Microsoft buying Nokia, is a bit emotional

 

My Nokia Lumia 800. Never going to sell it.

 

 

I love Nokia, the brand, the company and the people there that make such great devices. I love Windows Phone for a fresh new perspective on the mobile UI design. But now Nokia being brought by Microsoft is not exactly what I would have wanted, though business wise it makes absolute sense.

Sigh. 

Irrespective of what would be my next phone (if any), my current phone (the iconic Nokia Lumia 800) is going to be preserved with me, till I am in this physical world. So much for brand loyalty, I think is okay ;)

 

It is not calls, text and tweet that would make a smartwatch

When I was a kid, I loved wearing watches. My initial fancy was with digital watches. Then I liked the analog quartz watches. Once I got my first smartphone (the Nokia 6600), I stopped using a wristwatch altogether. I still rarely wear a Casio battery less solar watch, when going for a long outing. But I almost always never seem to like wearing anything on my wrist.

Most of the times I find the functionality offered by my wristwatch redundant. Well my current Casio does only the following: Show time, Show data, has stop watch, and I can setup an alarm. All of this I can do it on my smartphone in a much more intuitive way. The only incredibly important thing that my watch offers over a smartphone is the virtually lifelong, never ending battery, oh well it doesn't have one, it uses a supercapacitor instead.

So with all the media interest on the "upcoming smartwatches", it made me think: What exactly can a smartwatch do better than a smartphone?

It can not be calls, text and tweets
I don't see at all how a smartwatch would be more useful by merely offering what a phone already does good: calls, text and tweets. Moreover, I don't think that it is really useful or adds value as a device on its own. The reason why smartphone replaces a PC for most of the tasks is that it incredibly easy to text, call or tweet, or for that matter check email on a smartphone than on a PC. A smartphone can do this with a reasonable screen estate and with some very smart on screen keypads for entering text. This may not work out as much on a smartwatch. An alternative would be to use voice commands, but it would look funny yelling into my watch ... mistaken for characters in Captain Vyom or Space Age Sigma TV serials ;)

Sure you can link up a Bluetooth headset, but then you are wanting to keep two things charged using the battery. That doesn't make it smart, and no you can't yet power this on body heat. I would instead just pick that smartphone from my pocket and speak or text in a much more convenient way.

And so it can not be something like play music, watch YouTube or vine clips, or post Instagram photos. That does not click. Further, I think any of the above is not important when I am on move.

What would be unique applications on the smartwatch?
To me a smartwatch should offer all of the following to be useful:

• Super light construction, super good battery life. May be some kind of solar charging could be good, but highly unlikely with the current tech. It should ideally be water proof, but water resistance would do.
• It should display time, date and any upcoming calendar appointment on the home screen (and nothing else)
• The calendar app (or should I call it waap? - short for watch application ;-) ) should be location aware. I should be able to add location based reminders to the calendar, may be controlled via my paired smartphone.
• The sensors that watch should have: GPS, Magnetometer, Gyroscope, Body and Atmospheric temperature reader, Pedometer (or a software solution based on GPS), Heart beat monitor, dedicated bar code / QR code scanner, it also needs to be always connected .. to the Internet and probably have a NFC radio.
• Must have wapps (first party / third party via watch SDK): Weather app (local aware), Health app (body temperature, heart beat rate synced with cloud / smartphone), Voice recorder, Alarm app, Compass App, Show my location, Near by app (like Nokia City Lens), Transit app (like Nokia transit app - controlled by the accompanying smartphone), Travel app (get me a taxi - Uber style, flight status, train ticket status), Apple's Siri like assistant
• SDK offering ways to extend watch functionality: barcode/QR code scanner for price comparison apps, QR code scanner for contact transfers / sharing, calendar and location based advertising - say 'buy milk' is one of the reminders, the watch will beep you when you are near a supermarket, and indicate the price of it in adjoining shops too... limitless possibilities

So what are 3 things from above that are most important?

• Super light construction, super good battery life
• display time, date and any upcoming calendar appointment on the home screen
• Weather app, Health app, Voice recorder, Compass App, Show my location, Near by app, Transit app

No, I can't cut down further, I would rather (not) use my current watch instead.

