on the hotel’s grounds. No roaming charges for these calls.
• In another case, I spent one night in a hotel room, in a recently renovated 8th century building, that had no landline. But it had a WiFi service available; I used Truphone on my iPhone to make a couple of voice calls. (The price of staying “legal” in Canada is not to have Skype for iPhone installed.)

The trip, combined with my WiFi experience during a March vacation trip to South Carolina, significantly reinforced my belief that WiFi is becoming the potential “stealth” carrier in the smartphone communications business. But what does that portend for the future?

Friend Andy Abramson, in a post Rumored New Apple iPod Touch Will Be Huge for VoIP, Multimedia, has pointed to the rumors of a new iPod Touch that will include a camera, a built-in microphone and 64GB of memory:

This is awesome news for the likes of Skype and client Truphone and will likely start a flood of “me too” applications from the likes of Cablevision who operates a WiFi hot zone in the New York area, Clearwire and Comcast who are chasing customers in the Portland area with WiMax and elsewhere as the WiFi capability of the iPod touch means its a mobile phone without the mobile phone bill and contract connected to it, something Jeff Belk, the former Senior VP of Strategy at Qualcomm discussed in Unstrung in February of this year.

And where does he see the disruptive uptake?

…. Within two key categories:

1) Pre-teens who need a phone but can’t afford a contract

2) Travelers who don’t need to be “always on” but want to stay in touch cost effectively.

Who benefits from this? Anyone with a travel router to sell, including Apple. Toss a travel router in your bag, and stay in a hotel with wired broadband to your room, and logging on is a snap.

As pointed out in the introduction to this post, I think I was already well into Andy’s category 2 during my Spain trip. Alec Saunders, in Will the new iPod Touch unleash VoWiFi? I’ll wait and see, sees WiFi as a “backup” to 3G network but pipes into the road warrior discussion with:

Travelling, however, is a different story.  As Andy notes, you can talk for free on WiFi when you’re travelling, versus whatever the outrageous roaming rate that your carrier might charge.  Savvy travelers use products like Truphone and Skype to avoid roaming charges.

Bottom line: users will continue to look for the combination of access and cost that serves their immediate need. While in Canada, I never run over 1GB of data on my BlackBerry Bold and have a reasonable cost voice subscription for voice calls; thus my mobile carrier costs are not a particular concern. But when I leave Canada, I will look to use any wireless service that avoids the last bastion of excessively high mobile calling costs: roaming charges.

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This evening I had a conflict: I needed to meet up with a neighbor while walking my dog but wanted to watch a key hockey game via my NHL Center Ice cable subscription. Why? Another neighbor’s son is a leading player on a team that is surprisingly making a run for a playoff position. Fortunately SlingMedia last week released the first “gold” version of SlingPlayer Mobile for BlackBerry. I was able to watch the final period of the game while walking the dog (Blues won!). And this is currently only uniquely available on a BlackBerry Bold since it requires access to a 3G network when not in a WiFi access point’s zone.

While I reviewed it previously during my beta testing activity, SlingPlayer Mobile for BlackBerry is now delivering a high quality, reliable performance with improvements made in reception stability and adapting to commands accessed by pushing buttons on the cable box’s virtual remote control included with Sling Player Mobile for BlackBerry. Key improvements over the past three months of beta testing include:

• Ability to add/ edit Slingboxes and Channel Favorites directly on SlingPlayer Mobile, not just via SlingPlayer 2.0 for Windows, which in the past was then propagated down to the BlackBerry
• Additional setting to optimize low bandwidth streaming
• Additional convenience features, e.g. current connection type indicator, volume level indicator, keypad lock, in addition to general UI improvement
• Enhanced aspect ratio/ display mode support
• Audio track selection if available as part of the channel program

Some of the features I have come to appreciate include:

• ability to see whether you a re on a WiFi or 3G wireless connection (Bold only)
• volume level indicator
• access to your SlingBox account allows easy access to your various SlingBoxes without the need to enter all SlingBox parameters
• access to the “Favorites” menus that can be setup on a PC or Mac.
• use of the SYM key to switch between viewing “connection mode (WiFi or 3G)”, battery level and volume level indicators
• ability to schedule recording of programs on my cable boxe’s DVR player
• “Listen” mode: listen to the audio without video; ideal when driving – safer and reduces battery drain

The best test of quality is following the high speed action of a hockey game; there is no pixelation or other display break up other than when changing channels or pulling up information such as the digital cable guide or channel information bar.

SlingPlayer Mobile for BlackBerry works over a 3G connection on the BlackBerry Bold or over a WiFi connection on any 8×20 BlackBerry, 8900 BlackBerry Curve or the Bold. SlingMedia has said they are investigating support for the Storm; also they announced at CES 2009 that SlingPlayer Mobile for iPhone will be released later this week.

SlingPlayer Mobile for BlackBerry continues to be one of the best demonstrations of the power of the BlackBerry Bold, requiring optimum performance from the processor, display and network connection. And when you get totally absorbed in a music production carried over, say, an HD Net concert, you also get to experience the excellent stereo audio quality of the Bold.

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Towards the end of February there were several news reports about DoCoMo suspending their recently launched BlackBerry Bold service due to an overheating issue. In my six months of using a BlackBerry Bold I had never encountered any heating issue. But during my Toronto to San Francisco flight to eComm 2009 on Monday, March 2 that changed. I’ll get to the details but first I need to provide some background.

As reported previously I often use iSkoot or IM+ Plus for Skype (BlackBerry  version) for accessing my Skype contacts via voice or chat while away from my home office. One benefit of the BlackBerry version is that chat sessions can occur in background while using other applications. (This also applies to iSkoot for Android.) As new messages arrive, I receive a notification which provides me with an option to look at the message or continue my current foreground activity.

Early in February I attended a BlackBerry App World Developer presentation in Toronto where Tyler Lessard, RIM’s Director of ISV Alliances and Developer Relations, made the point that, in designing third party applications, developers need to “write to the device platform”, not simply to the “application”. For instance, any IM or “voice enhanced” application should include access to the native Blackberry address book as a matter of convenience; iSkoot on the BlackBerry can access the BlackBerry address book for setting up SkypeOut calls. But most importantly, RIM provides API’s such that an application can run in the background and receive data in a “push” fashion rather than requiring it poll the network frequently for data. Tyler pointed out that this approach minimizes an application’s dependence on the radio and, ultimately, battery life.

Finally, as background to this story, I should mention that, due to an allergic reaction to watch back covers, I cannot wear a watch; I use my Bold as a clock for time checks.

So what happened during my flight to SFO that resulted in a mild searing of my left hand? While at the Toronto airport waiting area I made a Skype call to Spain via iSkoot. Immediately after completing the call, it was time to board, so I simply pocketed my Bold and boarded. Once seated I turned off the Bold’s radio, more to conserve battery rather than worrying about interfering with aircraft radio.

But about two hours into the flight I pulled out my Bold to check the time and noticed that it was somewhat warm. Checked the radio settings; both GSM and WiFi were off. Checked again half an hour later when I wanted to listen to music on the Bold and all but mildly seared my hand while holding it. And, what had been a completely charged BlackBerry Bold at the beginning of the day was now showing battery level down at one-quarter. Obviously something was still active and draining the battery.

At that point I realized that I had left iSkoot running when I boarded the plane; maybe its background processing was attempting, unsuccessfully to check for my Skype messages; however, being unsuccessful resulted in frequent re-attempts. I closed iSkoot; within 15 minutes the Bold’s temperature had dropped to a point where I could hold it comfortably; an hour later it was back to ambient temperature.

