BitDepth#886 - May 21
20/05/13 20:44 Filed in: BitDepth - May 2013
Illuminating the Lumia
At a casual glance, Nokia’s new Lumia looks like a colourful, hip iPhone alternative. The device is a robust effort at reclaiming Nokia’s once robust presence among smartphone manufacturers. Photograph courtesy Nokia.
Here’s the first confusing thing about the Lumia line of phones being offered now in Trinidad and Tobago. The new phones, introduced almost exactly in sync with updated Lumia devices worldwide, carry the same names as the earlier line of phones, introduced in November 2012.
So the phone that I’m currently testing, billed as the Lumia 920 in T&T, is actually the Lumia 928 in the US being sold by Verizon. Needless to say, this is likely to cause some confusion among those keen to compare specifications between smartphones.
Correction, May 20, 2103: According to Jarrod Best-Mitchell, Nokia's territory manager for Trindad and Tobago, the Lumia 920 available exclusively from Digicel in T&T is the same model that was introduced in November 2012. The 928, which I have not personally seen, has a different design.
Anyone curious about the differences between the two models can view GSMArena's comparison here.
The indecision in the Lumia only begins with this curious decision to reuse an old model number on international versions of the phone.
Nokia’s Lumia line is a nexus of desperation, bringing together two powerful names in technology, Nokia and Microsoft, to create a phone that both hope will become a strong third alternative to the popular iPhone and the open market assault of phones based on Google’s Android operating system.
The race is on for that coveted third place between Blackberry, who have fielded a credible competitive product in the Z10 and Q10 devices, which finally give the one-time smartphone leader a fighting chance in today’s markets and Nokia and Microsoft have partnered to create something equally credible and pleasingly designed.
I’ve been seeing phones based on this OS while in development for at least two years now, usually in the hands of Microsoft’s PR people and executives and the quick demos I got then of the platform were intriguing and full of promise.
Windows Phone 8, the operating system that Microsoft developed for this refreshed charge to the forefront of the smartphone race, will be immediately familiar to anyone who has worked with Windows 8.
It’s a lot like Windows RT scaled down for a phone, except for the fact that it actually isn’t. There’s an apps platform based on tiles capable of displaying information as well as launching software.
There’s no old Windows code, either developed for the phone or the desktop OS lurking under the slick graphics, and that represents a commitment that Microsoft hasn’t demonstrated with its ambivalent Windows 8 desktop and tablet software.
On phones, as with WinRT, it’s all tiled apps all the time and here’s where things get seriously odd. Software developed for the Modern UI, which looks exactly like the tiled software on Windows Phone 8, isn't platform compatible. Developers must recode and recompile apps developed for the desktop OS to run on the new Windows Phone platform.
This puzzled me enough at last year’s launch of the new OS that I cross-examine the point during a Q&A in Mexico (read It’s all about the apps here). Wunderlist, for instance, one of the apps I consider critical to my mobile experience is under development for Windows RT and a phone app will get done after that.
This bit of developer-level clumsiness aside, both Microsoft and Nokia have knocked themselves out to create a strong smartphone contender. Developers will want to look at this article, which details which bits of code are portable between the platforms and what's not.
As a piece of hardware, the Lumia is a slick piece of work. The polycarbonate shell has a slick, classy finish that looks more like finely painted metal than plastic. There’s an inductive charger available for the phone, which only adds to the general feel of sleekness.
The dual-core Qualcomm Krait processor is snappy, and the devices are generously kitted with flash storage, the 920/928 shipping with 32GB of storage.
This turns out to be crucial, because the Lumia line of phones are sealed boxes. You can change the SIM, but there’s no slot for an SD card, and you can’t change the battery. One puzzling choice in the limited real estate of a smartphone’s screen is the inclusion of a hardcoded search icon for Bing right where the back/return button is on Android.
I can’t think of a single time when I’ve tapped that button intending to search for anything, but it’s come up often through accidental muscle memory presses. Apart from that odd (or is it clever?) design decision, the agreeable handling of the phone suggests that Microsoft and Nokia have managed to come up with a distinctive alternative treatment to the iPhone’s design.
At a casual glance, Nokia’s new Lumia looks like a colourful, hip iPhone alternative. The device is a robust effort at reclaiming Nokia’s once robust presence among smartphone manufacturers. Photograph courtesy Nokia.
Here’s the first confusing thing about the Lumia line of phones being offered now in Trinidad and Tobago. The new phones, introduced almost exactly in sync with updated Lumia devices worldwide, carry the same names as the earlier line of phones, introduced in November 2012.
Correction, May 20, 2103: According to Jarrod Best-Mitchell, Nokia's territory manager for Trindad and Tobago, the Lumia 920 available exclusively from Digicel in T&T is the same model that was introduced in November 2012. The 928, which I have not personally seen, has a different design.
Anyone curious about the differences between the two models can view GSMArena's comparison here.
The indecision in the Lumia only begins with this curious decision to reuse an old model number on international versions of the phone.
Nokia’s Lumia line is a nexus of desperation, bringing together two powerful names in technology, Nokia and Microsoft, to create a phone that both hope will become a strong third alternative to the popular iPhone and the open market assault of phones based on Google’s Android operating system.
