Why Are Smartphones So Dumb?
I can’t say that I’m thrilled about my Treo 680. The best thing I can say about it, I think, is that it’s not as bad as all the other options out there. But a couple of days ago the screen got cracked and so all the thinking I’ve been doing about how to replace it has suddenly become no longer theoretical. It’s time for a new phone.
Trouble is, I have very high expectations of a handheld computing device. I got started with an Apple Newton, and despite all the legitimate criticisms of that device (as well as a bad reputation that’s largely unearned) it set the bar very high. The Newton was not just an electronic phone book and calendar, it was a handheld computing platform with a host of applications developed for it. I found it very handy to carry around a device with a word processor, spreadsheet, email, web browser, ebook reader, a time tracking/billing system for my consulting, and a few games. The thing that Apple didn’t get right with the old Newton was data synchronization. Getting it to talk to my desktop PC was never seamless. Once the platform was canceled by Apple, new software and enhancements became fewer and farther between, while software on other platforms kept on progressing, introducing incompatibilities and making staying with the Newton more difficult despite all its capabilities.
I won’t chronicle the list of handheld and portable devices I’ve had since my first Newton, but at each stage there was a real sense of compromise, that I was settling for a device that was not as complete as it could have been. I’ve settled on the Palm platform for several years now, as it has allowed me to use my handheld devices as a word processor, spreadsheet, email device and to track time and billing of my clients. My only complaint with the devices has been that the screens are a bit on the small size. Many don’t believe that a small device can be useful for such things, but I’ve had much more success writing reports, documentation, blog entries and even short stories on my Palm. The platform is simple and elegant and allows me to get to work right away and without distraction. I’ve spent a lot of hours in cafés typing on a portable keyboard or writing with a PDA stylus, being much more productive than I’ve been with a desktop or laptop computer.
I see the question frequently, either directed at me or at a proposed lightweight device: why not just get a laptop? Well, I have a laptop and it’s nowhere near as convenient as the lightweight suite of applications I had on the Palm or the Newton. Not only were these devices «instant-on» devices, software applications would load and be ready to use within a second or two at most. These people invariably point out that laptops have «sleep» or «standby» modes, but even starting up from one of those modes will take as much as five or ten seconds, and launching an application still takes just as long as it does on a desktop computer. I just tried starting Microsoft Word on my 1.07 GHz G4 iBook, and it took 15 seconds. That’s not too bad, especially for an older, slower processor. Launching Documents to Go on my Treo (which I can still do despite the cracked screen) shows Docs to Go to be one of the larger, more bloated software packages I’ve used: it takes almost two seconds to start.
That’s what the «why don’t you just get a laptop» crowd doesn’t get when they laugh off old products like the Newton or new proposals like Palm’s defunct Foleo. Laptops are big, bulky, heavy, awkward, slow machines with tremendously bloated software. I want something lightweight, mean, and lean. I know it’s possible, because I’ve used these devices. The only problem with the devices that work great is that technology has passed them by. The Palm OS, for example, is stretched to the maximum running a telephone in the Treo. It doesn’t multitask well enough to handle high-speed communications and Palm doesn’t look like they’re ever going to get it together to ever complete the next version of the OS that they’ve been promising for the last six years. Palm recently let us know that we wouldn’t see their new version until at least October of 2008.
So despite the investment I have in time, energy and software in the Palm platform, I’m unhappy enough with my Treo’s performance and unsuitability to the tasks that I got used to doing with older Palm devices (reading eBooks, writing, tracking my time for billing clients) that I don’t want to replace my Treo with another Treo.
This poses the troubling question: what else is there? There are Windows Mobile devices out there with the software support and form factor I’m looking for, but I’m prejudiced against it: I’ve used enough of the Windows CE lineage enough times not to want to try again. It’s always been a hopeful start with Microsoft’s handheld platforms, as they always look good on paper and always have people saying, «this version isn’t like the last version, they’ve fixed this, that or the other thing.» When I’ve gotten my hands on them, they’ve all been poorly designed and difficult to use. It may take only a second for the application I want to load, but getting at the application eats up another fifteen or twenty seconds, even when I’ve known how to find it. Microsoft’s design philosophy seems to be: make easy things difficult so that we look smarter than everyone else. The last PocketPC I used had built-in WiFi that I was never able to turn on. I found instructions on the Internet but they were so convoluted I gave up. There was no way to configure «networking», it was all hidden in something called «locations» and no matter what I did, it wanted a phone number for connecting to the Internet. Again, there was nothing called «connectivity» or «connections» or «LAN» or anything that might be associated with hooking up to a wireless network. It was poorly designed, badly conceived and after a few weeks of trying I gave up and gave the device away. I’ve set up networking with Windows, Macintosh, Linux, BSD, AIX and OS/2, and I’ve gotten Newton and PalmOS devices hooked up to the Internet. I’m sorry, if after two weeks and extensive googling, a guy like me can’t find the network configuration (never mind how to configure it, I couldn’t find the place to do the configuration!) then you’ve failed basic software design. With experiences like this, no matter how good the Windows Mobile devices look on paper, I have trouble bringing myself to lay down hard-earned money on one.
Blackberries are a non-starter. Third-party software for the Blackberry is scarce and doesn’t include any real good word processors or eBook readers. The screen is small enough to not be any improvement on the Treo anyhow.