I have contacted iSkoot with a suggestion that they look at:

• checking whether at least one of the Bold’s radio channels (2G/EDGE,3G or WiFi) is on before attempting to contact the network , and
• ensuring they are using RIM’s  API’s appropriately, especially with respect to their “push” feature, to reduce the heavy battery consumption I have experienced in normal use of iSkoot.

I also had SocialScope running while in flight; however, on my return flight with SocialScope open, I did not notice any heating issues. And, while I made reasonable use of my Bold during eComm 2009, I have not noticed any heating issues. Blogging colleague Jon Arnold did mention that, during phone calls, he did notice his Bold got warmer; however, it was not uncomfortably warmer. To me this was simply an indication as to how much I use text for conversations from my Bold: BlackBerry Messenger, SocialScope, iSkoot (for Skype IM and chat), email (either BlackBerry or GMail), web browsing and how little I use it for normal voice conversations.

Bottom line: if you’re writing applications for the BlackBerry, ensure you are only accessing the Internet when one of the BlackBerry’s radios is on, take advantage of the BlackBerry’s “push” feature, using the appropriate API’s to help extend battery life while using your application and check for other opportunities to “write to the device platform” as opposed to simply attempting to port an application from another platform.

Final question: does this provide a hint as to the cause of the DoCoMo problem? Is it possible that some DoCoMo-exclusive software is encountering a similar problem? To date a Google News search does not provide any mention of restoring availability of the Bold at DoCoMo.

And I’m still awaiting notification of a new build of iSkoot that addresses this issue. In the meantime make sure iSkoot is closed when turning off your BlackBerry radios (GSM/3G/EDGE and WiFi).

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• BlackBerry Bold sales suspended in Japan (reghardware.co.uk)
• NTT DoCoMo’s overheating BlackBerry Bold not caused by battery, says RIM (engadget.com)
• Overheating BlackBerrys not big in Japan (vnunet.com)
• NTT DoCoMo pulls BlackBerry Bold (mobilecrunch.com)
• Palm Pre, BlackBerry Bold, Android G1, iPhone: What’s best? (lucafiligheddu.com)

Skype today published data from a recent Zobgy survey that, aside from demonstrating smartphone users’ desire to control their own phone configuration, demonstrates that a significant majority of users in the four countries surveyed (U.S., U.K., Japan and Spain) simply are still not perceiving the potential for a mobile phone handset to be considered as having additional use beyond simply making voice calls.

While I am receiving feedback from acquaintances who are saying their BlackBerry Bold or 8900 Curve has become their mobile computer (reinforcing my own experience) the survey results conclude:

• over 62% of the survey respondents do not perceive their mobile device as an extension of their computer.
• Over 70% have never downloaded an application to their mobile phone.

What this survey really says is that awareness of the smartphone as a mobile computing device is still quite weak amongst the general public, especially in North America. Secondary to this finding are the results showing:

• Only 23% feel that they have more or the same level of control over their mobile device as they have over their computer.
• 67% want to be able to choose their mobile applications for themselves, rather than have their carriers choose for them.

Of course consumers want choice; the real issue here becomes the legacy microcomputer user issue of balancing:

• how much guidance does a vendor (carrier, PC manufacturer, smartphone vendor) provide driving users to “supported” or “authorized” applications against
• how aware is the consumer that they can actually have “freedom to choose” when it comes to not only smartphone applications but also personal computing applications.

The major difference from the early Windows 95 days of wanting to be on the Windows desktop and wanting to be immediately available on a smartphone is that the carrier, not the operating system developer, approves the user interface and smartphone configuration that is available on purchase of the computing device.

We have since seen the disappearance of “pre-configured” Windows desktop applications (how many PC’s have I installed over the past 15 years where I removed the AOL application?) with more practices such as the Dell Vostro line of business PC’s providing a minimal number of pre-installed desktop applications supporting use of the PC itself and no third party applications. It has become the responsibility of  the individual third party developers to generate market awareness and adoption on a PC platform.

The Apple iPhone started this trend within the smartphone consumer market. A basic iPhone has the necessary applications to use the phone for voice calls and text messaging along with a minimal number of third party applications such as Google Maps and Facebook. From this starting point, the user can then use the iPhone App store to choose applications that find the nearest Starbucks, tell you when the next TTC streetcar is coming, deliver the Toronto Globe and Mail or turn your iPhone into a musical instrument. No carrier control, no carrier revenue; over 20,000 applications available.

When looking at the BlackBerry, one again finds that it comes with a set of basic applications that support communications, either voice or text (including several IM applications). Users have long been able to add applications either via stores such as Handango with 1800 applications for the Bold, Crackberry App Store or a wide range of enterprise-specific applications. Today my BlackBerry can follow Twitter and Facebook via SocialScope, deliver my cable TV service to the device anywhere worldwide, make Skype calls via iSkoot or IM+ for Skype, follow the news on NY Times, Wall Street Journal or CNN (Globe and Mail, where are you?), stream video to the Internet (Qik) and use any Google service (Maps, News, Reader, Search, Sync, etc.).

The ability to download user-selected applications is here (certainly on my Rogers Wireless service). The real issue is that North Americans need to be made more aware of the potential of a smartphone to deliver value-added services and information. Only at that point will there be sufficient pent-up consumer demand to “free up the smartphone” from today’s level of carrier control.

According to the report the Spanish and Japanese “get it”; probably other European countries where the level of  carrier control of applications is much less than in North America also get it. The survey found almost twice as many Spanish have downloaded applications and perceive their mobile devices as an extension of their computing experience. When the awareness is there, the demand for user freedom to choose their applications and smartphone configuration will arise.

The bottom line:

• General awareness of mobile smartphones as more than a voice calling device still needs to be promoted heavily by both application developers and smartphone vendors
• Users perceive that they would want to have control over their smartphone applications if they know there is an huge range of non-telephony applications available.
• the younger generation will drive adoption through their personal social networks, in turn, making older generations aware of what can be done with a smartphone.
• Developers still need to market their applications, emphasizing the user experience, beyond simply having them available on the iPhone App Store or BlackBerry App World.

All it takes is for an individual to find one Starbucks, watch one television program remotely, see a live video of the grandchildren, read one time sensitive news report, have one business success story or make a free international Skype call via iSkoot or other Skype-enabled application to drive awareness amongst a broader public. In the end it’s all about demonstrating the satisfaction that results from an engaging user experience to build the necessary awareness.

Om Malik says “As Mobile Data Grows, People Want Wireless Carriers To Buzz Off”.

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An acquaintance’s selection of BlackBerry Bold, based largely on Twitter message exchanges, has resulted in not only a few informative posts but also an avalanche of almost daily Tweets responding to individuals seeking a recommendation for a smartphone.

When I traveled to IT Expo and Mobilize last September I was in the unique position of having a BlackBerry Bold, following the Rogers Canadian launch but prior to the long-delayed AT&T launch in the U.S. During that trip I showed the Bold to fellow blogger Luca Filigheddu from Italy. I had previously met Luca at eComm 2008 where it was rapidly apparent that he is highly respected, especially in Italy, for both his business acumen and opinions on the emerging communications space. From his About page:

Luca is a recognized expert in the VoIP market. He’s now CEO at Abbeynet, an Italian company which develops technologies and services in the field of IP Communications since 1999. Abbeynet is the company behind services like Chocophone, Abbeyphone, Sitòfono and Hictu!.

