iPhone SE - welcome back!

My iPhone 6 took a swim a couple of weeks ago. A short swim in the sea with a waterproof bag that wasn't. I reverted to my Android spare (a 1st generation Moto G), which was sufficient but slow. I contemplated a faster Android. The thing is, as the article here shows, they all have massive screens. As I've said before they are a poor compromise for me: too small to be a proper reading/viewing device (so I have a paperback-sized iPad mini), and too large to be a handy phone.

I remember thinking, on the recent launch of the iPhone SE, that it was a smart move. The iPhone 5 was the nicest phone I have ever used: comfortable to hold, with hand clasped right around it, and easy to use, with thumb capable of touching all 4 corners of the 4" screen without spraining or dislocating. The SE is an update: all the newest chips and sensors in the old body, and 25% cheaper than an equivalent iPhone 6. Best of both worlds, in principle, but faced with the real prospect of replacing my phone, would I actually buy it?

The latest Android phones have overtaken Apple's renowned user experience, at least in terms of sheer features. There are gadgets and slidey expandable bits, and it's all quite intuitive in Material Design: the subtle shading guides you on what can be pressed and slid. App design is a bit more haphazard, but that's the price of freedom from Apple app store stringencies (and their 30% tax). Very impressive but maybe a bit over-complicated, I thought, as I read the reviews from my iPad.

Then there's the Android phone hardware. You get a lot of bang for your buck, these days. Widescreen TV resolutions on small inches of screen, zillion megapixel cameras, SD card expansions, fast charging USB 3 ports, octo-core processors with gigahertz of speed. There's a lot of variety, a lot of power consumption and big batteries behind those big screens... just to run as smoothly as an iPhone. Perhaps that's the real reason the screens are so big: a selling point to offset the bigger battery needed to power all those cores?

I was in Atlanta on a biz trip, so thought I'd pop into an Apple store to try an iPhone SE. Failing that, I'd pop over to Best Buy and try some Androids.

Picking up the SE surprised me with the emotional connection it evoked. It felt like a favourite pair of shoes or jeans. Comforting and familiar. Super snappy to use too, unlike my old iPhone 4, which has slowed with age.

I've had it a week now and am thoroughly delighted. Except for one thing: having used my Pebble watch with the Android I now see how restrictive Apple is with their API for non-Apple watches. Guys, it doesn't make me want to buy an Apple watch, it just hobbles an otherwise perfect phone. Easy fix. Now to order that waterproof case...

Apple Watch: cracks showing?

From this story and similar it's easy to interpret that the honeymoon period of the new product category is over. Apple cynics proven right? Or markets just being fickle? A bit of both.

I'm an Apple sceptic: love their stuff, but not the reality distortion and unnecessary product lock-ins that often accompany it. Overall, they are a healthy part of the technosphere, which is not easy for a behemoth.

Something is clearly wrong with their Apple Watch sales. So they are below expectations, but why not publish them anyway? Apple's profit margins are normally huge on anything they sell, so even if the volumes are lower than expected, it's not like they'll have failed financially, is it? I think the absence of information, in this case, could work against them not just in the markets, as it has already shown, but in consumer confidence. In this internet age, consumers like to to make informed decisions, so any perception of withheld information fuels lack of confidence, and, arguably, is just as easy to exploit by a canny competitor.

But they had to do it. For Apple not to have a watch in this still-embryonic but burgeoning wearables market could have been perceived by the markets as leaving money on the table. And this first offering is pretty decent: all the buttery smooth and shiny user experience features are there. It's just not essential or different enough from the iPhone. I doubt anyone in late 19th or early 20th century had a pocket watch and a wrist watch.

This is the first step on a product journey, a marker. Remember, the first iPhone didn't even have copy & paste. But then Apple defined the category and were so far ahead of the competition they could take their time perfecting the product. This time, the category is already quite crowded and despite their behemoth status they didn't own it. Do they have the agility to evolve faster than rivals?

If you compare the pace of innovation in iOS versus Android, you'll see that since about 2013 Android has outpaced Apple. Android in 2015 is a lot better than Android in 2012, whereas iOS is a bit better. This isn't about which OS is better, but about which OS is improving the fastest.

But Apple is a hardware company. And I think the reasons the Apple Watch is not a giant success are hardware-based, from the basic: battery life; to the sublime Dick Tracy fantasy: a camera. These limitations are understandable to geeks: the science simply isn't there yet. But the average Apple consumer thinks it's all magic anyway, so will expect Apple to crack these things in version 2 or 3. Can they? I can't think when they've ever had this much competitive pressure in hardware. This should get interesting.

It's Pebble Time: taking on the mighty Apple Watch

The best personal tech should be invisible. Not literally, that would be unhelpful. But it should fit into your life seamlessly, without significant adjustment to your life, unless it augments it. Smart phones are a brilliant example: you already had a mobile phone, but here's one with more sensors and downloadable apps. Super productivity or super distraction? Your choice, but either way you're ostensibly happier.