The race is on for that coveted third place between Blackberry, who have fielded a credible competitive product in the Z10 and Q10 devices, which finally give the one-time smartphone leader a fighting chance in today’s markets and Nokia and Microsoft have partnered to create something equally credible and pleasingly designed.
I’ve been seeing phones based on this OS while in development for at least two years now, usually in the hands of Microsoft’s PR people and executives and the quick demos I got then of the platform were intriguing and full of promise.
Windows Phone 8, the operating system that Microsoft developed for this refreshed charge to the forefront of the smartphone race, will be immediately familiar to anyone who has worked with Windows 8.
It’s a lot like Windows RT scaled down for a phone, except for the fact that it actually isn’t. There’s an apps platform based on tiles capable of displaying information as well as launching software.
There’s no old Windows code, either developed for the phone or the desktop OS lurking under the slick graphics, and that represents a commitment that Microsoft hasn’t demonstrated with its ambivalent Windows 8 desktop and tablet software.
On phones, as with WinRT, it’s all tiled apps all the time and here’s where things get seriously odd. Software developed for the Modern UI, which looks exactly like the tiled software on Windows Phone 8, isn't platform compatible. Developers must recode and recompile apps developed for the desktop OS to run on the new Windows Phone platform.
This puzzled me enough at last year’s launch of the new OS that I cross-examine the point during a Q&A in Mexico (read It’s all about the apps here). Wunderlist, for instance, one of the apps I consider critical to my mobile experience is under development for Windows RT and a phone app will get done after that.
This bit of developer-level clumsiness aside, both Microsoft and Nokia have knocked themselves out to create a strong smartphone contender. Developers will want to look at this article, which details which bits of code are portable between the platforms and what's not.
As a piece of hardware, the Lumia is a slick piece of work. The polycarbonate shell has a slick, classy finish that looks more like finely painted metal than plastic. There’s an inductive charger available for the phone, which only adds to the general feel of sleekness.
The dual-core Qualcomm Krait processor is snappy, and the devices are generously kitted with flash storage, the 920/928 shipping with 32GB of storage.
This turns out to be crucial, because the Lumia line of phones are sealed boxes. You can change the SIM, but there’s no slot for an SD card, and you can’t change the battery. One puzzling choice in the limited real estate of a smartphone’s screen is the inclusion of a hardcoded search icon for Bing right where the back/return button is on Android.
I can’t think of a single time when I’ve tapped that button intending to search for anything, but it’s come up often through accidental muscle memory presses. Apart from that odd (or is it clever?) design decision, the agreeable handling of the phone suggests that Microsoft and Nokia have managed to come up with a distinctive alternative treatment to the iPhone’s design.
Comments
BitDepth#885 - May 14
13/05/13 23:17 Filed in: BitDepth - May 2013
Digital distribution dilemma
Kelli Richards speaks at NAPA. Photograph by Mark Lyndersay.
On May 07, Kelli Richards, President and CEO of The All Access Group presented the second of several local talks on digital distribution at the UTT Campus at NAPA.
Richards began working in digital distxribution at Apple in 1987, back when all online distribution of music and video was illegal.
At NAPA, speaking as a guest of COTT and hosted in T&T by the US Embassy of Trinidad and Tobago, her talk was focused on music, but also covered film, e-books and perhaps most usefully, the need for artists to become far more engaged in online marketing as a critical component of their success strategy.
The digital distribution entrepreneur began with Patronet, an early experiment with the direct to fan business model.
“You must see your creative work as a business,” she warned the musicians at the COTT event, “and you must see yourself as a brand.”
Crowdfunding, a growing source of capital, she noted, was just “one spoke in the direct to fan wheel.”
Artists who chose crowdfunding to access capital for their projects should be careful to choose their outlets and to review their business arrangements. Kickstarter, for instance, is all or nothing, and takes a two to five per cent cut of the take. IndieGoGo allows artists to keep all the money that’s pledged, but takes nine per cent of a missed goal and four percent if you get all the money you’ve asked for.
But crowdfunding isn’t just post it and hope, artists need to be willing to keep pitching the project and keeping their marketing ongoing. One good example of a crowdfunding break out of perks is here: http://ow.ly/kWqyS.
For musicians, Richards suggests a regularly updated presence on Bandcamp, Soundcloud, MySpace, Twitter and Facebook.
“Post as much as music as you can,” she advised.
“Post a video. Share and update as much as possible, as often as possible.”
For musicians and audio recording artists, her advice was quite specific. If you charge, make sure the product is of the highest possible quality. If it isn’t, it might be better to just give it away.
Surprised at the hesitation to engage online in so many of the young artistes coming to the microphone at NAPA, I followed up with Victoria Trestrail, a young folk rock singer who asked some particularly pointed questions at the talk.
Trestrail, who has a presence on Reverbnation where you can hear her work and view her videos (http://ow.ly/kWr3q), has placed three of her songs in five episodes of the quirky web comedy The Louise Log and joined the team to see the results of their nomination The Shorty Awards in Manhattan in April.
Victoria Trestrail first tried working with local musicians, but she says, “It didn’t work out. I went international, and I was appreciated.”
In 2009, Trinidadian Rishi Ramlagan, aka Snakeman, reached out to her on Facebook after hearing one of her songs and produced three of her more successful works, Johnny’s Fool, Steady Now and The Essentials.