The interface part is tricky.
Most of the so called "mockups" I have seen so far (or the UI available on current 'mobile watches') is just dumbed down, scaled down version of a smartphone UI. That simply is not going to work. Some people may claim that Windows Phone UI (the modern / metro UI), would be great on the smartwatch too. But I don't think that is going to work either. Although a refined form of Windows Phone UI may actually work. Here is my 30 minute powerpoint mockup :)

A mockup of smartwatch UI that I would like to see.



Of course to realize this into hardware and software is a task in itself, probably not possible as a single entity.

In any case, Samsung is going to show its smartwatch next week, let us see what they have. And Apple has been rumored long to be developing one, I hope that they have some of the things I mentioned in the post. But I would be quite thrilled if Microsoft and Nokia come up with some elegant solution as well. I would consider myself rather lucky if I get a chance to work with one of the teams doing this work though :)

(Update Mar, 2014: Samsung has indeed released multiple "smart watches", but none of them are actually up to mark, and doesn't seem to solve any real issues)

Trying my SLR attachment lenses with Lumia 800

About an year ago I had purchased a set of attachment lenses for my Canon 1000D from EBay. These were kind of very cheap replacement for doing some extreme macro shots, as the actual macro lenses from Canon were way too expensive and I simply could not afford to buy them. The cheap replacements turned out to be ok (see one such shot of pollens here http://www.flickr.com/photos/tovganesh/sets/72157628049776643/). But over time I realized that the color reproduction was poor in low light, more over the field of view was extremely narrow. Further, it was quite a task to screw these attachments to the lens only to discover that the subjects have moved away.

 

So when couple of snails visited to my backyard today, I decided to experiment a bit. And today being a bit sunny day helped. Here are some of the shots taken on my Canon 1000D.

 

Shots of 'mother' snail. Top one via normal lens, bottom one using additional attachment lens. Both shot using my Canon 1000D.

 

 

The 'baby' snail. Shot using additional lens attachment on Canon 1000D.

 

 

'mother' snail, shot using normal lens of Canon 1000D.

 

Now snails are very interesting creatures to watch when the crawl by, and my dad wanted me to record a video. My Canon 1000D, though pretty good at photography, doesn't have video recording. This is where my Lumia 800 chips in, which can take pretty good 720p videos. Initial shot was pretty ok. But then it clicked: how about just placing the SLR attachment lenses on top of the Lumia, hold it by hand and shoot?

 

Simple placement of SLR attachment lenses on Lumia 800, and just hold the lens while shooting.

 

 

Surprisingly, it worked out pretty nice. See the video below to get an idea of the additional zoom offered.

 

 

 

So it turned out to be my "jugaad zoom" for my Lumia 800 ;) I will experiment more with "jugaad zoom" till I can get hold of Lumia 1020 or a higher version of that :P

 

In any case, now I will more often than not be using these lens attachments.

 

 

Quad-Core phones are 'in budget', but what about battery life?

Karbonn (an Indian mobile manufacturer), just released a Quad-core phone (http://www.karbonnmobiles.com/karbonn-S1Titanium-proid-118.html) for a price that is about 10K INR, which, I think is the max budget for many of the salaried people. Regardless of whether people go for the higher specked (and a bit more expensive) Micromax Canvas HD, the Quad-core phones have started to trickle in. And they are within budget of a large number of people. Sure, you may not see such devices coming from Samsung or Nokia any time soon, but I have a gut feeling that with this kind of aggressive pricing, Karbonn and Micromax may soon gain some sizeable 'market mindshare'.

While it gets me exited that we have some cool computing power on mobile phones now (any one interested in some Quantum Chemistry? see https://sites.google.com/site/tovganesh/s60 ), what is surely lacking is Apps that take advantage of the cores and more importantly the battery life of these devices.

While Jeol at the Nokia Conversations (http://conversations.nokia.com/2012/10/09/processing-processors-whats-the-score-with-multi-core/), gave a very good account of where the cores are useful and also why merely incrementing the core count makes no sense; this is a known fact, especially for me, who has substantial experience in parallel computing.