I’ve been considering Nokias for a number of reasons. Nokias have always had the best sound quality to my ear; some people think that they sound tinny, but with my high-frequency hearing loss the boost in the upper range is welcomed. Nokia seems to understand that someone buying a phone marketed as a «smartphone» might want to actually use the device for something other than making calls. They’ve bundled some of their phones with a version of Documents To Go, just like Palm devices. Their e90 line flips open like a clamshell, revealing a QWERTY keyboard and an extra-widescreen display. The e61i seems to be a contender but for Symbian’s complete balkanization of their platform. No software written for one Symbian device will work with another. So while it appears at first glance that there is a wide range of software available for them, when it comes to finding software for a specific phone the field gets sparse fast. My problem with the e61i is that it will make a lousy eBook reader. There’s good reader software available, but not for any commercially available books. Sorry, I don’t want to limit my reading to the classics. In fact, the classics are the books I’m more likely to want to read on paper. It’s new stuff that I want on my handheld.
eReader did make a version for Symbian, but only for four models of phone that were discontinued six or seven years ago. This does not encourage me for the future of handheld computing.
Maybe this just means convergence hasn’t really gotten where I want it to yet and I should go back to having a separate handheld and phone, and I should let each do their thing. The problem with that is that their functions depend on one another. Do I want to have a great platform for writing emails that has no built-in connection to the Internet? I don’t think so. I did that for years, connecting through my cellphone over Bluetooth. It’s a clever enough solution, but the bottlenecks with Bluetooth slow even a fast connection to a crawl. No, I want my portable Web and email device to be connected, and since WiFi isn’t everywhere yet, that means a cellular connection.
Well, email and web in a phone, you say. Why not try the iPhone? Well, I like the iPhone, but I have some serious reservations about it. Those reservations amount to: Apple doesn’t want third parties writing software for the iPhone, and Apple doesn’t want to write new software for the iPhone. Apple appears perfectly happy with the iPhone really not being much of a smartphone. Sure, it’s got email and Web browsing, and it’s all tightly integrated with the address book and calendar, so far all is as it should be. But they are not allowing developers to write iPhone applications that do the things that I like to do with a handheld computer: no capability for reading eBooks (Apple says audiobooks ought to be good enough), and if Apple keeps going the way they have, there will never be a word processor for the iPhone, never be time-tracking or billing software so that I can clock myself in and out when I’m on site with a client, never be Pocket Quicken for the iPhone, never be add-on software for the address and calendar apps to facilitate organizational methods like GTD or 7 Habits, never be an encrypted password-storage application to keep my PINs in, never be an Athletix for the iPhone for me to keep track of my exercise plans and progress. Apple’s idea of providing a software development kit? AJAX. So I can have any of the above, as long as I find a website that provides those applications online.
There are two drawbacks to software that runs on someone else’s server: one is privacy. I don’t want to keep my password vault on someone else’s machine. Second is the dependence on connectivity. If I go out of cellphone range, that means right away I lose access to those applications I count on. Furthermore, if a software vendor goes belly-up and shuts down their servers, I lose the application that I paid for. This is not a reliable model for mission-critical apps.
Still, for someone like me, maybe the iPhone isn’t such a bad thing. With some exceptions, I could write or install software to interface with the iPhone, and I could run those applications on my own server. But that really isn’t how I want to spend my time. I want to fork over money to software developers and let them do the work. I shouldn’t have to reinvent the time tracker in order to bill my clients.
If I get the iPhone, then I’m looking at buying a Palm device to go with it. If I’m going to do that, I may as well just get a plain phone — whatever the phone company will give me for free or cheap — and supplement it with a Palm device. Apple, for shame! This is no smartphone.
So now I’m thinking I should buy an AT&T 8525 and just take real good care of it so that if Windows Mobile is still as bad as it used to be, I can take advantage of the store’s return policy. The 8525 looks like it is supposed to do what I want it to: I can get eReader for it and read on that nice big screen it has, I can use the slide-out keyboard for SMS text messaging, Iambic makes Agendus for PocketPC, SplashData can store my passwords, and while I understand Pocket Word and Pocket Excel are disappointing compared to Documents To Go, I’m sure I could make do. If I couldn’t DataViz makes Documents To Go for Windows Mobile as well. MarkSpace makes Missing Sync for Windows Mobile so I shouldn’t have to worry too much about syncing with my Mac. Pocket Quicken and BillRate should finish the package up.
As I said, it all looks good on paper, but looking at the device I feel like I’m looking at Lucy from Peanuts holding the football and telling me that this time she won’t yank it away before I can kick. Too many times I’ve been down this particular road. But maybe that is what a 30-day return policy is for.
Finally, regardless of the choice I make this time, I find it rather disappointing that we haven’t come any farther than this technologically. Most of the features and software I want on a handheld device today were on handheld devices over a decade ago. Why should they be so hard to assemble today? I’m not going to pine for the Newton here; I still have my Newton and I could use it. There are clear advancements that have been made; I just wish that we hadn’t taken so many steps back at the same time.
This is why it is a DAILY
This is why it is a DAILY ANNOYANCE to me that we don’t yet have brainjacks. I hope my son, at least, lives to see a world where he can conduct Google searches with a quick thought.