Tag: iPhone

Categories
technology

5 Reasons To Own A Smartphone

5 reasons to own smartphone - blackberry bold picture Last couple of years I spent writing a lot about smart phones – likes of Samsung BlackJack, HTC Tilt, Blackberry and even iPhone. Time has come to combine all the thoughts into bullet points, so here I present you – five reasons why you should own a smartphone.

1. You will look more professional

Yes, whether you like it or not, a person with a complicated phone looks smart. That’s one of the reasons they call it a “smartphone”. Another reason is that your phone (like most of your accessories) tell the onlookers something about you. Smartphone tells them you like to keep things in order. True or not, this brings us to

2. Smartphone makes it easier to organize your life

Just compare an address book on your regular cell phone and smart phone. Not only it is easier to type someone’s e-mail or phone on a regular alpha-numeric keyboard (though downsized) than it is on a 11-key phone pad, it is also easier to retrieve this information, view it on a larger and more convenient screen. And when it comes to managing tasks or notes – it usually takes about couple of years to find and memorize a location of task manager or note keeper. With smartp hone all these options are one or two button clicks away.

5 reasons to own smartphone - Motorolla Startac picture 3. Smartphones are a breeze when it comes to syncronizing them with your PC

Be it a Blackberry, Windows Mobile phone or even iPhone – the amount of effort needed to backup or sync your data with your PC is next to zero. Plug it in, click Sync (if even that) – you’re done. With regular cell phone – good luck figuring out which cable and software would work with your specific model.

4. More ways to get in touch

Long gone are the days when you had to keep ringing until someone picks up. With SMS, e-mails and mobile messengers if you own a smartphone – you are just a couple of keystrokes away from your friends or colleagues. Even if they can’t respond now, they’re sure to read that message, e-mail or IM – and get back to you as soon as they can. That is, of course, if they do own a comparable smartphone.

5. More ways to have fun when you have a spare time

Imagine you are on that never-ending line at the airport check-in, overcrowded downtown NYC Starbucks or just waiting for someone to show up for the meeting. With all the news, RSS channels, online music, movies and downloadable games – no line is too long. Imagine, some people are actually reading books off their smartphones (myself included) and feel good about it. My 40 minute bus ride to lower Manhattan could not be more entertainig with all the reading I’ve got.

As you can see, even the dull corporate Blackberry could be tons of fun. Come think of all the cool Samsungs, LGs or shiny HTCs coming up this year – the fun just never ends.

Categories
cellular

Blackberry vs. iPhone

RIM’s BlackBerry is the leader in the smartphone market today, but now that the iPhone 3G has become more attractive to both consumers and the enterprise, RIM needs to stop the iPhone onslaught as soon as possible.

There’s no argument about it – devices designed as business tools will work out better for business tasks then devices designed as status symbol. From my personal standpoint – the iPhone isn’t good or bad or evil – it’s just useless.

When you are indeed a business professional your tasks include sending and receiving e-mails, checking and updating schedules, going to meetings, taking notes and, possibly, sharing your thoughts with peers. While passive parts can easily be done with any device, including iPhone, the active parts, that include typing or some other kind of active interacting the Blackberry is ahead by leaps and bounds.

Instead of thoroughly analyzing let’s do the funny thing – let’s look at the way both devices are being positioned in minds of customers. In other words – what do we know about these devices from advertisings, promotions and other PR stunts.

Anything you know about the iPhone is related to entertainment – you can watch YouTube, listen to music, browse the web, run cool Apps. Any poster you can find projects iPhone as a fun cool gadget that will bring envy to your peers eventually making them go through same artificially-induced demand curve that ends with 10 days wait for shiny new thing.

Whatever you see or hear about Blackberry has nothing fancy, cool or entertaining about it. The device is much bulkier, calling it pretty would be an overstatement and it has that vibe about it that you’re connected to your job 24×7. Everything you know about Blackberry is about getting more productive on the go.

Surprised? Did’t think so. The distinct difference between the entertainment center posing as occasional work desk and work power horse occasionally serving as a music player cannot be missed.

So what’s in it for small business? Whether you need to project your status image among collegues and peers – go with the iPhone, you won’t miss. If you need to get the job done – the Blackberry should be your answer.

P.S. Neccessary disclosure: I own and alternate between Samsung Blackjack (creature very similar to Blackberry) and AT&T Tilt.

Categories
Main

Retire Your iPod

Retire Your iPod - Small Business, Marketing and Web Design BlogThere’s a little incentive these days to own an iPod, let alone any other mp3 player. For those crazy about any product Apple releases there’s an iPhone that’s just as good as an iPod plus you can call your friends when you’re not listening to music. If you own any other smart phone device (or PDA phone) than their memory – whether built-in or expandable, like memory cards, is all yours to store your tunes. There’s little – if any – reason to own any mp3 player.

As always, Apple got there first, although many people have been using PDA phone as my ultimate media player couple of years before that. Video looked just as good and you didn’t have to pay for each and every ringtone. But you’d have to use Windows Mobile for that, which is, of course, unacceptable for Apple fans. Admittedly, devices didn’t look half as sexy as iPhone.

But even since early Sony’s attempts to introduce Sony Phone Walkman (I think I have one laying around somewhere given to me by some friend) the idea of merging multimedia device and phone was in the air. As we progress in faster cellular networks, faster mobile processors and better screens (i.e. better video quality) eventually we will see a single device that’s capable of playing stored media files (video, audio), streaming from various sources, like XM satellite radio, YouTube (and its clones), various streaming services like Last.fm and Pandora. The device will be capable of taking down your notes and synchronizing with almost any popular calendar and contact application out there (including online services, like Google Calendar, Yahoo and MSN). Apparently e-mail and web browsing capabilities already in place, they’ll just be more robust and less cumbersome. That includes sync with corporate e-mail services (Exchange, Domino) as well.

The way this future device (or rather a group of devices) will greatly vary depending on the target market. For example, for hip young crowd the device will probably look overly stylish, hyper sleek, uber sexy and totally overpriced. For corporate employees it’s going to be some sort of cross between Blackberry and something that looks nice. For geeks it’ll probably either look like a HTC Shift with a twist and a handle.

Overall, the idea that you will have a unified multimedia device with phone capabilities is upon the big corps like Nokia, HTC, Sony and others. Let’s just hope they finally hire some decent designers and the next wave of such devices won’t look like Blackberry on steroids.