Steady Now earned an Honourable Mention in the 2010 Billboard World Song contest and been featured in the Facebook app Hit or Not.
“I consider myself a songwriter that sings,” Trestrail wrote in response to emailed questions, “but I write for other artistes as well”
Richards’advice distilled...
Be available.
Own your online presence.
Know your audience and market.
Gauge your expectations.
Invest in the product, make it polished and professional
Sometimes it’s wiser to give it away for free.
Connect with the world.
Engage with your audience and produce work.
Adapt and evolve. Keep yourself relevant.
There’s no right path to success.
Related: BitDepth#349, An open letter to Orange Sky.
Kelli Richards speaks at NAPA. Photograph by Mark Lyndersay.
On May 07, Kelli Richards, President and CEO of The All Access Group presented the second of several local talks on digital distribution at the UTT Campus at NAPA.
Richards began working in digital distxribution at Apple in 1987, back when all online distribution of music and video was illegal.
At NAPA, speaking as a guest of COTT and hosted in T&T by the US Embassy of Trinidad and Tobago, her talk was focused on music, but also covered film, e-books and perhaps most usefully, the need for artists to become far more engaged in online marketing as a critical component of their success strategy.
The digital distribution entrepreneur began with Patronet, an early experiment with the direct to fan business model.
“You must see your creative work as a business,” she warned the musicians at the COTT event, “and you must see yourself as a brand.”
Crowdfunding, a growing source of capital, she noted, was just “one spoke in the direct to fan wheel.”
Artists who chose crowdfunding to access capital for their projects should be careful to choose their outlets and to review their business arrangements. Kickstarter, for instance, is all or nothing, and takes a two to five per cent cut of the take. IndieGoGo allows artists to keep all the money that’s pledged, but takes nine per cent of a missed goal and four percent if you get all the money you’ve asked for.
But crowdfunding isn’t just post it and hope, artists need to be willing to keep pitching the project and keeping their marketing ongoing. One good example of a crowdfunding break out of perks is here: http://ow.ly/kWqyS.
For musicians, Richards suggests a regularly updated presence on Bandcamp, Soundcloud, MySpace, Twitter and Facebook.
“Post as much as music as you can,” she advised.
“Post a video. Share and update as much as possible, as often as possible.”
For musicians and audio recording artists, her advice was quite specific. If you charge, make sure the product is of the highest possible quality. If it isn’t, it might be better to just give it away.
Surprised at the hesitation to engage online in so many of the young artistes coming to the microphone at NAPA, I followed up with Victoria Trestrail, a young folk rock singer who asked some particularly pointed questions at the talk.
Trestrail, who has a presence on Reverbnation where you can hear her work and view her videos (http://ow.ly/kWr3q), has placed three of her songs in five episodes of the quirky web comedy The Louise Log and joined the team to see the results of their nomination The Shorty Awards in Manhattan in April.
Victoria Trestrail first tried working with local musicians, but she says, “It didn’t work out. I went international, and I was appreciated.”
In 2009, Trinidadian Rishi Ramlagan, aka Snakeman, reached out to her on Facebook after hearing one of her songs and produced three of her more successful works, Johnny’s Fool, Steady Now and The Essentials.
Steady Now earned an Honourable Mention in the 2010 Billboard World Song contest and been featured in the Facebook app Hit or Not.
“I consider myself a songwriter that sings,” Trestrail wrote in response to emailed questions, “but I write for other artistes as well”
Richards’advice distilled...
Be available.
Own your online presence.
Know your audience and market.
Gauge your expectations.
Invest in the product, make it polished and professional
Sometimes it’s wiser to give it away for free.
Connect with the world.
Engage with your audience and produce work.
Adapt and evolve. Keep yourself relevant.
There’s no right path to success.
Related: BitDepth#349, An open letter to Orange Sky.
BitDepth#349 -August 2002
13/05/13 22:58 Filed in: BitDepth+
Dear Orange Sky...
BitDepth#349 was originally published in August 2002 in the tabloid newspaper, The Wire.
So far, you boys have done everything right. You’ve created great music and performing it with energy and enthusiasm, fed the media with a steady stream of free CDs, some of which seem to change weekly. You’ve worked the circuit, playing the big clubs, the small clubs and the large closets.
You’ve built a serious, committed following that loves your music, will travel to hear you play and talks about your work as if it were the most important thing in their lives.
Now it’s time to take the next big step, and all the big rock biographies say that’s hooking up with a major label and bringing your music to the world. Well, I’m a fan and I’m here to tell you that they are wrong. Hooking up with a big label will be the death of you and this is why.
In a brilliant dissection of the recording industry as it exists today on the website Salon, Courtney Love, sometime actress, widow of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain and leader of the rock band Hole, explains just where those huge advances that get paid to bands go.
In Love’s brutal math (see Courtney’s math, below), a new band with a hit record earns nothing. This is the math that allows record companies to spend US$45m lobbying against online music distribution while simultaneously telling artists that they have no money.
At the height of his popularity, Prince would appear on stage with the word “slave” written on his cheek. Acts like Destiny’s Child and Toni Braxton, at the peak of their careers, declare bankruptcy. It isn’t because they spend money carelessly or smoke crack. It’s because their contracts are draconian and the only escape is the humiliation of acknowledging that they are broke.
