When I first conceived of Arteculate, I started writing articles before I knew about the joys of WordPress. Frustrated with my inability to create a professional-quality web design, I felt like I should at least be doing something with my summer. Well low-and-behold, after the jump are two of the original concept articles I wrote. They’re a little more satirical and a little less concerned with the interplay between technology and society than what I have planned for future articles, but they’re a fun read. Moreover, they show how much has changed in the nine months since I wrote the articles: Palm and its Pre and Pixi are nearly on deathwatch, with Sprint placing its future in Android and 4G, and Windows has now buried Windows Mobile 6 and given birth to a brand new ultra-sleek Windows Phone 7 Series.
I’ll follow these up soon with a rethinking of the original articles that reflects all that’s happened these past months.
The New Sprint: Can the Ailing Carrier Reinvent Itself on the Heels of the Palm Pre?
For a couple years now, Sprint has been the wireless carrier that many inhabitants of the internet love to hate. Critics complain about poor service and dropped calls, but more than anything, it seems there has been resentment aimed squarely at Sprint’s traditionally poor handset offerings. As a Sprint customer, I can confidently say that I’ve always been content with the wireless experience itself. However, the inexistence of groundbreaking phones on Sprint’s network (Samsung Instinct, let’s not try to pretend), especially after the release of the iPhone more than two years ago, has been a nasty bug eating away at my technology-loving insides. And dare I say, as much as some of my friends complain about AT&T’s poor service, the lure of having the prettiest, shiniest, and downright most usable and feature-rich handset out there has always tempted me to jump ship.
Well, maybe I should say that critics did complain about poor handset selection. Honestly, after the release of the Palm Pre, the only thing Sprint’s users and skeptics can legitimately complain about regarding handsets is that the carrier is forcing customers to pay more for a different plan in order to get the best piece of kit Sprint has to offer. It’s disloyal, it’s devious, and it works. Well, so far anyway. While official numbers aren’t yet out, sources point to the Pre as being Sprint’s most successful handset launch ever, with over 50,000 units sold in the first weekend. And after two years of being disappointed with Sprint’s offerings, myself and many others have finally been given a reason (on the handset front) to stick with the ailing carrier.
Given the Pre’s meteoric rise to fame, at least as compared to other Sprint phones, it seems safe to say that the carrier’s found something of a winner. The Pre is the first phone that can really compete with the slickness of the iPhone, and with similar internals (the famous Cortex A8) and a bunch of brains from Apple’s neck of the woods, it ought to. However, the Pre has a long way to go before beating out the iPhone, and claims that iPhone users will be switching to the newest smartphone en masse seem to have been nothing but puff.
One notably missing piece in the Pre’s success puzzle is a compelling marketing campaign; nobody is too impressed with the spooky elf-lady, and whatever firm cooked those ads up must have forgotten that a good way make people want something is to highlight what that thing can do to improve people’s lives. Compared to the iPhone’s cult of personality, the Pre sure has a lot of catch-up to do. Moreover, getting back to the question of whether the Pre can save Sprint from hemorrhaging even more customers this quarter, it’s going to be effective marketing that turns things around. No matter how many techies are buying Pre’s right now, techies alone will not buy a million phones. Palm and Sprint’s efforts must focus not just on innovating upon the already drool-worthy platform that is WebOS and the Pre, but making sure that it’s more than just the tech news readership that’s developed this near-Pavlovian response for the phone.
Windows Mobile 6.x: Can’t This Dinosaur Go Extinct Already?
Ah, Windows Mobile… with the media and consumers focusing so much on newfangled mobile computing platforms from the likes of Apple, RIM, and now Palm with its new Pre, this years-old contender has left users waxing for something better and more modern. Effectively, Microsoft has left Windows Mobile in the rear-view mirror of other major smartphone OS’s.
To its credit, Windows Mobile has potential capabilities that meet or exceed those of all its competitors (trust me Android and jailbroken iPhone users – its software catalog is extensive). It’s WinMo’s interface that’s so pitifully far behind the competition. Options are constantly not where you expect them to be, and simple tasks which should be the bread and butter of any smartphone are executed clumsily, requiring many clicks before the laggy interface brings up what you expect to see.
Maybe it’s the awkward implementation of nearly every feature that’s so infuriating about the platform. I can’t count the number of times that I missed a call because the answer button failed to react to a tap, nor can I measure how many minutes I’ve wasted waiting for the messaging application to load up simply so I could respond in a yes-or-no fashion to the text of a friend. Possibly the most heinous problem of all is my HTC Touch Pro’s affinity to come out of standby in my pocket for no reason whatsoever and call the last person I’ve dialed once, twice, or maybe even three times. I hear the sound of my phone rustling in my pants is quite titillating to my girlfriend.
It’s the combination of these problems, none of them with any good fix (sorry S2U2 fans, but it’s just no iPhone substitute), that I cannot stand about the platform, and which has me convinced that Windows Mobile, as it stands, simply has no future and poses no threat to its competition in the current mobile market.
Maybe some companies run on enterprise software that requires employees to use a WinMo phone for job use. These phones might even sound quite good on paper: 528mHz processor, 256mB RAM, EVDO Rev. A, 3.2MP autofocus camera, resistive touchscreen, sliding QWERTY keyboard… the list goes on. But it’s the droves of people who switch back to their iPhone, Blackberry, or basic feature-phone as soon as 5pm rolls around that really illustrate the gap between WinMo and other smartphone options. Moreover with exchange support and many applications making their way to other mobile platforms, the only excuses for remaining with the platform are legacy software issues. In fact, many companies have rewritten proprietary software to give employees the option of picking up an alternative to Windows Mobile.