Henry Graves Supercomplication Pocket Watch

Remember pocket watches? No, I never wore one either, but I imagine they were the mobile phones of their day. Before them, you had to find or hear a clock somewhere, usually a church or a school or a station. Suddenly you had the power of time in your hand. 

Then, in 1968 Patek Phillipe made, arguably, the first wrist watch. It was intended as jewellery for ladies, who often didn't have pockets for a watch. As the technology improved and became more rugged, soldiers adopted them. The pocket watch didn't fade away, it just added features, culminating in the Henry Graves Supercomplication, made by Patek Phillipe in 1933 and still the most expensive watch in the world ($24m at last auction in November 2014).

Point is, the problem of conveniently telling the time was, effectively, solved with the wrist watch. But it has barely evolved since. Despite watchmakers' enduring ability to sell absurdly overpriced lumps of metal because they'd work on the moon, or at 10,000ft underwater, these lumps are functionally redundant, for the most part. Like handkerchiefs. Most millennials don't wear a watch because they have a smart phone with network/atomic accuracy.

So if you're selling a smart watch you're either trying to persuade a youngster to wear something useful on their wrist, or persuade an older person to replace their expensive birthday present for something more useful and equally elegant.

Smart watch?

The original Pebble was a great concept in 2013: a watch that listens to your phone (both Android and iOS!) and lasts a week. Biggest Kickstarter project ever at the time. And they delivered what they promised. Now, I'm a big watch fan, have about eight at any given time, but it didn't attract me because the screen was black and white only and the case was too big. It looked like a 90s Nintendo Gameboy for your wrist. Without the retro fun.

The original Pebble. Neat but ugly.

But earlier this year Pebble ran another Kickstarter campaign to build the Time: promising colour screen and slim form factor yet still the 5 day battery life. All the other smart watch makers are targeting looks and features, but these guys are sticking with their formula and refining it. Many people scoffed at the paltry 64 colours and lack of touchscreen, but those of us with some electronics knowledge realise that full colour touchscreens burn battery life, and what's the point of a watch you have to plug in every day? Might as well just use your phone. At $189 it's $100 cheaper than a Casio Pathfinder or Citizen Ecodrive. So why on earth not? I backed it.

Pebble Time!

It's very light - feels lighter than the strap - and pretty slim. The strap is smooth and soft, with a little stretch to it. One of the best I've worn in terms of chafing, which is no small thing for my hairy wrists. After 10 mins wearing it I pretty much forgot it was there, so big tick in the 'invisible' box.

Screen

Classic elegance... with weather

While the screen is a decent size, there's still a lot of real estate not used. No doubt Pebble sought to maximise screen size within technical constraints, but what about solar panels in the frame or that outer bezel? Even though a Pebble consumes about 5x the power of a solar watch, like a Pathfinder, solar top-up could still potentially increase battery life by 20%.

Outdoors... with stats

The screen is a bit dim in some light, needing a shake of the wrist to activate the backlight. Not a big issue (I know many lump of metal wearers who have their straps so loose they have to wiggle their wrists to haul the watch into view anyway), but there's currently no control of the backlight timer, so it may fade too quickly causing you to have to shake again. Frustrating, but easily rectified (please, Pebble!). Thankfully, there are loads of watchfaces, and many have colour configuration options, so it's easy to find one that is hi-viz.

Notifications

It's a similar story for notifications: I can't control them as well as I'd like in two ways: first, being able to mute some apps. You can do it on the phone, but why not on the watch too? Secondly, there's just one buzz signal. I've seen pebble apps that offer multiple buzz combinations, and it would be great to make better use of these in notifications. I don't know if the Time buzz motor supports variable strengths, but that would be great too.

Buttons & gestures

The buttons are excellent, and the motion sensor is really well tuned to different movements, which some apps, like the OutDoorWatch app (above), use to great effect. Move your arm laterally, like throwing a frisbee, toggles the bottom section of the screen to switch displays between, say, a barometer graph and a compass. Shake your wrist side to side once slowly and the middle section changes. With the combination of buttons and wrist shakes I don't miss a touch screen.

Battery

Battery life is as advertised: 4-8 days depending on use. 4 days if you're mucking about with it all the time, and using watchfaces that update the weather every 20 mins.

Microphone

The watch has a mic for voice control, but it's not well supported yet. This could be a brilliant addition to a beautifully simplistic watch, allowing you to literally call up all those voice-enhanced features of your smart phone from your wrist: voice memos, Siri or Google Now etc.

Apps

As you look through the Pebble App store you get the sense that developers are either waiting for the crowd's reaction, or being passively discouraged by the incumbent app store owners. Not only did Apple delay release of the Pebble Time app on the iOS AppStore (they relented after a social media campaign), but they have made some of the API functionality of iPhones exclusive to the Apple Watch, shutting out Pebble from offering some more enhanced features in the iOS version. No such apparent limitations on the Android version, so the Android version of the Pebble app has better app features available than the iOS version. Let's hope Apple play fair and open it up. There's plenty of room in this fledgling market, and no need for Kickstarter-backed David vs biggest market-cap in the world Goliath.

