Articles from: Mobile

Last week Apple released the much anticipated update to it’s iPhone operating system. Finally bringing many of the features most phone providers would have thought completely necessary in a modern smart phone: MMS, Video capture, Cut, copy, paste, Memo recorder, Background IM applications.

The Apple website lauded these new features as exciting developments, yet they can be found on most current Nokia, Sony Ericson, Samsung, LG and HTC handsets.

It’s taken two years to get these features on the iPhone - with many saying 3.0 is what it should have had when it launched. Yet everywhere I look i see iPhones, it’s easily the favoured handset amongst my friends - with the previously unconvinced now benefiting from their purchase of the new iPhone 3G S.

So did this lack of key features make a difference in the beginning, did it limit the success - no. The iPhone was so far ahead of the competition in other areas that people felt happy to live without these must-have features. This approach to not including everything people expect underlines a key principle for the internet age

Prioritise your killer features to bring instant success and don’t be afraid to add the perceived must-have basics later.

Avoiding the mythical phase 2 or phase 3

How many times have you heard - “That’s a cool idea, but lets put into phase 2″ - it’s an admission, a lack of confidence or ambition - and a fast track to mediocrity.

It happens like this, new service developments, shops & services start with hygiene factors. The team worry about doing the basics well and spend most of the budget doing these. Invariably things don’t go to plan and the pot for all the innovative extras gets smaller and smaller. The site or service launches, and it immediately fails to get traction, the audience figures grow much slower than expected, feedback isn’t a positive as expected which further pressures their development budget. This leads to a review of the project, a postponement of phase 2 - and a belief the service idea doesn’t work or the core idea was failed.

The next time your team think about delaying an exciting and innovative idea to phase 2 - ask yourself this - which of our supposed must-have features can we delay instead?

Delivering on your ambition

If your ambition is to build a better X - and let’s face it just about every project starts that way -  don’t start by copying the competition and talking about  doing the hygiene first. If you’re not innovating or doing something noticeable, why should people change their existing behaviour. Playing catch up with your competition is hard. Start from a positive position and force them to try and catch you. And remember if hygiene is easy it will be easy to add later.

If you take a look back over the myriad of web 2.0-like developments we’ve seen over the last few years. The ones that succeed are the ones that get their new ideas out there quickly, claiming their space with a bright new idea and then adding new features as their audience grows and helps them understand what makes sense.

So be brave, implement the things that differentiate first, then add the basics over time. If you talk about doing a phase 2 - make sure you’re audience is so excited they want a phase 2 and you then deliver on it.

So my slightly battered iPhone 3G can now be a tethered modem for my laptop. That’s something I actually find quite appealing for the occasions I’m out and about with no wireless access. What I don’t find appealing is the price of £15 per month. That’s an amount I’d rather not spend - especially given the few times I’d need it. ¹

There’s no doubt the iPhone has been a success for O2 - it’s the phone of choice amongst my peer group - a quite astonishing fact. With so many things I love about my iphone I’m already lusting after a new 3GS for the better camera, faster processor and video capability. Having it supply on-the-go access for my laptop would be brilliant.

Looking at O2’s decision it seems wierd that they would charge a customer the same as a mobile broadband user - especially when you already have the hardware. Moreover isn’t the iPhone supposed to come with unlimited data traffic? ²

So doesn’t this decision mean O2 are effectively charging users that tether for something they already own are entitled for? I can’t see how this thinking is living up to ‘We’re better, connected‘.

You’re back to the old tricks of charging me twice, how is this better?

Ok, so there are several arguments for charging (see footnote), but using this heavy handed monthly contract is going to drive users to crack their phones and use them anyway. For those wanting to crack it - a simple search on Google will tell you the details.

Come on O2 don’t be stupid. Let iPhone customers get a comparable access when they need it - how about you text when you need to activate for a day - then pay £1 for that day’s usage. This is capped to match the the monthly mobile broadband rate.

Fair and easy. And better, connected.

1. Using a tethered laptop would push up data use. Although 3G web speeds are a bit lame on the phone, research shows this perceived browsing speed is actually a function of the browser render speed and less about connection speed. Previous tethering speed tests show decent browsing speeds when using the phone.
2. Although the iPhone has unlimited data on it’s handset - this was a climbdown from the first releases. Originally marketed as unlimited the small print said provided a fairly measly data cap made it far from unlimited. Public pressure brought a clarification where unlimited started to mean unlimited. Any unlimited tariff is of course subject to a fair use policy. With it’s wi-fi support it’s easy to see how the iPhone actually uses less 3G than you might expect. Many of us have wi-fi at home, work, on the train and in urban areas, reducing the demand on O2’s 3G data network. Having a tethered phone changes our usage model and thus is likely to push up data usage.

Another week and there is another furor building for Google.  This time it surrounds their latest product launch, Google Latitude, which enables users to connect to each other and track each other’s movements.

Innocent enough, you might think… Sure, people being able to tell where you are at any given time may not be everyone’s cup of tea but hey, it’s a free country, right?  Well according to some it shouldn’t be - the trade-press never could resist a scandal and before most people had even heard of the service it had already been denounced again and again and again.

Following some rather silly criticisms - the fact that your employer could track your movement for example, only actually true if you chose to give them access (and even if you for some reason did, you can still lie about your location by setting it manually) - The Guardian’s Paul Lewis managed to note one legitimate concern: that your phone could be setup without your knowledge if someone ‘borrowed it’. 

As valid as this concern might be it still seems to miss the point - if my partner is borrowing my mobile phone to track my movements then we clearly have bigger problems anyway. And in any case, you cannot apply pressure to have a product withdrawn simply because it could be misused by a small minority.  Huge numbers of normal high street products - glue, deodorant, cars - could be misused yet we still have the freedom to use them.  It is the act of misuse itself that needs to be controlled, not the product.

Even if you have concerns over Google’s ability to keep private data private (they seem to be better at it than the government anyway) then it should be the user’s choice whether they entrust a third party with personal information.  Let the journalists carry on with their paranoid concerns about privacy, I’ll do the sensible thing and just make sure my phone has a PIN.  After all, if someone has taken my phone they already have access to a huge amount of personal information.

I’m moved to include a lovely old Dilbert cartoon given to me by Dan Holder a senior art director here.

It raises a good point about “best practice.” If we’re honest with ourselves best practice is the last refuge of the unimaginative. It says we’ve stopped thinking about a problem and have settled upon a “lore”. Best practice is a sacred cow which we do well to sacrifice. More than ever, brands need brave ideas which cut through in what is undoubtedly a time of crisis. It’s time to dream to innovate, create and have fun. If you find a best practice document here’s a handy way of dealing with it.