Dean Bubley asks an important question: why are there no apps that make real use of the WiFi on phones. I mean, why can’t I use my phone as a remote for my Squeezebox?
For quite a while I’ve been busy using a Nokia E60 lent to me by the kind folk at Truphone. It’s a great device, but with some incredibly frustrating flaws. It’s riddled with the idea that connectivity is scarce and must be rationed. Every application that opens or sits idle for a short period needs to re-affirm that it’s allowed to use the network. It’s like having a torch with an “on” button and separately having to keep pressing an “enable battery use” button. The whole damned point of these apps is to use the network! There’s no option in the application manager to over-ride it.
Then it seems to believe that my home WLAN is a precious resource and I need to be asked before accessing it. Look, folks, the data’s free! No permission needed. I hereby permit my phone to access my network as much as it likes for as long as it likes. Really, I do. I won’t sue myself for my device accessing my network. I promise.
And then I’m on the 3Gb/month T-Mobile Web’n’Walk plan. That’s a lot of data. You’d get RSI trying to download that much via Google Maps for Mobile (which is superb, BTW) — the most data-intensive thing I do. (Opera Mini is also a small marvel.) Yet it always asks me which access point to use. If I’m in the UK, the cellular data’s free too. Please, stop hassling me — it’s worse than Vista, and at least it was easy to turn off the “endlessly nag user” option there.
Until the handset makers fix the basic usability problems, I don’t see any chance of mass market WLAN apps emerging. And that means, for example, Nokia’s PC Suite taking the WLAN settings from my laptop and syncing them to the handset. I should never need to provision it twice, via triple tap.
It’s the opposite philosophy of the iPod and iPhone experience — “so damned much storage or screen estate that you’ll never care about the limits again”. Betcha the iPhone doesn’t hassle its users every move. Nokia, I’m sure “connecting people” is fun, but can you fix the “connecting phones” first?
Posted by Martin Geddes at 10:34 PMTrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.telepocalypse.net/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/mgeddes/MT/mt-tb.cgi/892.
Take a look at Devicescape, maybe that's what you are looking for:
http://mobilesociety.typepad.com/mobile_life/2007/10/devicescape-mak.html
Cheers,
Martin