Appz.ie Blog

There is a lot of buzz about the upcoming major Nokia press conference, where they will be announcing their new strategy.

This strategy will probably be to continue beavering away with Symbian their lower-end and mid-range smartphones and to sell Meego and Windows Phone 7 versions of their very high-end phones.

The logic behind this strategy will be something about not wanting to spurn Symbian developers and to keep the Meego open source dream alive/Intel on side/etc.

I’m not entirely against this idea, but what I would like to see Nokia do is “a windows phone 7 with Symbian.

With the latest version of Windows Mobile Microsoft recognised that the platform had become a big brand-less mess of different specifications and carrier/manufacturer customisations (like android) and was unpopular with consumers (unlike android).

Microsoft tackled this by heavily reining in Windows Mobile:

They removed functionality, simplified design and established strict standards for hardware and software.

Although this hasn’t conquered the market overnight, I think it was a great move for Microsoft and exactly what Nokia should do with Symbian.

Symbian is a big mess and needs to be redesigned to be easy to use on cheap smartphones. The N8 and E7 and other such high-end phones need to be put onto a higher-end OS like MeeGo, Android or WINP7. A very clear delineation between entry-level smartphones and high performance business phones needs to be established. This means killing off some of the E and N lines of phones. If they fall into a mid-range they need to go.

Nokia also makes too many models of entry-level smartphones. With so many Android handsets on the market I don’t feel that Nokia can keep diluting their own brand by bringing out numerous versions of the same handset. Nokia has too much competition to be so scattered.

Finally Nokia need to get phones to market faster and keep information about them more tightly controlled before launch. I’ve watched the Nokia launch cycle and the launch cycle of android manufacturers for a few years now.

Nokia devices tend to be leaked about a year before they launch, which makes Nokia smartphones dinosaurs at launch. HTC phones by comparison go from rumour to launch in 3 months or less, this sort of speed is necessary if you want to appeal to lovers of the bleeding edge.

So to summarise:

• Split Low and High End Smartphones
• Dumb Down Symbian
• Lessen Handset Choice
• Bring Out New Handsets Faster
• Be More Secretive

Thanks for reading,

-ANkh

As paid applications will be coming to Ireland soon I thought it might be a good idea to highlight a few of my favourite paid applications and encourage you to go out and get them when you get the chance.

The first application I have chosen to show you is Locale:

Locale is an application which allows you to set up conditioned behaviour on your Android phone. It was designed to easily support third party plugins so that other applications can be developed to interact with it.

To give you an example I’m going to show you one application I have set up to be configured through Locale.

The example I have chosen is my SayMyName Switcher

SayMyName is a free application which will shout out the name of contacts who call, text or email you.

SayMyName can also read out whole text messages and the subject lines of emails.

But that is where my problem arises, I want SayMyName to read out emails and texts, but not all the time. Only when I am too busy to do it myself.

With Locale I am able to address this problem.

You need the Locale Application Detection Plugin developed by Androgone in order to do this. I bought it for €0.75 in the Android Market.

Application Detection lets you select the Appz which you will set as a test

condition for the your settings.

In my case that means Car Home (an Android 2.2 feature which combines various navigation and search features in an easy to use interface) and CardioTrainer (which records exercise metrics).

Once these settings have been added to the SayMyName Setting all you need to do is save, and you’re done!

Next time you’re driving, running or cycling you will have your text messages read to you.

I hope this explanation of the purpose and function of Locale will convince you to to purchase Locale and other paid application from the Android Market when it opens to Ireland.

Having spent some time with Wordpress and its many, many plugins I have decided to use it.

Wordpress: A winner is you!

Sorry Drupal, better luck next time.

At the moment I am hammering away at setting up input forms. Hopefully this will bare fruit soon and people can start posting.

I have also set up a new Twitter account just for Appz.ie: twitter.com/AppzieNews, so follow that or subscribe to this blog to stay informed.

-Rory

Hey!

Yesterday I went to Open Coffee Dublin in Café Novo.

There I met a number of interesting people including @rmgtdblog who writes the Think In Projects blog.

He echoed the advice of @leofogarty in telling me I should use Wordpress to design Appz.ie on.

Being an easily swayed person I have decided to try Wordpress as a solution.

If you go to http://appz.ie/wordpress you can see my efforts with Wordpress, but I’ll still be fiddling with Drupal  on http://appz.ie/drupal.

So lets see what I can make.

If you have any comments or advice please leave a comment!

-Rory

Hi there, welcome to the Appz.ie blog!
I’ll be using this blog to chart my progress setting up the site.
So subscribe now and comment when you see something interesting!