What really bugs me is the fact that more powerful these devices get, more often these have to be plugged in to the grid to juice them up. The company that makes strides in the battery technology (and not the core counts), will make the next major wave in mobile computing. Sure, my beloved mobile company, Nokia, claims that Asha 'smart devices' are battery smart too, but I would rather want to see that smartness in the Lumia devices :)

 

Quick take on Lumia 510

I take all the opportunity to covince people to get a Nokia device, it seems. My experience with the Lumia 800 has been great, even when I won't be getting the new Windows Phone 8 update. So this time it was my uncle, who had an old Nokia C-200, and was looking for a device with somewhat big screen and supper for office docs as well as navigation (as he travels a lot). So I convinced to get him a Lumia 510. Mostly because it fit his budget and had a bigger screen than the Lumia 610, even when the on device free memory is about 2.2 GB and is not expandable.

Lumia 510 along with my Lumia 800. The display feels really big on 510, but the clear black curved glass makes 800 look gorgeous in comparison. The photo was taken using a Lumia 710.
 

 After installing couple of apps and all India offline maps for Nokia drive, the space left was about 1.7gb. Next my uncle needed to transfer some of the music he had on his older phone to the new one. Being space constrained, I converted the mp3 files into mp4 format and synced via Zune, which saved quite a lot of space. After all these the free space on the device is 1.12gb, sufficient space for many docs and photos. Also the extended 7gb of storage on cloud is quite useful, especially for backing up the photos.

My uncle doesn't play games, so none were installed. Althogh I can guess that because of hardware limitations, many highend games may not be compatible. Also some of the apps like Skype are not compatible for low memory Lumia phones yet.

Overall, my uncle and I liked the device. The UI is pretty responsive. Some third party apps takes noticeable time to launch, but once loaded they are pretty responsive. I would recommend this device to first time smartphone buyers, who are looking for a valuable and stable experience from a smartphone.


 Sidenote: This post was entirely written on my Lumia 800, only using the IE9 browser.

Random thoughts: 24hours without Nokia Lumia

Last week, I had to visit some 'high security zone' where no communication device is allowed in the premises. So I decided to shutoff my Lumia for 24 hours (of the grid) and use another basic Nokia device: the 1280 (which is usually used by my parents), while commuting from and to this high security place. Before going into this place though, I had to hand over my Nokia 1280 to a colleague, who himself was carrying a Lumia 710. That Lumia device and the Nokia Drive were extremely useful to get to many places that day, but essentially for me, I was completely free from grid and my constant companion device. In the retrospect, I thoroughly enjoyed the day and felt no urge what-so-ever of my missing Lumia 800, partly because my colleague was anyway using one when it was needed.

During this off-grid time, it was fun observing how radically different the UI paradigms of Nokia Lumia and Nokia 1280 are. While Nokia 1280 is one of the most basic phones available (monochrome screen), Nokia Lumia 800 is one of the Nokia's flagship smartphones running Windows Phone OS. A while ago, I had written an article on Kosh (building a mobile user experience for myself, part I : http://tovganesh.blogspot.in/2012/01/kosh-building-mobile-user-experience.html ), where I had written about how unintuitive it is to use the most basic function expected form a phone : to make a phone call; on all of the smartphone interfaces available today. I have time and again noticed this with my parents: they never got around being comfortable using Android (even when I had put the contacts on the home screen), they are somewhat comfortable with using my Lumia 800 (probably because of the bigger screen, again pinned contacts are needed, the phone app still looks a bit unintuitive), but they are very comfortable and happy to use Nokia 1280. The phone does one thing extremely correct : make and receive phone calls. When making the phone call, you just need to press the numbers using the keypad and click the call button done. For Lumia, you need to open the phone app and then key in the numbers, so is true for any other smartphone OS. This in itself is a major roadblock. Take the other case: receive phone call. On Nokia 1280, you just need to press the receive button and bingo, start talking. On most smartphone (including Lumia), you have to use some kind of a swipe gesture. These gestures may be so intuitive and cool for most of us (they certainly are for me and I feel comfortable using them), but with my parents this is just a burden. For this is more complex than just clicking a button or lifting the receiver of the landline. In fact, my parents are much more comfortable with landline than the mobile phone. Surely there is a lot of scope for improving the user experience of mobile communication devices.

