BlackBerry Playbook

The reviews are in! Everyone is talking about the new tablet offering from R.I.M. Many are touting its size, screen resolution, and interface as excellent, but did R.I.M. rush it to market?

Early reviews are noting that the new tablet is shipping without native email, contact, BBM or calendar support... (pause) Really? A company built on providing robust email support for enterprise users is not supplying native email support in its new tablet? I thought I had seen it all... Apparently the new device can only support email, contacts, or calendars by first tethering to a BlackBerry device.

Then as I read through the reviews, I noticed something else. Without an email client constantly pinging the Blackberry Enterprise Server(BES), the Playbook battery still only gets just over seven hours of battery life...

Credit: Anandtech.com

My hypothesis is that there is an email client for the Playbook, but it will not be released at launch because it would make the battery life decrease drastically. My guess, the battery will last about 25% less than it does at this point in time.

Battery life on the Blackberry that your new Playbook is connected to is now drained even faster because it is constantly using Bluetooth to transfer data back and forth. If your Blackberry is your main mode of communication, I suggest that you buy an extended life battery.

I personally feel that the omissions were purposeful and serve to mask a battery life issue. To me, this is a rush job and needs to be fixed before coming to market.

Gmail contact "auto-save" feature now changable

Ever noticed that when you look at your contact list in Gmail, you may have over 1000 email addresses? That's because Gmail saves every person that you have ever emailed as a contact. You now have the option to change that setting. The switch for this is found in the General Tab of your settings tab. There have also been many other changes in Gmail including the following:

• Better warnings for typos in email addresses: Gmail tells you which addresses have a problem.
• Fewer error pop-ups: If you reply to messages in the Trash; Gmail will automatically move the conversation out and send the message instead of giving you an error message.
• Keyboard shortcut guide for everyone: Whether you've enabled keyboard shortcuts or not, hitting "?" shows the shortcut list overlay, and offers a quick box for turning them on.
• Refresh button: It was a link; now it's a button.

Enjoy Gmail!

Why I prefer iOS over Android

Let's be clear, there are clear differentiators in hardware, but the real question here is which platform is for YOU? Personally I prefer iOS as a platform over Android. Here is why:

1. Consistent User Interface: I can pick up my wife's iPhone today and go straight to where ever I would like to go. If I pick up my cousins ThunderBolt and then go pick up my friends ThunderBolt, there will be drastic differences between the two that will require me to relearn the OS. In addition, most apps use different kinds of interactive elements in different locations which means that with each app, you must relearn your phone. This leads me to #2.


2. Fragmentation: Not only is there fragmentation from a OS version standpoint, but also from a UI Layering standpoint. The Android source code, or skeleton, is offered to OEMs. This source code is then completed by the OEM to include their version of various apps and even core functionality such as Keyboards, Email Apps, Map viewers, etc. All this results in OEMs adding Sense, MotoBlur, Touchwiz, etc. on top of a base Android build. This also does not include the various differences hardware. Each OEM is tasked with building drivers for their device that will allow for full use of the hardware provided. A prime example of this is the Motorola Xoom tablet which HAS a MicroSD slot, but cannot UTILIZE it. What does all of this mean?

Data collected 3/15/2011 - Almost a month after Android 2.3 was released, 2.2 is still most prevalent because OEMs take their time updating the OS/UI/Drivers to the latest version for each phone.

3. Long Term Support: Since OEMs are responsible for updating their phones with their version of Android, they normally take forever to do so. These are the same OEMs that thrived in an industry that was practically built on throw away "feature phones" that are now in charge of updates for your shiny new phone. In many instances brand new phones are still shipping with year old versions of the Android OS. What is their incentive to update your device? There is a new phone out practically every quarter, so with this kind of turn around the updates will most likely stop before they ever started for the phone you just purchased three months ago. Sure you can root your device then install a custom baked ROM, but how many none power users will do that? iOS on the other hand is updated fairly regularly and my now two and a half year old phone has had the latest version of the OS from the day it was released to the public.

4. EcoSystem: The Android Ecosystem has some serious issues that will hopefully be fixed by Google's recent change in attitude. Currently 87% of Android Developers feel that fragmentation is a huge issue. The fact that there are so many processors, graphic processing units, ram amounts, etc. makes developing a "lowest common denominator" kind of game. In other words, if I purchased the latest dual-core smartphone with 1Ghz of RAM and went into the Android market to buy a game, I would not come out with a game optimized for my device. Unless Google's change in attitude toward total "openness" makes a noticable difference, the Android development community could diminish. Also hostile to developers is the ease of hacking the marketplace. If developers don't get paid, they eventually stop writing code. Simple as that.