vPlayer

I've recently been using the wonderful 'File Expert' app on my Desire, to drag videos straight off the home network and onto my phone. This is great for the tube into work, as while everyone else is standing around looking like they'd punch a lost dog for looking sad, I'm stood there guffawing at Family Guy (which by the way, is the perfect time length for a trip to work, and always lifts the spirits). This week though, the trial version of vPlayer, which I've been using to view said videos ran out, leaving me all at sea. For the full version the makers wanted HK$23 - or £1.82 in Sterling. Now there are other apps out there that I am sure fulfill the same function - my housemate uses Rockplayer, but I've found vPlayer to be a great little app, that is lightweight and plays almost anything you can throw at it. I had no real qualms about shelling out the price of a Sainsburys Tuna Sandwich and a packet of quavers for the app.

My thinking behind this was fourfold.

1. As above, its a great app that just works.

2. Regular updates mean that I'm buying into something that will be updated as new formats arrive etc etc

3. I'll be able to use it on my tablet when Honeycomb finally arrives

4. It'll be ad free.

Unfortunately not all of the above assumptions turned out to be true.

My biggest complaint is that it is simply not ad free. Is it wrong to assume that it would be? Its generally accepted that if you pay for media, whether it be, music (spotify premium), DVDs or games that what you are buying is not also ad supported. I may as well have just downloaded another app that does the same job, and also has ads all over the place. This is a perfect example of how to get things wrong on the Android app market. Some developers have already voiced their concerns about Androids users willingness to pay for things. Its a very delicately balanced situation, and making them pay for an ad supported product does not seem like the way to convince them that your Hong Kong dollars are being well spent.

Regular updates are another thing. Am I right to assume that I am entitled to free updates? This is more of a grey area. I am buying an app based on what it can do, right now, and yes, today it does play video's on my Desire running Android 2.2. But what happens when I inevitable upgrade (every 18 months or so)? Will the app then work on my Nexus S running 2.3 or even, my Honeycomb tablet. Many people may end up owning both a tablet and a phone. Will I end up having to buy a separate video playing app for that? Its an interesting question, given the divergent nature of the Android OS. You are buying apps for your account, they have no resale value whatsoever, so you had better make sure you want something when you buy it. If a developer decides that he has got better things to do than update his app, thats it, for your next phone, you'll have to buy another app that does exactly the same thing as the one you currently own, but is compatible with your new, slightly tweaked OS. I must however, put my hands up and say that I don't know what the solution is here. All I know is that I don't want to have to buy multiple apps that do the same thing for every new phone or tablet I buy.

Stuck in the middle

Well here we all are at some kind of mobile half way house. It’s the 28^th of January and the dust has finally settled from CES. Past the casinos and the neon lights CES bought so many other exciting things to the table this year. My personal, if somewhat predictable, highlight was the glut of (Android) tablets, mostly powered by ARM CPU’s. Motorola’s Xoom appears to be Googles flagship device, which they hope will go head to head with iPad2. The UI so far looks slick and intuitive. However, there is always the worry that with a company like Apple, they’ll pull something special out of the bag with its 2^nd iteration, and its possible the others will look like they are playing catchup. Interestingly, while we saw a number of tablets being demoed, there is still a lot of unknowns when it comes to Honeycomb and any small tidbit still seems to have the tech news sites clamouring for coverage.

HTC – one of Androids pioneers, produced on of the more mystifying things to come out of CES. The ‘Flyer’ a tablet based on 2.3 Froyo. Quite why HTC think anyone would knowingly purchase an Android tablet based on a shoehorned OS just a few months before honeycombs release is beyond me. Maybe they are counting on mainstream consumers not knowing the difference. Perhaps true, but a little insulting all the same. NEC on the other hand, made their claim for the most backwards and forwards tablet in the form of their dual screen Android tablet – imagine a large Nintendo DS. Not a bad way to protect the screen but being limited to 384mb of RAM and Android 2.1 is just asking for negative press and more concerningly for Google at least, a negative user experience. If consumers get hold of devices that are a pain to use, it’s going to push them away from Android for generations to come. It’s all very well Motorola and Google getting Honeycomb right, but if everyone else is getting it wrong, especially in the more mainstream price sectors, then all that hard work is undone. At least once Honeycomb is finally released it should signal the deathknell of tablets running 2.xx.