That brings me to the UI paradigm used in new Asha touch series phones (Asha 305 and Asha 311): the three screens and the drop down. One of these screens is actually the phone app, which is also accessible from the drop down menu. This is so close to what I had enlisted in the Kosh UI design : things like phone (and for that matter any other form of communication) should be easily accessible at any point in time of using the device. To some extent this is what Windows Phone with its Live Tiles help to bring in, but again stop short of integrating other elements like the ones available with the new Asha touch OS. (PS: Just for a thought, I think, the Smarterphone acquisition http://www.itwire.com/it-industry-news/strategy/52030-nokia-nabs-another-mobile-os-buys-smarterphone, played a great role is a substantial transformation of the S40 OS in just a very short period of time).

Nokia Asha 305 : the right direction

A while ago, I complained about Nokia Asha series being >5 K INR makes no sense (http://tovganesh.blogspot.in/2012/04/why-nokia-asha-priced-above-5k-inr.html). I am now happy to see Nokia release Asha 305 (http://nokia.indiatimes.com/nokia/touch-screen/nokia-asha-305-black-/10011/p_B10811), with just the right price point and just the right features. This is the first full touch phone in the S40 series to be released in Indian market, and I am expecting it to do well, provided it gives substantially superior performance in comparison to budget Android phones. Specs wise it seems great, and I plan to review this device when I get hold of one of these (anyone wanting to lend me a review unit is welcome!).

In the mean time I keep supporting Nokia, and hope that they can come out of the tough times (as well as the Jolla venture). Just last month I convinced two of my colleagues to buy Nokia: one Nokia Asha 200, the other Nokia Lumia 710, and I too got a very basic and lovely Nokia 1280 for my parents (actually I too might use this for some of my travels, when I can't carry my Lumia 800 around).


Update: Well a youtube user DrTechn0logy has already done a pretty indept review of the phone and you can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aduq2DwQlH0&feature=plcp

3dcam script app is live on Windows Phone Marketplace

To download search for '3dcam' in the Marketplace, or use the link (http://www.windowsphone.com/en-IN/apps/50758998-0b2c-4d70-ad02-5326823cc783). You might have to check if it is available in your countries marketplace, although I have opted for worldwide publication.

The 3dcam app is actually a very simple script written using TouchDevelop and is packaged as an app using the tools at touchdevelop.com. I had earlier written a blogpost on the script itself (http://tovganesh.blogspot.in/2012/02/fun-with-3d-anaglyphs-touchdevelop-and.html)

The app is absolutely free (and no ads), and depending on interest I will keep adding and improving this script app in my free time. Enjoy!

(Obligatory Note: This is a personal project, and not connected to my current employer)

Apps I use on my Nokia Lumia

Once in a while a device comes in that you just love, and makes you feel special. Nokia Lumia 800, for me, has been just that. It is simply the most beautiful piece of electronic craft made. And it has been about five months that I have been using this device. So, this is probably good time to give you an idea of the apps that I use on my Lumia device on day-to-day basis.

OS Apps

Now usually one would forget about these ‘Apps’, but these are actually the apps we use most on daily basis. The phone app, the contacts app (people’s hub), the calendar app, the e-mail app (linked mail-box) and browser app (IE 9) are the ones that I use the most. And I would safely guess that this is the case with most. Naturally, using these apps built into the OS is the first hand experience that you would get of any platform. And I must say that the experience here is absolutely premium, perfect and pleasing.

The second set of OS apps, that I use less regularly are: music hub (Zune and others), picture hub (camera app and others) and of-course the office hub (more on this later in the post). I am very much pleased with the design of music hub, but at the same time miss some important things: An equalizer and ability to create on-device playlists. The camera is good, but the app asks for more usability: the controls are simply not easily accessible. I would, in fact, call out on camera app and make it standout as an outlier in the whole of the Metrofied design world of Windows Phone. It needs a serious re-design.

