Evaluating Mobile OSes

My Windows Mobile 6 phone continues to perform erratically (rebooting itself now and then) although the battery life is now reasonable due to battery replacement.  So still wanting to replace it and then give my iPod Touch to my wife.  The article Mobile OS Showdown: Android, BlackBerry, iOS, and Windows Phone 7 provides several slants for comparing features of the mobile OSes.  Some criteria and considerations that sets the mobile OSes apart:

• Two-way sync with multiple Exchange-protocol (e.g. Google) calendars
• Customization, e.g. different virtual keyboard or home screen
• What security granularity and warnings when installing new app?
• SSL connection when connecting to retrieve email, calendar?
• Voice control of device and extent
• Turn-by-turn navigation 
• Important:  Does default browser support Flash?  HTML 5?
• How are email attachments handled?  Can choose application to open them?
• Open file system structure
• What formats can default media player handle?
• VoIP calling
• Multi-tasking for third-party apps? 
• OS-specific features:  WP7 Live Tiles and Android's Notification pane

The hardware of a particular mobile device is another story.

Some thoughts:

• Apps - is developing a WP7 app that integrates well with the OS so different compared to the other OSes that developers will avoid offering a WP7-version of their app?
• Office suite - how good is Android's native Google Docs app?  How well does it work offline? 
• iOS seems to marry data and application together, that is, data resides in one application and to access it, you have to use that application.  Another way of looking at it:  You can't choose which application to open a piece of data.  Generally this is not a problem which seems to be iOS's design philosophy

Listened to Windows Weekly 175: Wrong Again Monkey Boy

• Netcast
• Comparison between China (accelerating development) versus United States (slow moving, a has-been?) and Google/Android versus Apple/iOS.  
• Google's Android Market is a "wild west" experience compared to Apple's App Store which is curated, consistent, and overall, a higher-quality experience.  However, the advantage for Google is the pace of development and change
• Google's Android Market can be viewed as being like YouTube where anything goes until it is reported as abuse or violation

Waiting for next cool gadget (definitely not like waiting for prostrate surgery appointment)

While I continue to suffer with the battery life of my 35-month-old Windows Mobile smartphone and look forward to getting an Android 2.2 device, I find it interesting that although members of our society feels like they are caught in a rat race, simultaneously we cannot wait patiently for the next new device. 

For tasks that need to get done, weeks seem to fly by while we are preoccupied with other things or procrastinating.  Outside, in our backyard, vegetables and weeds alike grow bigger with each passing day.  My wife's tummy is getting bigger.  On the other hand, I have a hard time keeping on top of all the things that need to get done.  And therefore the launch date of the next cool gadget will be here sooner than we think.

Here's to Android 2.2 in Canada, here before I'm ready  :-)

Listened to This Week In Google 52: Android Goes To War

• Netcast
• Users of social networking websites should be given a clear choice of what they make public and what stays private (by default)
• However, there are benefits to making things public, e.g. your real-time location may give you coupons to a bakery you are in.  Also, people may share things with you they might not otherwise do, by knowing what you've made public--mutual benefit because of openness 
• The problem is when some social networking websites prevent access to data (via APIs) that people have already indicated as public.  This data then cannot be mined by other organizations or analyzed for societal benefit
• With data showing that more Android phone are being activated per month than iPhones, and the number of Android apps becoming available, iPhones and their apps may be relegated to a niche market, like computers with Mac OS, in the near future.  The $99 USD to become a iPhone developer and the need to do development on a Mac hampers innovation (as some of the brightest developers may simply choose not to be limited by Apple)