As a passionate user of any kind of technology and internet service, he loves gadgets and electronic devices and wants to try out any new cool device that arrives to the market. Luca can be considered an early adopter in any field of technology. In particular, he loves Apple, Nokia phones and his Sony PSP.

And he loves trying new VoIP services out, of course. Luca’s current interests are web-based VoIP services, Web 2.0/VoIP integration and product marketing. In the never-enough spare time, Luca loves martial arts and listening to good music.

He is a very avid Twitterer but only when his Tweets have relevance. Little did I know that showing him the Bold would eventually trigger an avalanche of tweets supporting his decision to acquire a Bold, to be followed by a continuous, almost daily, feed of recommendations to individual Twitterers.

In early November, 2008 His Nokia N95 had died for some reason. Initially he asked on Twitter for input to a decision between the BlackBerry Bold and the iPhone. Unfortunately a Twitter search does not go back that far; however here are some of his posts at the time:

• Business Usage: iPhone 3G or BlackBerry Bold?
• A Bold New Experience
• Why The BlackBerry Bold is Way Better than The iPhone 3G (for business)

and I started observing his recommendations appearing in Twitter, often with the single word “Bold” in response to an @ request. On the right is an early example. Between Luca’s blog posts and the Twitter conversations one can build up the feature set that supported the decision to go with Bold.

• Why Multitasking on Mobile Devices Matters
• He gives a fairly balanced review of four smartphones in Palm Pre, BlackBerry Bold, Android G1, iPhone: What’s best?
• He has become an avid user of SocialScope (full disclosure, so have I): SocialScope, the new Social Networks Aggregator for BlackBerry (Note:  SocialScope is still in alpha as they work out client/server balance, scaling and user interface issues – follow @socialscope for on ongoing dialogue)

• How To Sync your BlackBerry Bold with a Mac (the only solution that REALLY works) Why Google Sync was his sole recommendation.

• David’s Posterous: Why I ditched my iPhone for a BlackBerry Bold.

• Give a New Look to Your BlackBerry: Vista Themes

• How I Achieved an Unbelievable Battery Life on My BlackBerry Bold

Keyboard, multi-tasking, battery life, MMS, cut and paste – eventually Luca covered all the highlights and features of the BlackBerry Bold.

However, just as importantly, Luca’s ongoing dialogue with his Twitter followers and Blog readers provides a great example of the power of social networking as a viral marketing tool. Person-to-person threads, information delivered by a party with no interest in the outcome other than the best interest and satisfaction of his “friends”, a passion for excellence in technology have come together resulting in many sales for a product in a highly competitive market space.

Yes, I have had a Bold for a while; I also have an iPhone. This evening, via an iPhone application with reliable sources, I learned about a 3 cent/litre increase in the price of gasoline tomorrow, went out and filled up my tank to save the cost of a Tim Horton’s coffee and donut. iPhone is a great information delivery platform; BlackBerry has, however, the best line of devices for complete two way personal and business communications. And for some results:

• BlackBerry grabs market share as the iPhone slumps

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With the evolution of smartphones incorporating both WiFi and 3G wireless support, we are also seeing the application of Voice over IP technology as providing at least one leg of a wireless call.

• iSkoot was a pioneering example, with both their support of a wide range of wireless phones, including Nokia, Android and BlackBerry (full disclosure – I use iSkoot on my BlackBerry Bold) and their Skypephone so successfully launched on 3 services in nine countries.
• Recently we have seen the evolution of Skype Lite capable of providing access to Skype on over 100 Java-enabled mobile phones (not all smart phones), including Android.
• And Truphone has been launching services on Nokia, BlackBerry and, most recently, iPhone.

The real challenge for Skype was to get carrier adoption. Certainly the 3 Skypephone experience represents a successful business model where, as disclosed at eComm 2008, royalties associated with 3’s revenues are paid to both Skype and iSkoot. Skype announced at CES that they are developing carrier relationships in ten countries, including United States, that involve deployment of the Skype Lite client . With its new management team, including a former Motorola executive, it was only a matter of time before we would start to see deeper relationships with mobile device vendors.

And, of course, this initial device vendor relationship is with a vendor who has not exactly been a significant smartphone player in North American markets, although their market penetration has been more successful in European and Asian markets. Today, Skype and Nokia have announced a partnership where Skype will become deeply embedded into Nokia’s S60 Symbian platform with the launch device being the forthcoming Nokia N97. From the press release:

The Skype experience will be part of the address book of the Nokia N97, enabling presence – seeing when Skype contacts are online – as well as instant messaging. Nokia N97 owners around the world will also be able to use 3G and WLAN to easily make and receive free Skype-to-Skype voice calls, in addition to low-cost Skype calls to landlines and mobile devices.

The pros:

• Its support of both 3G and WiFi; this has certainly played well for Truphone adoption
• It supports the device at a platform level as evidenced by the integration with the native address book and the Nokia SIP stack. Is this a full VoIP client integration?
• The initial launch device has a QWERTY keyboard, making chat sessions on the device more viable and readily adopted
• An established smartphone vendor market leader outside of North America
• Probably a software licensing revenue generator for Skype
• Opportunity to drive (and share) SkypeOut calling revenue
• It provides free, beyond a monthly flat rate for the basic carrier service, voice and chat conversations with over 40 million Skype users worldwide

The cons:

• Nokia needs to establish North American smartphone market presence in a market dominated by iPhone and BlackBerry and where carriers largely control which devices and applications are available for use over their network
• Nokia needs to demonstrate they can provide a more user friendly smartphone user experience (a la iPhone) as opposed to simply being a handheld multimedia computer.
• Nokia needs to partner with carriers who are willing to allow open access to applications in their newly announced Ovi storefront

The questions:

• Has Nokia already signed up carriers to take on the (somewhat delayed) N97 when it launches in June? Following along with a Skype strategy announced at the CES press conference, we can probably assume that the device will first be available in non-carrier dominated markets.
• Does this represent an evolution of the Skype Lite client where chat and call setup occur over the network while the more robust and readily scalable voice channel carries the voice portion of a call?
• Where are the revenue opportunities for Skype, Nokia and the carriers?
• What is the ongoing relationship between Skype and iSkoot who pioneered this carrier adoption model? This Nokia-SKype partnership is totally independent of any iSkoot participation.
• How will the Nokia-Skype partnership compete with UMA plays such as described on the Tweet in the right?

Bottom Line: Liquid communications means turning on a device and finding Skype is “just there”. A partnership with the world’s largest vendor of mobile phones with hundreds of existing carrier relationships is not to be taken lightly. Combined with the Sony Ericssson Skype panel announcement yesterday, what hand will Skype play in working with Apple (iPhone) and RIM (BlackBerry)?

Update: Andy Abramson, VoIP Watch, attended the press conference:

Basically the underlying message the Skype CEO shared was carriers who will work with Skype will pick up users who spend more money than the non-Skype using mobile phone customer, or at least they did with 3.

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In my early 50′s youth when I was delivering afternoon newspapers in somewhat remote Saskatoon, Saskatchewan I always tried to be at one customer’s home at 4:30. Why? At that time the only television viewable came via high rooftop antennae from transmitters far away (~400 miles) near Minot, North Dakota. If atmospheric conditions were favorable my customer would let me watch half an hour of a kid’s program (probably Howdy Doody); most of the time we got to watch it masked by a snowy blizzard of faint reception. Getting any type of television reception at that time and location was, at best, a challenge and an adventure.