Which brings me to the point of my letter.
Recently, the RIAA sneaked a clause into a revision of copyright law that essentially makes recorded works produced for a label "works made for hire". They have also worked to ensure that the copyright in recorded works will not pass on to your heirs.
There’s another way, and it has big recording companies scared. It’s based on the best elements of the Internet, and it’s only going to grow as bands get smarter and the web gets faster. A website has a one to many ones relationship that is unique in the history of artist-fan interactions. An Internet presence brings information, value and intimacy to the people who listen to you. Web word beats the best artist’s relations executives cold.
But you can’t do this halfway. You have to decide that you’re going to conquer the world one byte at a time and change your thinking from the big deal that makes you famous to the one million little deals that will make you famous and rich.
You’ve got to sample your work with web audiences, post clips of your concerts and videos, offer downloadable photos and biographies and sell the hell out of your CDs either on your own or through a retailer that’s sympathetic to small shops like PayPal and the Amazon Z-shop system.
You have to do this because the recording industry is Miss Havisham’s wedding cake. It looks pretty, but it’s old, stale and rotten to the core.
There is clear evidence that music traded on the Internet gets people interested in new bands, and buying CDs for music they won’t normally hear on the radio but big music doesn’t want to know about that. They want every song that gets played to register as a coin in their slot and to protect that river of cash, they will destroy the experience of listening to music to do it with “altered CDs” that won’t play in some players and computer systems.
The recording industry didn’t want reel to reel recorders, cassette recorders or DAT tape. Hell, they objected to listening booths in record stores on the premise that people would listen for free.
Have faith in your music and your fans. Make your money touring, selling quality merchandise and autographed CDs. Retire rich and happy, bouncing your grandchildren on your knee, boring them with road stories and let Sony, Warner and BMG find somebody else to cornhole.
Courtney’s math
• Band gets $1m advance on sales and 20% royalty on unit sales (generous).
• Band pays $100,000 for manager’s 10% commission, $25,000 each for layer and business manager, splits difference for living expenses, less tax.
• Band releases two singles and two videos ($500,000), pays for “radio promotion costs” ($300,000) and tour ($200,000).
• Riding a smash hit, the band sells one million CDs, earning $2m. Record company takes back the money the band owes them ($2m), makes $4m in profit. Band earns zero.
Janis Ian’s arguments against big label representation summarised
• The normal industry contract is for seven albums with no end date
• A label can refuse an album if they decide, using their own criteria, that the material is “commercially or artistically unacceptable”.
• The Controlled Composition Clause demands that singer-songwriters agree to be paid 75% of what the US Congress has demanded that labels pay.
• Since 1960, songwriter royalties have risen from US$.02 to 8 cents. Songwriters with hits from the 1960’s still get 2 cents.
• The label owns your voice as well as your product. If an album goes out of print, it dies if the label refuses to reissue it.
• America (unlike Europe, Japan and Australia) does not pay performance royalties to songwriters.
BitDepth#349 was originally published in August 2002 in the tabloid newspaper, The Wire.
So far, you boys have done everything right. You’ve created great music and performing it with energy and enthusiasm, fed the media with a steady stream of free CDs, some of which seem to change weekly. You’ve worked the circuit, playing the big clubs, the small clubs and the large closets.
You’ve built a serious, committed following that loves your music, will travel to hear you play and talks about your work as if it were the most important thing in their lives.
Now it’s time to take the next big step, and all the big rock biographies say that’s hooking up with a major label and bringing your music to the world. Well, I’m a fan and I’m here to tell you that they are wrong. Hooking up with a big label will be the death of you and this is why.
In a brilliant dissection of the recording industry as it exists today on the website Salon, Courtney Love, sometime actress, widow of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain and leader of the rock band Hole, explains just where those huge advances that get paid to bands go.
In Love’s brutal math (see Courtney’s math, below), a new band with a hit record earns nothing. This is the math that allows record companies to spend US$45m lobbying against online music distribution while simultaneously telling artists that they have no money.
At the height of his popularity, Prince would appear on stage with the word “slave” written on his cheek. Acts like Destiny’s Child and Toni Braxton, at the peak of their careers, declare bankruptcy. It isn’t because they spend money carelessly or smoke crack. It’s because their contracts are draconian and the only escape is the humiliation of acknowledging that they are broke.
Which brings me to the point of my letter.
Recently, the RIAA sneaked a clause into a revision of copyright law that essentially makes recorded works produced for a label "works made for hire". They have also worked to ensure that the copyright in recorded works will not pass on to your heirs.
There’s another way, and it has big recording companies scared. It’s based on the best elements of the Internet, and it’s only going to grow as bands get smarter and the web gets faster. A website has a one to many ones relationship that is unique in the history of artist-fan interactions. An Internet presence brings information, value and intimacy to the people who listen to you. Web word beats the best artist’s relations executives cold.
But you can’t do this halfway. You have to decide that you’re going to conquer the world one byte at a time and change your thinking from the big deal that makes you famous to the one million little deals that will make you famous and rich.
You’ve got to sample your work with web audiences, post clips of your concerts and videos, offer downloadable photos and biographies and sell the hell out of your CDs either on your own or through a retailer that’s sympathetic to small shops like PayPal and the Amazon Z-shop system.