Productivity

I love OneNote. And I use it extensively. To have it exclusively available in Office Hub was one of the prime reasons for me to choose Windows Phone 7 over other platforms. Though OneNote is quite well done in its mobile version, there are some of the things I miss : save web clip, insert video clip; stuff that I need to get my work done. I do use other Apps: Word and PowerPoint, Evernote, Adobe reader, kindle reader and the amazing offline Dictionary.com app, PC Remote Pro and SSH Client Pro, handyscan. Apart from these I also regularly use Skype, the Weather app and the World time app all of which are well designed and very useful for me. Intermittently, I use the Sports tracker to see how much of my walking/cycling skills have improved  

Development

Not much to say here except to say that I just love the concept of TouchDevelop. There is nothing on other platforms that brings back the joy of programming the way TouchDevelop does. And that too, you just need your smartphone for your perfect program. Although, I would entirely leave it to you, if you actually want to take up coding. Although, if you ever want to give it a try, TouchDevelop will be a no barrier fun programming experience. To see the ‘scripps’ (script apps, the term I just coined ) I have written visit: https://www.touchdevelop.com/wblh

Photography

As I said before, I simply don't like the inbuilt camera interface. There is a lot to be improved here. Hopefully Nokia can do something about it. In the meantime though, there are some excellent photo editing apps that I regularly use: Nokia Creative studio, Thumba photo editor, InstaCam and PhotoFunia. I also regularly use Flickr to upload my photos.

Video

The inbuilt cam-coder is good enough. What is missing however is a good in device movie editor like Windows moviemaker. This is very much desired if we are to be able to post edited videos on social media. Without this, strangely, the so-called social features of Windows Phone are incomplete.

Games

Before I got my Nokia Lumia, I hardly used to play games. But this Windows Phone hooked me to many games. And, no, Angry Birds is not one of them (though I have it installed on my phone anyways). The games I love most are: Wordament, Shuffle Party, Breeze and occasionally Chess4All and Packman 7. The Xbox integration seems also to be well done, although I personally don't use one.

Social

For Twitter and Facebook, I simply use the People’s Hub. With groups and contact live tiles, this is simply what I need to stay connected on these social networks. There are official apps for Twitter and Facebook, but I simply do not feel the need for them, at least for now. I also use Foursquare and LinkedIn app which are far superior in design and usability when compared to other platforms.

The Special Nokia Apps

I regularly use Nokia Maps and Nokia Transport. Nokia Drive is also used occasionally. All these apps are exceptionally useful and are simply not available on other platforms; for that matter even WP7 phones from other manufactures. This was also one of the reasons I chose to get a Lumia device when switching over to WP7.

Music and Instruments

I love to hear instrumentals and especially Indian classical. Zune, with music got from flipkart does the job for me. I occasionally use the inbuilt radio app, the TuneIn Radio (for BBC), SoundHound and PrimeTube (for Youtube). I also love fiddling around with instruments so I use PianoPhone 7, Honey Guitar, Drum Kit and Synth Free. Hopefully, one day, I can create something interesting like this:

Metro : Track created using free Windows Phone apps

Local Apps

These are apps that are probably of relevance to only Indian users. I regularly use Zomato (the design is just too buttery and the operation smooth) and occasionally Flipkart, ebay India and IndianRail app.

Misc.

Some of the apps that I don’t regularly use but are quite handy and sometimes just fun: Flashligh X, SkyDrive (I use office hub integration), Google search app, Microsoft Academic Search, Face Swap and Face Mask, Fantasia Painter Free, Function Plotter and Jack of Tools.

Endnote:

1) A lot of people crib about windows phone not having enough apps. After using Nokia Lumia for about five months, I can surely say that windows phone is not short of quality apps that you will *actually use*.

2) Two things I miss is official Google Maps and GTalk app. While there are alternative third party apps, they are not exactly of great quality. While Nokia maps can be any day be substituted for Google Maps, GTalk integration to People’s Hub would be great.

3) All icons used here are owned by respective owners of the apps and are reproduced here for information purpose only.