Fast forward 55 years to this past week’s 2009 New Years day afternoon. While riding as a passenger in our car, we sped along Ontario’s main 401 freeway as I watched the CBC Sports color telecast of the third period of the NHL Winter Hockey Classic (live from Wrigley Field) on my BlackBerry Bold. It was one more test to carry out during the public beta of SlingPlayer Mobile for BlackBerry.

I viewed all the action in full color; equally as impressive was the quality of the stereo sound (which “swells” out well beyond the device). The only frame freezing probably occurred as my BlackBerry switched between cell tower sites. Otherwise I was experiencing a crisp picture with sharp colors and clear sound coming from my home cable TV box. Talk about convergence – a Rogers cable TV signal being transmitted back out over Rogers High Speed Internet to a BlackBerry Bold via Rogers 3G wireless.

I have provided the detailed basic requirements for using SlingPlayer for BlackBerry Mobile on my recent Web Worker Daily post: “A New BlackBerry Experience Goes Beta: SlingPlayer Mobile for BlackBerry” along with a history of SlingMedia’s hardware and software products. Note especially that it requires a version 4.5 firmware upgrade of any BlackBerry 8×20. While it works via a WiFi connection on all supported devices, over a 3G HSDPA network (Rogers, AT&T and T-Mobile in North America)  it only works currently on the BlackBerry Bold.

Over the past 15 months I have been using SlingPlayer Mobile for Symbian on a Nokia N95-1 over WiFi connections. It has been a consistently reliable experience over that period; it also provided me with some benchmarks for testing the BlackBerry version’s user interface and video/audio quality. Here are some of the experiences I have had with SlingPlayer Mobile for BlackBerry on my BlackBerry Bold 9000 over the past few days of beta trials:

• a rock concert on HDNet where percussion, guitar chords and voice cover a wide audio frequency range
• a rebroadcast of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas eve concert on PBS where over 200 voices, soloists and the orchestra provide an excellent source for testing the clarity of audio as well as the resolution of the video
• several sports events, including fast moving football and hockey action as a test for shadowing and pixelation
• Oprah Winfrey making Skype High Quality Video calls

In all cases the experience on the Bold took full advantage of the Bold’s processor power, network speed, native stereo audio and its widely acclaimed “stunning” color display. Simply stated, I became immersed in the programs I was watching to the point where the experience was transparent to the underlying technology. My only negative was more physiological than technical: I found full “playing surface” views of sports events could cause a bit of dizziness due to focusing on all the action within the Bold’s display size; holding the device further away from my eyes addressed this issue.

While I had some excellent viewing and listening experiences, a few comments:

• instead of a full visual representation of the cable box remote control, the remote control buttons are represented on a menu bar across the bottom of the screen. Note that in addition to the icons on the menu bar, one can “fast-track” to an item using the keyboard (for instance, M=Menu, O=Power On/Off, etc.)
• scrolling across any of the three menu bars is done via the BlackBerry’s trackball.
• audio comes out by default over the Bold’s speakers without the need to click on the “speaker” button
• the “Favorites” menu bar picks up your “Favorites” channels stored via SlingPlayer for Windows¹
• changing channels may cause a video freeze up for 10-20 seconds; this is an issue SlingMedia is trying to minimize.
• no apparent viewing experience difference whether using either a WiFi or 3G connection
• needs a bar to display volume level when using the BlackBerry’s volume +/- buttons
• switches readily between a full screen video and a display that incorporates one of three menu bars
• needs to “reconnect” if you switch to another BlackBerry application while viewing (SlingPlayer application remains open in background but disconnects from the source); the “reconnect” time is 5 to 15 seconds.
• battery life on the Bold for continuous reception of a broadcast via WiFi is about 2-1/2 to 3 hours.; it’s probably shorter on other 8xx0 models.
• I have also been able to get SlingPlayer Mobile for BlackBerry beta working on a BlackBerry 8820 over WiFi where, once again, it provided an excellent true reproduction of the video signal within the limitations of the 8820′s video and audio hardware.
• it can also be used to operate the PVR on my cable TV set-top box.
• latency: at midnight New Year’s Eve, SlingPlayer for BlackBerry Mobile rang in the new year seven seconds after the broadcast version directly connected to a cable service.
• you can almost read those real time scoreboard bars that appear across the top of the screen during football and hockey broadcasts.

And, for now for those not able to take advantage of SlingPlayer Mobile for BlackBerry due to its current specifications:

• it works over a GSM/EDGE connection on unsupported BlackBerry 8xx0 devices; however, SlingMedia does not guarantee the resulting performance. This is really an application for 3G or faster wireless networks only; an attempt to connect my Bold in a rural area where there was only EDGE wireless failed.
• once SlingMedia releases this HSDPA version of SlingPlayer Mobile for BlackBerry they will look at doing a version that runs over Verizon’s, Bell Mobility’s and Telus’s 3G EV-DO network

A suggestion for RIM: SlingPlayer Mobile for BlackBerry demonstrates the full potential of the Bold’s and Javelin’s video display. Let’s hope that newer versions of their firmware can achieve the same level of high quality video on the YouTube player and other video applications supported by these devices.

If you have both a SlingBox and one of the supported BlackBerries, upgrade your firmware (where necessary) and give SlingPlayer Mobile for BlackBerry a try (U.S., Canada, U.K.). Sling Media is now looking for feedback from its targeted user public.

With over 500 channels to choose from, at any location worldwide where I can find a WiFi or (unlimited data plan) 3G HSDPA connection, television broadcast viewing has come a long way from having, in a fixed location, a single channel available only when atmospheric conditions permit.

SlingPlayer for BlackBerry has significant potential for business road warriors; in addition to the entertainment aspect, it also provides immediate access to “breaking news” and business broadcasts from taxis, airports, coffee shops, restaurants (mind your etiquette, however). For those states considering legislation prohibiting texting while driving, they may also want to include viewing videos as a potential distraction.

And this is an application I don’t expect to see on an iPhone any time soon.

(I would have put up a screen capture; however, the video does not make it to the BlackBerry screen capture programs I employ, including PC desktop programs.)

¹SlingMedia’s remotely stored “Favorites” feature will be supported by a future version of SlingPlayer for Mac.

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If I ever had any doubt about the value of Twitter as a commercial social networking tool, it evaporated this weekend as a result of following some Tweets on the subject of smartphones that appeared this weekend. They certainly provide an independent perspective on issues that I’m sure others are wondering about:

Mark Evans acquired an iPod Touch back in August after deciding he did not need an iPhone; as a result of his recent employment status change, he is now debating the merits of having a smartphone – in particular, an iPhone

Luca Filigheddu has just gone through the process of evaluating the BlackBerry Bold and iPhone over the past few weeks. Yesterday he sent me a Twitter direct message to say that he had acquired a BlackBerry Bold; after he had had a few hours experience Saturday I see this on his Twitter feed:

And when I came home yesterday evening I see that my acquaintance Olivier Chaine has put up this Tweet (earlier yesterday I had suggested, in response to his request for smartphone Twitter client recommendations, that he look at Slandr.Net as a mobile platform Twitter client):

First I would suggest that the mini-computer industry died many years ago, to be replaced by the microcomputer era, especially server banks. Trust me, I spent a major part of my career relying on mini-computers. I think I would need a backpack to be mobile with a mini-computer.