You have to do this because the recording industry is Miss Havisham’s wedding cake. It looks pretty, but it’s old, stale and rotten to the core.
There is clear evidence that music traded on the Internet gets people interested in new bands, and buying CDs for music they won’t normally hear on the radio but big music doesn’t want to know about that. They want every song that gets played to register as a coin in their slot and to protect that river of cash, they will destroy the experience of listening to music to do it with “altered CDs” that won’t play in some players and computer systems.
The recording industry didn’t want reel to reel recorders, cassette recorders or DAT tape. Hell, they objected to listening booths in record stores on the premise that people would listen for free.
Have faith in your music and your fans. Make your money touring, selling quality merchandise and autographed CDs. Retire rich and happy, bouncing your grandchildren on your knee, boring them with road stories and let Sony, Warner and BMG find somebody else to cornhole.
Courtney’s math
• Band gets $1m advance on sales and 20% royalty on unit sales (generous).
• Band pays $100,000 for manager’s 10% commission, $25,000 each for layer and business manager, splits difference for living expenses, less tax.
• Band releases two singles and two videos ($500,000), pays for “radio promotion costs” ($300,000) and tour ($200,000).
• Riding a smash hit, the band sells one million CDs, earning $2m. Record company takes back the money the band owes them ($2m), makes $4m in profit. Band earns zero.
Janis Ian’s arguments against big label representation summarised
• The normal industry contract is for seven albums with no end date
• A label can refuse an album if they decide, using their own criteria, that the material is “commercially or artistically unacceptable”.
• The Controlled Composition Clause demands that singer-songwriters agree to be paid 75% of what the US Congress has demanded that labels pay.
• Since 1960, songwriter royalties have risen from US$.02 to 8 cents. Songwriters with hits from the 1960’s still get 2 cents.
• The label owns your voice as well as your product. If an album goes out of print, it dies if the label refuses to reissue it.
• America (unlike Europe, Japan and Australia) does not pay performance royalties to songwriters.
BitDepth#884 - May 07
06/05/13 21:39 Filed in: BitDepth - May 2013
Sussing out the S4
A comparison of a quick snapshot of Port of Spain taken in standard auto mode (bottom) and in the new and thankfully subtle HDR mode (top) which merges multiple exposures to expand the dynamic range. Expect more on the advanced photographic features of the S4 in a future column. Photographs by Mark Lyndersay.
With this new release, the fourth in Samsung’s flagship S series phones that I’ve tested for this column the new S4 stands out as by far the best version.
Any consideration of this smartphone line is also, necessarily, a referendum on the state of Android development as well, since Samsung tends to dress the version of Google’s OS it uses pretty lightly on its phones.
Most of the device unique tweaks are user interface flourishes that don’t drift very far from a stock Android release, at version 4.2.2 on release for this new phone.
From its lock screen, Samsung offers its opening salvo of style, replacing the default ripple, already a charming effect on the S3, with a Star Trek style scatter of light that follows your finger as you sweep it across the screen to unlock to your home screen (the ripple is now an option).
What it reveals, though, is pretty standard and in some ways, annoying.
Samsung has ramped up the number of free apps it bundles with the S4, some of which seem useful or at least promising, like SHealth, which uses the phone’s internal gyros to count steps and STranslate, which may well prove to be a killer app for occasional travellers, but there are also five games, at least three of which seem designed to occupy children, but nothing genuinely and immediately useful like, say, QuickOffice.
This wouldn’t be a problem if the software, far more than it’s ever bundled on a phone before, wasn’t hardwired to the device and can’t be removed by casual user intervention.
There seems to be no good reason why a user isn’t allowed to dump these non-crucial apps and then restore them to the phone via a web reset to prepare the device for resale or interfamily pass-along.
I mention this because it now takes me “new computer” time to prepare a smartphone for day to day use, downloading, customising and password activating the small blizzard of apps that form part of my mobile computing experience.
It took me five hours to prepare and organise the 27 apps I run on an Android smartphone, down one now that Samsung bundles DropBox with the S4.
For an iPhone user, this is a laughable number of apps. I’ve seen casual users of Apple’s smartphones with ten screens worth of software icons, after all.
But this is software that I consider mission critical, without which my phone becomes dramatically less useful. The Android system of a holding bay for apps which you then promote to the six active screens on the device goes some distance in helping to organise a large collection, but there’s a part of me that’s just annoyed at seeing so many apps I have no use for and can’t get rid of.
The S4 is a sleek little number, slightly thinner and taller than the S3 with a gorgeous screen that seems to run right to the left and right edges of the device, though there’s a tiny sliver of border actually there. Everything pops on it. Icons, photos, video. Everything.
The phone is light, and even though Samsung still makes the back cover of this premium phone out of plastic, the new finish is more dignified than the barebones, adamantly plastic feel of the S3’s cover.
There’s a new software mini dock that slides out from the left where you can access a pool of Google developed apps (no option for third party software here) that you can turn off if you find it annoying (I did).
Problems were minimal. One widget I use to monitor an analytics package on my website, ballooned graphically on the new pixel rich screen (now 441 pixels per inch) and the mail app has developed a settings quirk which makes it impossible to access my domain’s e-mail server (the software won’t allow me to add my ISP’s username schema).