Just around the corner in February is of course Mobile World Congress – this year being hosted in Barcelona. I expect 4G phones to be prolific but this raises some interesting questions about the technologies penetration outside of the US – or lack of it. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out, especially for Apple, who traditionally release a ‘one size fits all’ iPhone and will be keen to take advantage of the speed increase that 4G offers. Other manufacturers can potentially scoot around the issue a little more easily as they often release different phones for different territories.

Honeycomb for xmas

Well its xmas. Mother dearest was going to buy me a Kindle!.... but instead bought me two concrete Gargoyles and a mustache kit (no, really). In all honesty, I probably would have preferred the Kindle, but it did get me thinking.

Just before I get onto what the thought was, I was also doing some thinking yesterday as well (you can tell its the holidays). A friend was given an iPad for doing a talk on IPTV at Broadband World Forum 2010, they turned up with it in one of the covers that makes it look like a leatherbound book, and you a little bit of a idiot on the tube (I have a feeling this will change as tablets become more commonplace). I had a little play, and it is undoubtedly a smart little device. Browsing around the OS itself was a pleasure. Apps open quickly and the screen is gorgeous to look at. I was quickly reading their iPad subscription to Empire, and then surfing the net (admittedly using my Androids hotspot feature, which made me think that 3G was essential), and everything seemed to just work how I would expect it to, in that magical way that Apple seem to design things. I want one and I'd buy one. But not as my main computer and not at the price that Apple want me to pay. The lack of physical keys still makes doing any task that involves a lot of writing a bit of a pain.

So this xmas I want a Kindle, and I want an Ipad. But I need neither. What I will buy is an Android tablet. Despite the not-too-bad job they've done I've no desire to take the plunge with the Galaxy tab and Toshiba's own shoehorned Android 2.2 tablets, and because of this I can't help but think that Google have dropped the ball with a post Xmas release of Honeycomb (the new version of Android targetted at tablets). I'm sure in 2011 we are going to see a deluge of Honeycomb tablets, it seems everytime I logon to Hexus a new manufacturer has a press release stating their intentions to release a Android tablet in the coming months, but its a great shame that they haven't already dropped.

Once again, I'd like to emphasise the importance of the app market in the success of a mobile OS, and what this has to do with the missed opportunity this xmas. Microsoft are currently paying the price for being last to market with the W7 phones. Hardware wise, they are great, but the reason I'd buy either an Android phone or a iPhone over them now is that 1. The app store is tiny in comparison. And 2. I've already made an investment in the Android marketplace which I take with me as I upgrade my phone. I certainly don't want to have to rebuy all my old apps for a new device. This will be the same problem Google will be facing with the tablets. Those who desire a tablet this xmas, only have one real option, the iPad. Still, its the same battle that Google faced on the mobile market and they have had astounding success there. The amount of companies already committed to manufacturing an Android tablet is also assuring.

In truth I also know that if Google released a buggy, unintuitive tablet OS, into this very new sector, where a lot of people will be buying for the first time, it would put a lot of people off using an Android tablet in the future, and for me at least, once you buy into an OS, it's very hard to switch it up.

I'd like to see some statistics on the amount of people who have switched between mobile OS's.

Millenial Media - a stats goldmine

Oooh. Stats!

Most of the time any regular readers of this blog will have had to make do with personal experience, meandering, off the cuff commentary and some hyperlinks as anecdotal evidence. Well today I bring you some statistics and graphs. Shall we dive right in?

Millenial Medias wonderful monthly report for September shows, amongst other things, strong smartphone growth, with them now accounting for 58% of mobile page impressions. If you remember, a few posts ago, I mentioned how surfing the net on my HTC Desire was nearly as easy as doing it from my home computer. I can't help that feel that the rise of smartphones, and the ease with which we can use them to surf the net is inextricably linked to the amount click through's and revenue we'll see the mobile advertising market make going forward.