So I’ll assume Mark is really looking to have a mobile microcomputer or PC experience on a smartphone. Having had several months’ experience with both an iPhone and a BlackBerry Bold, here are my criteria for a mobile microcomputer or, more aptly, a “Laptop for the Hip or Purse”:

• Minimum 480 x 320 graphics display.
• Full QWERTY keyboard.
• Web browser capable of supporting PC-type browsing.
• Supports “Cut & Paste” (of significant value more often than one would initially imagine until it’s not available)
• View and edit MS Office documents (Word, PowerPoint, Excel) with potential to add document creation.
• Supports video recording and MMS
• Background processing (especially after experiencing both Truphone for BlackBerry and Truphone for iPhone)
• Supports true Instant Messaging in background while running other applications
• A very high speed processor (>500 MHz)
• Runs applications such as Qik.com, SlingPlayer Mobile and iSkoot (for voice and chat conversations with Skype contacts).
• Bluetooth stereo audio support.
• Removable battery
• Equipped for memory upgrades through a removable memory card.
• Supports both Both WiFi and 3G wireless protocols

A nice set of specifications but the key question here is: “How does it change the user experience?”. In particular does it eliminate the “urge” to turn on, or always carry, a laptop to keep up-to-date with real time activities?

As I have mentioned elsewhere, after a month’s experience with the BlackBerry Bold, I found I had lost that tugging “urge” to turn on my laptop for keeping current with real time (and often mission critical) information. This change did not just involve email and web browsing but also Instant Messaging, Twitter and attached document editing.. RIM would do well to position Bold as a “Laptop for the Hip or Purse”, bypassing all the technical comparisons and moving on to succinctly promoting Bold based on the actual user experience.

I like my iPhone for many of its personal information delivery features; it gives me a feel for what is appealing about the iPhone. I can find Toronto Transit streetcar times, do unit conversions, find the nearest Tim Horton’s or Starbucks; it has lots of great information delivery features. On the media side it’s definitely an extension of the iPod although it does not have the full audio performance of the Bold.

However, a mobile microcomputer the iPhone is NOT! I find myself turning to my Bold much more often than my iPhone for real two way interactivity. And just as important as the keyboard is the ability to track instant messaging sessions, whether on iSkoot (for Skype chat), Palringo or BlackBerry Messenger in background while carrying out other activities. On the subject of low cost international calling I find I can make much more use of Truphone for BlackBerry than Truphone for iPhone (that’s the subject of a future post).

I am encountering more and more acquaintances who have no use for a touch keyboard; certainly my typing error rate is much worse on the iPhone. For this reason alone I consider the iPhone to be a very good one-way information delivery device whereas BlackBerry is a true two-way communications device.

As for applications, suffice it to say that over the next six months, where feasible business savvy developers will publish applications running on both devices. For instance, The Hockey News has just released mobile applications for both the BlackBerry and iPhone. I mentioned Truphone above; Mobile Google apps are another example.

Keeping up with iTunes music via BlackBerry MediaSync is a trivial operation. Frankly from some video and audio streaming experiences I have had, BlackBerry Bold provides superior stereo audio performance even without earbuds or a headset.

Bottom line: when I leave my home office or hotel room with my Bold, I no longer have to take my laptop to keep current.

Yes, at the moment, the iPhone browser a superior user experience but rest assured RIM is not ignoring the issue.At this point the Bold’s browser issues have sometimes been frustrating but they not been an inhibition to my browsing activities in any major way – I still get the information I am seeking. The critical parameter here is the 480 pixel display width, which is sufficient to view most websites and weblogs without the need for horizontal scrolling via a ribbon bar. When RIM releases carrier-specific versions of their upgraded operating system – including browser enhancements, the Bold will live up to its full potential as “A Laptop for the Hip or Purse”.

(As for pricing on Rogers, both the Bold and iPhone are C$199 with a three year contract.)

In future posts I’ll cover in more detail some of the issues mentioned above, including my Truphone evaluation on each device, some very interesting real time video and audio experiences, the range of third party applications available on each device and why both background processing and WiFi is becoming critical to any smartphone.

And, Mark, if you’re looking for a mobile microcomputer, I would suggest serious consideration of the BlackBerry Bold.

In closing, can we expect Skype to include BlackBerry as one of their supported platforms for Skype for Mobile? Or will iSkoot improve on their user interface to take advantage of some new BlackBerry developer tools? (Most Skype executives I meet are sporting a BlackBerry – it’s supported by eBay IT.)

Update: Luca published a post this afternoon, A Bold New Experience, and asks about his Tweet above: “Why Did I Say That?”

1) Always on Experience: the BB is offering me a realtime always-on experience never found in any device I used before
2) Multitasking – It lets you receive IMs while writing an email or making a phone call, for example
3) Stunning display
4) Wide availability of apps
5) Crazy speed
6) Great usability

Update #2: (Dec. 23) ZDNet names BlackBerry Bold as #1 most influential biztech product of 2008; iPhone is #3.

Other posts:

• Om Malik: Review: BlackBerry Bold is Beautiful
• Web Worker Daily: BlackBerry Bold: Upgrading Your Mobile Experience.

This evening iSkoot, the service that provides Skype access from smartphones, announced they had received a new $19 million venture financing round to build out and bring to market a new suite of mobile communications services. Recently iSkoot acquired Social IM, who is in the beta stage of producing a desktop Instant Messaging client linking real time communications and notifications to social networks. No further details have been released but obviously both their existing financing partners and one new partner feel there is a significant potential.

Update: VentureBeat reports that the financing relates to a forthcoming AT&T service offering “an array of Web services to users of its low-end phones — the majority of its phones, which don’t have the iPhone’s powerful features. The services will include things like social networking, email, RSS feeds and eventually services like Twitter.”

In addition to their smartphone service, iSkoot also provides the firmware behind the Skypephone, available through the Hutcheson Whampoa 3 carrier in the U.K., six other European countries, Hong Kong and Australia. According to Tech Crunch over 300,000 Skypephones are now in service. However, their recently launched iSkoot for Android appears to have encountered a rougher road; Andy speculates they may have launched prematurely to meet the G-1 launch date. I’m sure we’ll see upgrades to address the outstanding issues.

Personally I have iSkoot running on my BlackBerry Bold, largely to keep current on my Skype chat sessions when away from my office, and have experienced it on the 8820 as well as a Nokia N95. Look forward to learning more about the services whose launch is being supported by this new funding round in today’s somewhat rough economy. At least there’s still support for innovation in the real time conversation space.

• iSkoot Presentation at eComm 2008
• iSkoot Gets Third Party Recognition
• iSkoot Extends Partnership with Skype

Tags: iSkoot, Skypephone, BlackBerry Bold, Android

With about two months’ experience using a BlackBerry Bold, I was able to pull my experiences together for Web Worker Daily yesterday when this smartphone became available in the U.S. on AT&T: BlackBerry Bold: Upgrading Your Mobile Experience.

Last night at a small local dinner on the topic of social networking in public relations, a few attendees had Bold as it has been available for a couple of months in Canada. Our consensus was that in a world where one wants to keep current in real time with Twitter, email, document viewing and editing (a new feature of Bold) and browsing weblogs or many websites, the BlackBerry Bold can be considered as the first generation “laptop for the hip or purse”.

As for Skype via the Bold, whenever I’m away from home, I open iSkoot and am able to follow Skype chat messages (including Twitter4Skype) while riding the commuter services or in a restaurant. With Ontario’s forthcoming law banning cell phone use (except for Bluetooth headsets) and text messaging while driving. it means safer roads but I may not respond immediately. Of course iSkoot also gives me calls to Skype contacts with only charges for local wireless minutes.

