Category: mobile phones

If you’re an Android fan, chances are, you’ve heard of the Samsung Galaxy S4. And surely, by Android standards, it will be a great phone, likely selling by the shedload.

I’m sure the handset is designed well. The Galaxy S3 was pretty nice looking. Heck, even the S2 wasn’t bad. Samsung keeps getting better with their high-end handsets.

How much of that know-how they learned from Apple is not really relevant. It still takes some skill to design and manufacture a quality handset.

Surely the handset is very capable. It certainly looks that way on paper with a big battery, big camera, big screen, and so on.

But I still can’t bring myself to buy an Android device. At least not while I’m on Verizon and am therefore subject to my operator deciding what firmware I get when. And I don’t necessarily want the “value” that Samsung brings with their software.

And despite the fact that the device has a bug battery, there’s not a single Samsung Galaxy S4 Case that incorporates a battery in it like the Unu case I have on my iPhone 4s. Because while I know you can change the battery on a Samsung device–at least I presume you can on this one–I’d prefer the battery to be in the case so I don’t have to disassemble my phone to extend the battery life a few more hours.

Maybe I’ll change my mind if I manage to see a functioning unit up close and personal, but for now, I’m sticking with my iPhone.

It’s a shame that Posthaven does not yet have a mobile friendly way to create blog posts. That said, I know it’s only two people recreating the service from scratch, so it’s surely somewhere on their rather long list.

I actually tried creating this post on my iPad onto one of my Posthaven-hosted blogs: PhoneBoy Says. The text entry field doesn’t seem to work in Mobile Safari all that well. I even tried using Drafts to compose it and copy-paste it into the text field. No dice.

As I said, I understand what’s happening at Posthaven so I’m willing to give them time to add the necessary functionality. My main method of creating content (podcasting) can be done on mobile devices but that is not being done on Posthaven. Depending on the feature set they ultimately implement, it may never be.

Meanwhile, the general state of content creation on mobile is not what it should be. I guess there is only so much screen real estate to work with. Or maybe mobile is not the place to do it.

I say: bollocks. Like we used to say at Nokia, the best camera is the one you have with you. Likewise, the best content creation device is the one you have with you. And more often than not, my mobile device is always with me when the mood to create strikes.

This is one reason like iOS over Android: the content creation tools in general are better on iOS. But they still have a long way to go.

And it’s not just the app makers. It’s the service providers that rely on content creation that need to make this mental shift. I’m under no delusion that everything will be created 100% by mobile devices ever, but surely the percentages will rise as more people get more capable smartphones with data plans.

Someone reminded me of one of last year’s April Fools announcements from Google: Gmail Tap. Even if it’s a fake product, it’s at least an idea of how we could potentially change how we “type” on our touch-screen smartphones. Because, let’s face it, we need a better way.

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I think I see the appeal of these larger phones like the Samsung Galaxy Note 2. Of course, they are not without their pitfalls, either.

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So let me get this straight: Robert Scoble is going to Android for Google Glass, a product that hasn’t even shipped yet? Well, I guess if you’re Robert Scoble, you can do that. The rest of us, meanwhile, buy our products based on what’s shipping today, not what will or might ship tomorrow.

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The White House says it’s time to allow we, the people to unlock our mobile phones. It’s a good first step, but it won’t solve the real problem that exists. A problem that would be solved by applying the Carterfone principal.

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Nokia may have left Symbian on the side of the road in its quest to embrace Windows Phone, but Symbian is not dead.

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