The S4 is palpably faster at everything. Software launches fluidly and in a curious turn, some user interface flourishes seem designed to make the interface move just a bit more slowly and gracefully.
The S4 is an incremental improvement over the S3. Owners of the previous model may want to upgrade if screen quality and processor speed will improve their user experience, and users looking for a new smartphone will find the S4 to be a robust competitor in a suddenly quite crowded local market for handheld computing devices.
A comparison of a quick snapshot of Port of Spain taken in standard auto mode (bottom) and in the new and thankfully subtle HDR mode (top) which merges multiple exposures to expand the dynamic range. Expect more on the advanced photographic features of the S4 in a future column. Photographs by Mark Lyndersay.
With this new release, the fourth in Samsung’s flagship S series phones that I’ve tested for this column the new S4 stands out as by far the best version.
Any consideration of this smartphone line is also, necessarily, a referendum on the state of Android development as well, since Samsung tends to dress the version of Google’s OS it uses pretty lightly on its phones.
Most of the device unique tweaks are user interface flourishes that don’t drift very far from a stock Android release, at version 4.2.2 on release for this new phone.
From its lock screen, Samsung offers its opening salvo of style, replacing the default ripple, already a charming effect on the S3, with a Star Trek style scatter of light that follows your finger as you sweep it across the screen to unlock to your home screen (the ripple is now an option).
What it reveals, though, is pretty standard and in some ways, annoying.
Samsung has ramped up the number of free apps it bundles with the S4, some of which seem useful or at least promising, like SHealth, which uses the phone’s internal gyros to count steps and STranslate, which may well prove to be a killer app for occasional travellers, but there are also five games, at least three of which seem designed to occupy children, but nothing genuinely and immediately useful like, say, QuickOffice.
This wouldn’t be a problem if the software, far more than it’s ever bundled on a phone before, wasn’t hardwired to the device and can’t be removed by casual user intervention.
There seems to be no good reason why a user isn’t allowed to dump these non-crucial apps and then restore them to the phone via a web reset to prepare the device for resale or interfamily pass-along.
I mention this because it now takes me “new computer” time to prepare a smartphone for day to day use, downloading, customising and password activating the small blizzard of apps that form part of my mobile computing experience.
It took me five hours to prepare and organise the 27 apps I run on an Android smartphone, down one now that Samsung bundles DropBox with the S4.
For an iPhone user, this is a laughable number of apps. I’ve seen casual users of Apple’s smartphones with ten screens worth of software icons, after all.
But this is software that I consider mission critical, without which my phone becomes dramatically less useful. The Android system of a holding bay for apps which you then promote to the six active screens on the device goes some distance in helping to organise a large collection, but there’s a part of me that’s just annoyed at seeing so many apps I have no use for and can’t get rid of.
The S4 is a sleek little number, slightly thinner and taller than the S3 with a gorgeous screen that seems to run right to the left and right edges of the device, though there’s a tiny sliver of border actually there. Everything pops on it. Icons, photos, video. Everything.
The phone is light, and even though Samsung still makes the back cover of this premium phone out of plastic, the new finish is more dignified than the barebones, adamantly plastic feel of the S3’s cover.
There’s a new software mini dock that slides out from the left where you can access a pool of Google developed apps (no option for third party software here) that you can turn off if you find it annoying (I did).
Problems were minimal. One widget I use to monitor an analytics package on my website, ballooned graphically on the new pixel rich screen (now 441 pixels per inch) and the mail app has developed a settings quirk which makes it impossible to access my domain’s e-mail server (the software won’t allow me to add my ISP’s username schema).
The S4 is palpably faster at everything. Software launches fluidly and in a curious turn, some user interface flourishes seem designed to make the interface move just a bit more slowly and gracefully.
The S4 is an incremental improvement over the S3. Owners of the previous model may want to upgrade if screen quality and processor speed will improve their user experience, and users looking for a new smartphone will find the S4 to be a robust competitor in a suddenly quite crowded local market for handheld computing devices.
BitDepth#883 - April 30
29/04/13 20:18 Filed in: BitDepth - April 2013
Getting smart about phones
Samsung executives demonstrate the S4 to the media at Prime Restaurant after the launch of the new product. Photograph by Mark Lyndersay.
This week, two major manufacturers of popular smartphones launched the newest versions of their flagship devices in Trinidad and Tobago.
Blackberry, the company formerly known as RIM, introduced their new touchscreen device, the Z10 on Wednesday, and Samsung offered the fourth iteration of their premium “S” series smartphones the day before.
Add in the iPhone 5 and Windows Phone and the question that inevitably arises, normally while I’m contemplating cornflakes brands at the grocery, is “Which phone should I buy?”
Normally, I try to weasel out of such direct questions by waffling about personal choices, but the market has matured to the point that there are some questions that every buyer should be asking themselves.
Curiously, what needs to be considered has very little to do with what people normally use phones for, which is making calls. You can do that for far less with cheaper devices, and the considerations involved in choosing have more to do with computing than with talking and texting.
It will surprise nobody that the current market is a straight fight between the iPhone and Samsung’s devices, which is to say it’s a choice between iOS and Android, the operating systems underlying these phones.