And, if you don’t want to be “Always On”, BlackBerry Bold (as well as the forthcoming Storm and Pearl 8220 Flip) includes a bedside mode feature with options to turn off both phone call and email notifications (but logs them) yet still allows the alarm to work.

BlackBerry will continue to be a major player in the smartphone market; but these new smartphones are devices you have to see and experience to realize their full potential as not only a business productivity resource but also a personal associate for both your business and personal social networks and activities.

Tags: BlackBerry Bold, iSkoot, mobile, smartphone

Over the past five weeks I have had the opportunity to work with the Blackberry Bold on the Rogers network, including a week in California where I used it on AT&T’s network. While it has provided significant performance improvements over my previous 8820 and has several applications that just are not available for the iPhone, I still had the feeling I was running with late beta stage or release candidate firmware. The availability of a new firmware release over the past weekend has changed that feeling. But its U.S. release on AT&T has also been dogged by 3G network robustness issues.

Let me put some of these issues in perspective, incorporating my own experience with the Bold on both networks.

There are two major technical issues related to the Bold:

• Network robustness issues at AT&T
• Firmware issues that have possibly resulted in suspension of deliveries at Orange (and reports of inventory shortages at other carriers)

First, to cover the AT&T network robustness issues:

• as reported in RIM’s second-quarter report, 60 carriers in 29 countries have launched the Bold, including Canada, where I’ve had a Bold running on Rogers for the past five weeks. Somebody has to be getting their network right.
• several recent news reports have reported on network robustness issues as a contributor to the delayed launch on AT&T: Globe and Mail, TMCNet, CrunchGear
• a personal indicator: on a recent trip to California both my Blackberry Bold and iPhone 3G found an “EDGE” signal on AT&T more often than it found a 3G signal (in spite of setting the Bold to only operate on 3G). On the Rogers network I find the “3G” signal (in supported urban areas, such as Toronto and Montreal) more than 95 percent of the time.

I have to conclude, combining these issues, that the AT&T network robustness issues are real and serve as a threat to RIM’s ability to penetrate the U.S. market via the Bold. On the other hand the pending launch of Blackberry Storm at Verizon may become RIM’s primary route to to the U.S. market for their 3G smartphones, given Verizon’s reputation for, and experience with, 3G networks along with their extensive customer base. (Why else would several of my U.S.-based blogging colleagues attending the recent IT Expo all be running their laptops on Verizon for Internet connectivity with no complaints?)

Five weeks’ experience with the Bold tells me about its firmware:

• It delivers a significant performance improvement relative to the Blackberry 8820 I have been using for the past year. An half-VGA display with over 200 dpi resolution, 3G network speed and 624 Mhz processor speed all contribute.
• At no time has my experience to date inhibited my ability to carry on my normal mobile-supported business activities. I have had an opportunity to successfully take advantage of new applications such as editing Word documents.
• The display grows on you; when you find crystal clear small fonts or view Google Maps, you get this “how did they do this?” feeling. As indicated in other reviews, it’s stunning. And the supported resolution is a major contributor to my next point.
• The Bold is definitely a game changer. After my week of traveling to California with the Bold, I realized that I was experiencing a significant change in my mobile device work patterns. I was simply going to the Bold to keep current not only on email (using a strategic combination of both Blackberry Mail and GMail) but also on my Twitter feed, Facebook and Google Reader. I was able to not only read but also edit Word documents. I had lost the anxiety-inflamed urge to fire up my laptop PC to remain “always connected”; One non-technical acquaintance who has had a Bold since the Rogers launch in late August commented to me last weekend “I’m beginning to think my Bold is more powerful than my notebook”.
• At Mobilize 08 I met Google Maps senior product manager Steve Lee who pointed me to a new version of Google Maps for Blackberry which added Street View to the feature set available on Blackberry. While Google Maps itself is an excellent demonstration of both the Bold’s display quality and speed, turning on Street View and either moving down a street or rotating around a selected address brings into play both network and processor speeds to dynamically generate high quality images. (While this is a feature that will be included on Android, it is still not available on the iPhone.)
• Using Blackberry’s MediaSync, I can keep my music files updated by syncing with iTunes. But I also found having the trackball mouse a significant benefit when transcribing our interview with Josh Silverman via the media player; basically I was using the Bold as a Dictaphone.
• Skype chats running in iSkoot can run in background and provide notification when new chat messages appear. Also when my home office broadband was down recently for a neighborhood cable upgrade, I was able to use iSkoot to call into the daily SquawkBox conference call.
• Performance on WiFi has been excellent; walk into a registered WiFi zone and the Bold picks it up immediately. The actual registration process itself for a WiFi zone could be smoother but otherwise it works as expected.
• However, the Bold has been by no means perfect. Web pages would sometimes come up slowly; on some sites I would randomly get either the actual PC version of a page or the mobile version of the site. Sites were often stripped down to their basic content, absent of banners and sidebars. YouTube videos would stall with a “buffering” indicator appearing in the display; I was never able to view the complete video. I started to feel this was late beta stage firmware, not quite ready for “Main Street”. And then Friday reports appeared that Orange was possibly suspending Blackberry shipments due to software quality issues.

Friday evening I learned that RIM had released new firmware for Blackberry Bold on Rogers. It was described as addressing browser issues, delivering more stability and improving memory management, amongst other issues. I installed it quite seamlessly Saturday morning with the following immediate observations:

• The browser is much faster at bringing up standard web pages and renders original web pages correctly. Pages with few “feature enhancements” involving “scripts” load as rapidly as on the iPhone; pages with lots of “scripts” do take longer but are correctly and much more rapidly rendered.
• YouTube videos can now be played to the end. On some videos I encounter a momentary “buffering” delay but they always went to completion. The actual player itself could provide better video quality to achieve the superb quality I have seen on the Bold’s display when mpeg movie files are run but a user can readily follow the YouTube video action.
• After two days’ use, using the phone itself only minimally but with lots of web activity over WiFi, my battery is only down to the 40% level whereas with the earlier version I found I had to always do a daily overnight recharge.

Other issues need a few days’ use to determine if they have been addressed. But overall this upgraded Bold firmware appears to spell good news for not only Blackberry Bold but also the Blackberry Storm whose major differences involve radio bands supported, slightly larger display resolution and the type of keyboard but otherwise are based on the same underlying operating system, application and browser firmware.

The question that remains here is whether AT&T can fix their network problems in the near future or will the pending launch of Blackberry Storm become the real Blackberry 3G device launch product? For once I am quite happy to be a Rogers customer where they have spent over a year working with 3G technology prior to the Bold’s launch and the network performance is “just there”.

Bottom line: the Bold allows new user work patterns for mobile smartphones. It significantly reduces or removes the reliance on laptops to keep current with many communications activities, whether Skype Chat, Twitter Feeds or even minor document modification. Its 480 x 320 display makes it easy to read blog posts without ribbon bars. Background processing allows true multi-tasking. If you’re in a country where it is available it is worth checking out (especially once any residual firmware issues are resolved; if you’re in the U.S., it’s worth having the patience to await its release on AT&T or even the Storm’s release on Verizon.