The trouble is that this sort of friction makes third party developers jittery. So while some of the main app contenders, like Evernote and RunKeeper have Pebble apps, some of their competitors, like Strava and OneNote don't.

In addition to their C-based development environment, Pebble have released a Javascript framework intended to attract non-hardcore developers to lash their mobile app APIs to a simple Pebble app. I haven't tried it, but the fact that I'm tempted says a lot for this little device. 

Smart Straps?

As you see from the picture above of the back of the Pebble, the strap has quick-release pins for so-called smart straps. These are add-ons that offer more hardware features, like more sensors or batteries, or both. This could be a killer feature, if you think about it. Some ideas here.

Conclusion

The Pebble Time is light and almost invisible, and has fitted into my life seamlessly: I'm not scurrying around to find charging points, nor am I stroking it every five minutes like a cat with ball of wool. The subtlety of wrist-based notifications is not to be under-estimated: a quick glance at your wrist is significantly less effort than hauling that buzzing widescreen out of your pocket only to find that you've received a spam text. The apps that I do have are also just right for the wrist: running app, music app, misfit app, authenticator app, travel app - those activities that you don't want to be digging out your phone for. 

So there's all that subtlety and convenience that Apple Watch reviewers have been raving about. Except this watch costs half an Apple. 

There's another Apple-beating convenience too: the biggest convenience factor in every watch since Patek Phillipe's in 1868: battery life. The only Apple watch reviews I've seen that have reported battery life to be 'fine' are by techies who probably already plug in five devices a day. Let's see if real consumers are just as glowing about one day of battery life after the novelty has worn off. I don't doubt that it's a beautiful piece of kit, but is it useful enough to warrant daily charging? Unless it replaces your phone completely, like the wrist watch did the pocket watch, it never will be.

My only concern with the Pebble Time is that its potential never gets fulfilled; that it gets crushed by less functional but more glamorous and wealthy competitors. In these days of social media and crowdsourcing they don't need much clout to hold their own and gather support, but they need to do it fast.

Show us some smart straps, get that damn mic working, sort out the notification buzzes and we could have a winner here!

OS no-OS

Every once in a while an article appears saying something like "the OS is irrelevant because everything is on the Web now".

Yet, why can't I use my iApp on my android? Or on my mac, for that matter?

The current stress point in software is the OS. Apps are proof that the Web, while being a wondrously sticky medium, has a long way to go in democratising devices. If I want to build an app to be used across all devices I must build it for browser use. Or I must build 6 concurrent versions of it (3 desktop OSes, and 3 mobile OSes), which is not cheap, and depending on the app, not effective use of resources. In practice I'll pick the 2 most popular, usually Windows + either Android or iOS and extend when the revenue or funding kicks in. 

But why can't the browser do it all? Surely if the browser was the OS, we wouldn't need apps? Well, HP actually tried it with Web OS. As with so many of HP's recent innovations, it was a brilliant concept poorly executed. The devices were under-powered, and the marketing was crap. The HP Veer is still, physically, one of the nicest phones I've ever held.

And now we have chrome and chromebooks able to run Android apps.  Presumably Apple will follow, with OSX able to run IOS apps. But what about Apple TV too? It would need a better input device, like Kinect. Talking of Kinect, Microsoft, ironically, are probably the closest to seamlessness between their devices, with Windows, Windows Mobile and Xbox software all being sold in the one marketplace. Shame their user interface and many of their apps are so inconsistent. 

The thing is, apps are the best way to lock users into your platform. And for hardware makers, like Apple, the platform is everything. It is not in their interest for you to be able to run everything on the Web. It is in Google's interest: a cynic's view of Android is that it is a Google knowledge capture and advert delivery system. It's also in Microsoft's interest: they are laggards in both cloud and mobile, but gaining fast by slipstreaming the leaders. Google and Microsoft are software businesses, and even Microsoft have proven themselves bold in building apps for other OSes. They know that the proprietary app phenomenon is temporary: one day everything will run through your browser, on any device.

Beware Android users

The most sophisticated bug for a mobile phone ever has recently been found by Kaspersky Labs.


Not only can it do real damage (eg. sending SMS to premium rate numbers), it has no user interface, no indication of the privileges it has (circumventing all of Android's usual 'this app can..' lists) and cannot be removed from compromised devices!

The hackers found no less than 3 unknown critical vulnerabilities, one even obfuscating the code to prevent analysis.

Details here (Securelist.com).

Kaspersky have notified Google, but this could cast serious doubts on the enterprise use of Android.

Testing from BlogAway

Just testing posting directly from BlogAway app for Android (the best I have found in terms of being able to manage and edit multiple blogs, both off- and online)