The Mobile Mix report has a hundred other stats and plenty of talking points. Head over now and download it

Working out your differences.

Well well well, that cute little robot has dollar signs in his eyes. For the first time in its history Android ad revenue exceeded iOS. Am I surprised? No, not really, Androids multi manufacturer, multi price point system gives them an natural advantage in this space over their Cupertino based rivals.

Part of Apples charm is that it is a 'premium' brand and as such charges a premium price. Fine, this is a system that has worked, and continues to work very very well for them. Desire-ability is their stock and trade and no one does it better. $4.31 billion profit. Enough said.

I always think about Google and Apple as direct rivals, but this weeks announcement has made me reconsider, as in fact the two do not compete directly across the board. Apple has always made its own hardware and married it with its own software, this is true for every single product its released in the last decade. It means incompatibility errors are less likely to occur and given their premium status, they can make a profit on each piece of hardware sold. Microsoft have hardly made a penny from hardware, and neither have Google (apart from the Nexus One, which a) did not sell very well and b) was made by HTC).

Google, is a software company, through and through - which allows it to work as many with established manufactures as it can do deals with. Thus, a glut of Android devices, ranging in price. Apples approach, on the one hand allows it to garner profits from both revenue streams, but on the flipside means that it will lose some ground to Google in advertising revenue as Android devices proliferate.

Both companies are very successful, but in some areas their success is mutually exclusive, and does not hinge on the others failure. If nothing else, with smartphone sales skyrocketing this town is very much big enough for the two of 'em.

After work thoughts.

Confession time: I’m writing this from work. Well, after work – but still at work all the same. Due to today’s tube strike I spent the first hour of the day comfortably surfing the net on my smartphone. I use the word ‘comfortably’ because on the new smartphones its honestly only a little less convenient than on my desktop PC at home.

One of the few merits of riding the bus to work over the tube was that I had internet access. Soon, with Boris Johnsons plan to enable internet access in the tube by the time of the Olympics, this won’t be the case, and barring tube strikes I’ll have even less reason to ride the bus than I already do.

However, there seems to be the opinion amongst a significant amount of my colleagues that the tube is some kind of sacred ground, reserved for people watching, reading ‘The Metro’ and practising standing with your neck crooked at a funny angle. As much as I enjoy all of these things, I’d rather spend the time replying to Facebook messages that I’ll have to reply later, above ground, when I could be doing other things like living. Charing Cross currently has its first free wifi connection, and is the first London station to do so. It follows a similar system in Glasgows metro, which has already got a number of advertisers onboard to help fund the system. Personally, I can’t wait.

Android Psychology

Blog time again folks. I do like fleeting updates on here, like the good friend you see now and again, and always wonder why you don’t make more of an effort to meet up more regularly. Personally, I got a new phone, eventually opting for an HTC Desire on Android. I should probably just come out and say it, I’m an Android fan. On a side note, I’ve been speaking to other people on the Android platform about why they chose it over iPhone.

Why people choose Android:

• The iPhone is now so commonplace that they wanted something a bit different
• They are cheaper
• They know someone who blindly worships Apple – which really pisses them off.

Its amazing the amount of people who cite reasons one and three, given that taken on a purely unemotional level, they make almost no sense –However, anyone who has studied why people purchase what the do knows that emotion plays a massive role in the decision making process, even if the individual would claim otherwise. In the same way people (read: me) dislike the bands they used to love as soon as they hit the mainstream, people seem to be having the same reaction with smartphones. I’d like to find a psychological study that offers a theory about this by the way, but I’d say it is more prolific now than ever before because of the level of customisation that the new OS’s offer – no phone is ever the same, it’s an extension of the ‘self’, and thus you are emotionally attached. Armchair psychology 101. Unfortunately a different theory is needed for the popularity of the iPhone.