Andy Abramson at VoIP Watch travels a lot to keep up with his ever expanding list of clients. And he has been having his home office renovated for the past few months. So he gets more experience than most of us dealing with all the trivia of travel, including keeping his communications costs down. Check out his post “Mastering Better Working Anywhere” for the details including:

7. For places you visit regularly, buy a pre-paid SIM card, avoid roaming rates. If you visit multiple countries get a travel sim from SIM4TRAVEL or MaxRoam. If you are in WiFi environments a lot, get an account with client Truphone. Bottom line is you will save money and be more connected.

He failed to mention his overall mobile strategy but Saturday he called me from a new Skypephone 2; I initially took the call on my Blackberry Bold (to which my Skype account is forwarded). Perfect call quality for a 5 minute conversation; when I arrived home we continued the call over my PC Skype connection with excellent voice quality. Andy thinks 3 sets the standard for carrier services; the final confirmation? He actually bought two Skypephone 2′s (the second one for his wife) on prepaid plans for a total of £99. His conclusion:

Bottom line, if you’re heading to the UK or any country 3 serves, you can expect this kind of a great experience. That makes 3 a Working Anywhere Approved carrier.

Tags: 3, Skypephone, SIM4TRAVEL, MaxRoam, VoIP Watch, Andy Abramson

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OK, so it’s the fourth post this week where I’ve referenced Dan York. But over the two years I have known Dan I have to say he is, in my view, one of the most respected authorities on the technology behind today’s communications revolution. Yet he also understands the value of the user experience.

In celebration of Skype’s fifth birthday Dan has written the most thorough post yet on Skype’s accomplishments and how it has changed not only his life but also the communications market space he works in. He starts out with a personal reminder (along the lines of many of the “What Skype Means to Me” posts that Phil has been coordinating):

I had a personal reminder of that the other day when I wound up in a video chat with one of my closest friends who was my best man at my wedding 12 years ago. Although we have spoken in the intervening years, we had not actually seen each other in probably most of 10 years due to living far apart. He and his wife emailed a group of folks that they now had a Skype ID. I added them as a contact, opened an IM chat and wound up calling them… and then moving into video and seeing them both. It was a powerful moment – and a great reminder of the power of Skype to easily connect people.

Articulating his contribution to our Skype discussion on yesterday’s SquawkBox, Dan then goes on to talk about the many unique aspects of Skype:

• How Skype Disrupted Technology
• Skype “Just Worked”
• Wideband Audio
• Secure VoIP
• P2P VoIP
• Voice First
• Multi-Modal Communication
• PSTN Interconnection
• Cheap Calls
• Challenging SIP and Open Standards
• Persistent Chat – with History

Dan goes on to discuss some of the imperfections and bumps that Skype has experienced over the years and the need for the new executive team to express its vision for the future. (Although Josh’s “liquid communication” term is an appropriate description when I look at the variety of ways I can converse currently via Skype over my PC’s, Blackberry, Nokia N-series phones, Sony mylo, Nokia N-800 tablet, Skypephone).

Last week at Rogers’ Blackberry Bold launch, RIM’s Director of PR pointed out how, during the famous patent lawsuit, settled over two years ago, enterprise IT managers were seeking out alternatives to the Blackberry, should a court injunction force disruption of the Blackberry service in the U.S. This turned out to be one of the best “zero cost” marketing tools RIM has ever had. The IT managers could all report back that the only total solution to their mobile communications needs was indeed Blackberry. (And will remain so, in spite of iPhone’s success.)

So show me another multi-modal, secure, archiving, interconnected conversation platform that provides all the features above in a user-friendly means and that can deliver all the user experiences posted on Skype Journal over the past few days and I’ll stop being a Skype Cheerleader. (But, going forward, the Skype team still has to earn their way … and will.) Yet I’ll also be a cheerleader for anyone else who delivers beneficial user experiences with access to over 40 million ongoing users.

While I can find no press release from any of Skype, iSkoot or 3, it appears there was some 3 media event yesterday where it was announced that 3 will be introducing a new Skypephone 2 on August 18. Key new features include:

• 3G mobile broadband supporting HSDPA
• a 3.2 Mpixel camera (vs the current 2.0 Mpixel)
• integration of Skype contacts into the phone’s address book
• support for email (post-launch date)
• software to allow the Skypephone to be used as a modem when plugged into a PC (tethering)
• slightly larger screen (2.2 inch QVGA)
• RSS feed support
• a built-in Facebook application
• pricing of £69.95 on Pay-As-You-Go or free for contract customers

Chris Dawson at TameBay saw one yesterday:

The Skypephone however is the only handset in the world that has Skype built-in as an “always on” embedded tool rather than as an add-on application. That means it doesn’t eat into your data allowance and 3 allows a generous 4,000 Skype minutes and 10,000 Skype chat messages a month for free on the Skypephone.

At this same event it was also confirmed that 3 will be carrying the Blackberry Bold (where you have a full QWERTY keyboard for handling email and other keyboard-intensive activities).

Not exactly a quiet summer for smartphone introductions!

Tags: Skype, Skypephone, 3

I’ll be iBold enough to say that, applying physics terminology so much appreciated by RIM’s co-CEO, Blackberry Bold will reduce the half-life of the iPhone in the business and prosumer market by an order of magnitude.

Tuesday evening I attended RIM’s annual shareholders meeting in Waterloo at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, initially funded by RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaradis. A full house in the lecture theatre, including many RIM managers, all the Waterloo Region residents who had invested in RIM and the usual assortment of analysts and media. Full disclosure; this was my eleventh RIM AGM – the last ten as a shareholder of a minute quantity. More importantly RIM has become one of the most highly capitalized companies in Canada, competing with the Royal Bank for highest market capitalization on the Toronto Stock Exchange. RIM is to the Canadian technology scene what Nokia is to Finland and Skype to Estonia. From numbers heard at the AGM about 7,000 of their close to 10,000 employees are Canadians.

I attend each of these meetings, not simply to catch up with some acquaintances who participate, but mainly to listen to co-CEO Mike Lazaradis’ overview of the RIM’s technology and platform development. He has a way to articulate the technology within the framework of the the end user experience, developer program requirements, five nines availability, battery life, carrier benefits and other factors that have lead to their success. Coming out of the presentation, which largely focused on the forthcoming Blackberry Bold, I learned about:

• the Bold’s high-resolution (HVGA 480 x 320) display with a widescreen format and integrated lens technology.
• the new Blackberry browser (yes, you can flick your thumb to zoom without leaving thumb oil on the display cover)
• a new Clock application, complete with “bedside” mode; the picture to the right only gives a hint of what’s in store here.
• Blackberry Unite! allowing families, “friend groups”, and workgroups to communicate and share in many ways beyond voice and text via their Blackberries and desktops
• Blackberry Bold’s true GPS (that works with navigation software) but most importantly not only supports A-GPS to faciliate in-building location but also offers “Fast GPS Fix Times” – traditionally an issue with most GPS-based navigation devices.
• the extent of the Blackberry Enterprise platform that includes not only desktop (email/PIM) activities but also voice systems that allow your Blackberry to become simply an extension of the enterprise phone system, intranet web services involving SAP, Oracle IBM Websphere and all the current web services platforms and protocols and, finally, integration with real time enterprise collaboration services such as Lotus Sametime and MS Live Communication Server.
• Blackberry’s security validations with NATO and several national governments
• Blackberry Partners Fund to finance third party software development partners.
• The extent of Blackberry’s Developer programs with both prosumer general use offerings (via, say, Handango) and vertical enterprise applications.
• On the personal entertainment side, Blackberry’s new Media Sync creates a direct connection between your iTunes music collection and the Blackberry. (and will also be made available to all Blackberry devices with a media card – Pearl, Curve, 88xx – through both a firmware and desktop software upgrade).