In the US, iOS grabbed 53 per cent of the market with Android running a strong second with 41.9 per cent of smartphone sales. In Europe that inverts to 61 per cent for Android and 25 per cent for iOS.
I’ve used both for some time and while I’ve been using an S3 for the last eight months, I also handle the IT chores on the household management’s iPad and iPhone.
Android may be coming on strong as an operating system and developer platform, but it remains in the shadow of iOS, which delivers better looking apps across a wider range of disciplines. I’ve griped long and hard about the difficulties I’ve had finding a good word processor and slideshow app for my images on Android, both of which I consider mission critical. I was spoiled for choice for both on iOS.
For most users, the most important apps are not only available on both platforms, they are almost identical in function. If you jump between browsing, e-mail, Facebook and Twitter, either iOS and Android will serve you equally well.
Where they differ though, is in end-user experience. Getting apps from Apple is an easy, fluid experience, but even after significant work on improving its interface, Google’s Play Store still feels like a frontier town. Software curation also seems less strict there.
I visited a free template based app development site (appyet.com), plugged in the information I wanted and had software for a buddy’s news site up on the Play store less than an hour after paying the US$25 developer fee.
You’d think that this would mean that iOS is a better option, but some interesting Apple fatigue is setting in lately. The company’s iPhones, which work well and are quite extensible, are now seen by the hip and thrillseeking as dull. It’s the boredom of seamless functionality that reached its zenith in the work of Dieter Rams.
Android, in contrast, is seen as exciting, adventurous and innovative, the phones, more feature rich.
But what’s really happening here?
On Tuesday, Samsung executives at Prime were keen to show off all the new features of the S4, but almost everything that was featured was implemented through software developed by the company to distinguish the new device.
It’s growing harder to separate phones on the basis of hardware. Fast processors, pixel-rich screens and other features tend to be replicate quickly in this competitive environment and it will eventually come down to what a phone can do for its user.
Apple’s iPhone, out of the box, is pretty basic. It’s only when users begin to add apps and kit their phone out that it becomes a truly personal computing device. Just imagine what might happen if Apple discovered that the world doesn’t, in fact, end at the Florida Keys.
Casual smartphone users will be pleased by the additional features offered by Samsung’s new S4 and Blackberry’s Z10, though tech savvy purchasers will be annoyed that they usually can’t get rid of these apps if they don’t care for them.
There was a word for this type of thing when it got out of control on cheap PCs, and that word is crapware. With any luck, we’ll see less of it in the future on these handheld computers.
Blackberry and Microsoft, once the leaders in smartphones and computing software respectively are the marginal players in this fast growing sector and need to decide fast which model they plan to align with.
At the March 2013 Mobile World Congress, Microsoft VP for Windows Phone Terry Myerson announced that Windows Phone was beating the iPhone in seven markets and Blackberry in 26. Unfortunately, none of these markets are major metropolitan countries.
Smartphone customers haven’t begun to factor this new reality of software customisation into their purchases, but it’s going to be the next distinguishing factor in the marketing of devices to increasingly savvy users.
Samsung executives demonstrate the S4 to the media at Prime Restaurant after the launch of the new product. Photograph by Mark Lyndersay.
This week, two major manufacturers of popular smartphones launched the newest versions of their flagship devices in Trinidad and Tobago.
Blackberry, the company formerly known as RIM, introduced their new touchscreen device, the Z10 on Wednesday, and Samsung offered the fourth iteration of their premium “S” series smartphones the day before.
Add in the iPhone 5 and Windows Phone and the question that inevitably arises, normally while I’m contemplating cornflakes brands at the grocery, is “Which phone should I buy?”
Normally, I try to weasel out of such direct questions by waffling about personal choices, but the market has matured to the point that there are some questions that every buyer should be asking themselves.
Curiously, what needs to be considered has very little to do with what people normally use phones for, which is making calls. You can do that for far less with cheaper devices, and the considerations involved in choosing have more to do with computing than with talking and texting.
It will surprise nobody that the current market is a straight fight between the iPhone and Samsung’s devices, which is to say it’s a choice between iOS and Android, the operating systems underlying these phones.
In the US, iOS grabbed 53 per cent of the market with Android running a strong second with 41.9 per cent of smartphone sales. In Europe that inverts to 61 per cent for Android and 25 per cent for iOS.
I’ve used both for some time and while I’ve been using an S3 for the last eight months, I also handle the IT chores on the household management’s iPad and iPhone.
Android may be coming on strong as an operating system and developer platform, but it remains in the shadow of iOS, which delivers better looking apps across a wider range of disciplines. I’ve griped long and hard about the difficulties I’ve had finding a good word processor and slideshow app for my images on Android, both of which I consider mission critical. I was spoiled for choice for both on iOS.
For most users, the most important apps are not only available on both platforms, they are almost identical in function. If you jump between browsing, e-mail, Facebook and Twitter, either iOS and Android will serve you equally well.
Where they differ though, is in end-user experience. Getting apps from Apple is an easy, fluid experience, but even after significant work on improving its interface, Google’s Play Store still feels like a frontier town. Software curation also seems less strict there.
I visited a free template based app development site (appyet.com), plugged in the information I wanted and had software for a buddy’s news site up on the Play store less than an hour after paying the US$25 developer fee.
You’d think that this would mean that iOS is a better option, but some interesting Apple fatigue is setting in lately. The company’s iPhones, which work well and are quite extensible, are now seen by the hip and thrillseeking as dull. It’s the boredom of seamless functionality that reached its zenith in the work of Dieter Rams.
Android, in contrast, is seen as exciting, adventurous and innovative, the phones, more feature rich.
But what’s really happening here?
On Tuesday, Samsung executives at Prime were keen to show off all the new features of the S4, but almost everything that was featured was implemented through software developed by the company to distinguish the new device.
It’s growing harder to separate phones on the basis of hardware. Fast processors, pixel-rich screens and other features tend to be replicate quickly in this competitive environment and it will eventually come down to what a phone can do for its user.
Apple’s iPhone, out of the box, is pretty basic. It’s only when users begin to add apps and kit their phone out that it becomes a truly personal computing device. Just imagine what might happen if Apple discovered that the world doesn’t, in fact, end at the Florida Keys.
Casual smartphone users will be pleased by the additional features offered by Samsung’s new S4 and Blackberry’s Z10, though tech savvy purchasers will be annoyed that they usually can’t get rid of these apps if they don’t care for them.
There was a word for this type of thing when it got out of control on cheap PCs, and that word is crapware. With any luck, we’ll see less of it in the future on these handheld computers.
Blackberry and Microsoft, once the leaders in smartphones and computing software respectively are the marginal players in this fast growing sector and need to decide fast which model they plan to align with.
At the March 2013 Mobile World Congress, Microsoft VP for Windows Phone Terry Myerson announced that Windows Phone was beating the iPhone in seven markets and Blackberry in 26. Unfortunately, none of these markets are major metropolitan countries.
Smartphone customers haven’t begun to factor this new reality of software customisation into their purchases, but it’s going to be the next distinguishing factor in the marketing of devices to increasingly savvy users.
BitDepth#882 - April 23
22/04/13 22:41 Filed in: BitDepth - April 2013
At CDX2, issues related to government and big data formed a major part of the discussions. Some of the key topics are reported here. Click here to read more...
BitDepth#881 - April 16
15/04/13 20:48 Filed in: BitDepth - April 2013
At the second Caribbean Digital Expo, the discussions were about content and hard metrics. Click here to read more...
BitDepth#880 - April 09
08/04/13 21:53 Filed in: BitDepth - April 2013
Evernote is a great tool to capture notes and synchronize them across platforms, but writers may find it a useful tool for working in workgroups and on multiple devices. Click here to read more...
BitDepth#879 - April 02
07/04/13 00:05 Filed in: BitDepth - April 2013
Wunderlist makes a digital to do list present on multile devices and platforms. Click here to read more...
BitDepth#878 - March 26
25/03/13 21:37 Filed in: BitDepth - March 2013
Samsung's Elias Kabeche, VP Sales and Marketing for Latin America, answers questions about the company's new smartphone. Click here to read more...
BitDepth#877 - March 19
18/03/13 20:10 Filed in: BitDepth - March 2013
Samsung introduces the new S4 smart phone. Click here to read more...
BitDepth#876 - March 12
11/03/13 21:21 Filed in: BitDepth - March 2013
The National Carnival Commission goes to the stakeholders of Carnival to clarify its role. Some suggestions arose. Click here to read more...
BitDepth#875 - March 05
04/03/13 19:34 Filed in: BitDepth - March 2013
CarnivalTV has been fighting to do its work in the festival for two years now. What's been happening with them? Click here to read more...
BitDepth#874 - February 26
25/02/13 21:56 Filed in: BitDepth - February 2013
All the bacchanal about copyright in Carnival 2013 was about money, whether it's real or imagined remains to be seen. Click here to read more...
BitDepth#873 - February 19
18/02/13 19:36 Filed in: BitDepth - February 2013
An open letter to Allison Demas on managing Carnival 2013, Click here to read more...
BitDepth#872 - February 12
11/02/13 21:25 Filed in: BitDepth - February 2013
Is Carnival a collection of traditions or is it a commercial enterprise. Deciding this will define its future. Click here to read more...
BitDepth#871 - February 05
04/02/13 21:20 Filed in: BitDepth - February 2013
Blackberry, formerly RIM, introduces the new Z10 and a new operating system for a new era of smartphones. Is it too little too late? Click here to read more...
BitDepth#870 - January 29
28/01/13 21:13 Filed in: BitDepth - January 2013
Thinking about backup hits home when a drive goes away suddenly. Thoughts about backup systems and strategies. Click here to read more...
BitDepth#869 - January 22
21/01/13 22:45 Filed in: BitDepth - January 2013
HP brings its new enterprise level storage system to Trinidad and Tobago, sparking some thoughts about deep storage. Click here to read more...
BitDepth#868 - January 15
14/01/13 22:31 Filed in: BitDepth - January 2013
In a bizarre online error, Adobe inadvertently offers public access to its seven year old CS2 suite. Click here to read more...
BitDepth#867 - January 08
07/01/13 22:30 Filed in: BitDepth - January 2013
Cool stuff we learned in 2012. Click here to read more...
BitDepth#866 - January 01
31/12/12 21:42 Filed in: BitDepth - January 2013
Gifts you should have got for Christmas. Clip and save to pass on to your loved one for hints on your birthday. Click here to read more...