In response to one question about why RIM will continue to prosper, Mike explained how RIM now has many years of experience in dealing with the laws of physics related to understanding both the mobile and wireless environment in which they have to operate. Wireless spectrum management, rf transmit/receive technology (across 7 bands in the Blackberry Bold), an operating system optimized for wireless data devices, data management that optimizes compression while minimizing packets transported over the wireless connections with no information loss are amongst the issues that RIM understands most succinctly. It’s what has allowed them to be able to provide longer battery life, increase the rf range and provide the overall reliability required to satisfy a broader range of, especially enterprise customer, needs. Not only are the end user needs considered but also carriers have demands on minimizing bandwidth while providing quality voice and reliable data exchange. Nobody need look to any outsource supplier for key rf and chip technology information beyond the various Intel processors incorporated into the Blackberry; most of the rest is all built in-house. It is this “legacy” experience in dealing with these laws of physics that gives RIM a significant lead in its ability to offer compelling new devices such as the Blackberry Bold and to keep open a window of opportunity for unique new applications and user needs.

Following the meeting a RIM employee demonstrated to me a couple of the Bold’s features. Better at this point to reference a comment made by Boy Genius in his recent pre-release review of Blackberry Bold:

We said this before, but this really is the screen to beat. It might be a little too “contrasty” at times, if you know what we mean, but overall, it steals the show. It is the most vibrant, color-rich, sharp screen we’ve ever seen on a mobile device.

To which I can only say, Amen! An astonishingly stunning HVGA (480 x320) display approaching 200 dpi resolution. I watched a Star Wars action segment and an auto racing clip. You really have to see it to understand how impressive its HD video quality is. But then I saw how this display’s features were applied to Office documents. A complaint about previous Blackberries has been the lack of an ability to display email attachments. The Blackberry Bold not only has the capability to display Office document attachments but does it in a manner that blows away any previous “mininalist” experience with, say, spreadsheets on handhelds. You can actually do some reasonably significant spreadsheet activity on it. Having seen this I could only react by saying that this is one key feature that will sustain Blackberry’s lead in the business and prosumer markets. Apparently there is also a way to manage the display of Power Point presentations onto an overhead projector (details unknown).

And to check out one more aspect of the Blackberry ecosystem: determine what applications were available for my current Blackberry 8820, I went to Handango and selected my model.

Between the unpublicized infrastructure mentioned above for supporting the wireless-enabled enterprise and the features I saw Tuesday evening, I can only say that Blackberry Bold will significantly disrupt Apple’s efforts to enter the business market. The iPhone is left with two markets: younger generation consumers who want an expensive toy and Mac afficiandos who can use the iPhone as an extension of their Mac experience.

• Crackberry.com lists the Bold’s features and specifications.
• Crackberry.com’s reviews of Blackberry Bold.
• In a related story about carrier data plans: Score One for the Blogosphere – Immense PR Turmoil – Rogers Caves. Did prospective iPhone users raise such a fuss because the iPhone is not as efficient at handling wireless data?

Tags: Research in Motion, RIM, Blackberry, Blackberry Bold, iPhone, Mike Lazaradis, Handango, Crackberry.com, Perimeter Institute, Blackberry Unite!

The Canadian launch of the 3G iPhone received international coverage due to consumer reaction to Rogers initial price plans. But having followed the story since last fall and, having interviewed the first two customers to buy the iPhone 3G at Rogers Toronto launch location, the real story is about how Rogers is learning that smartphones are not simply another broadcast medium where the broadcaster or publisher determines the programming available to a viewer, listener or user. From a broader perspective Rogers also owns several radio stations across Canada, the Rogers Sportsnet which broadcasts, amongst other sports events, Blue Jays baseball games (and guess who owns the Blue Jays?). So conditions are ripe for a culture of “delivering programming” with little or no user interactivity or participation.

This came home to me at Rogers Nokia N95 8GB launch back in early May where I found that Rogers was offering access to predetermined mobile communities (Facebook, Flickr, My Space Mobile, etc.), video on demand streaming using licensed content such as Tonight Show with Jay Leno, radio on demand to access 25 XM radio channels, mobile TV under a Rogers Vision service providing licensed news, sports, weather content, mobile gaming and “Rogers Telenav GPS Navigator”. But they had no handle on the potential of the true mobile smartphone user experience.

Their pricing did not really allow for full access to mobile Internet applications as determined by the user. Over the past year-and-a-half I have used my evaluation Nokia N95 for YouTube videos, Qik.com live streaming, SlingPlayer viewing of my cable programming, Truphone for international mobile calling, Google Maps, iSkoot and recently added the Skype for Mobile beta along with a new GoBoingo client that senses when I am in a Boingo WiFi HotSpot. And, of course, the Nokia phones have improved their browsing experience immensely since I first experiences a Nokia N-Series phone two years ago. But I would make sure that I only ran these applications over a WiFi connection (the N-Series phones always ask what network connection you want to use with each application); otherwise, of course, a 5 minute Qik.com video recording would have cost $600 (yes six hundred dollars) under Rogers original data plan for the Nokia N95 8GB.

Rogers’s experience with the originally announced pricing plans for the iPhone demonstrated that their internal corporate “culture” really did not understand that

• one of the key breakthroughs of the iPhone, namely, the total browsing experience, and, with iPhone 2.0, the Apps store.
• the iPhone was not about just handling email or casually browsing to a few web pages.
• the fanatic Mac user community who viewed the iPhone as a mobile extension of their Mac.
• 3G’s speeds, effectively the first mobile broadband protocol, would change user’s mobile Internet habits simply resulting from 3G’s much faster speeds than 2.xG EDGE. (Update: Om Malik: New iPhone will Jumpstart Demand for Wireless Broadband.)

When they finally changed their data plan two days before the iPhone launch, this was implicit in one media relations comment where the Rogers spokesperson effectively admitted they had relied too heavily on their internal legacy market data to establish their initial pricing plans for the iPhone and effectively did not understand the “Mac” and “iPhone” culture. These users want the freedom to decide what they want to do – just give them a decent data plan. (As an aside, the Rogers plan is capped at 6GB whereas AT&T’s unlimited plan apparently has a 5GB cap that has not been publicized. And, if you’re downloading 6GB per month, I say, “get a life”.)

These factors hit home when I interviewed the first two customers to acquire an iPhone at Rogers Toronto launch store. Jordan Brown, a 16-year old high school student, had been wanting an iPhone since it was first announced a year ago and was not really able to go to the U.S. to get an unlockable iPhone 1.0; Wednesday’s data plan price change was the final trigger he needed to line up at 4 p.m. Thursday to ensure he would get an iPhone at 8 a.m. Friday. Robert Cowley, an auctioneer and Mac addict who joined Jordan at 4:45 p.m. Thursday, sees the iPhone as a mobile extension of his current MacBook. While Robert moved his Rogers account from a Pearl 8100 to the iPhone, it was his previous Mac enthusiasm along with the browsing experience and the Apps store, amongst other features that drove his change.

It is going to be an interesting summer as the Blackberry Bold launches in two weeks, with several new media management features along with, supposedly, an enhanced browser experience, while others such as Samsung attempt to launch an iPhone competitor called Instinct. But the bottom line will be twofold: what device best matches the user’s needs once they can experience new applications and what applications become the real interest and demand generators for these products.