iphone- gnegg

Skype over 3G – calculations

With the availability of an iPhone Skype client with background availability, I wanted to find out, how much it would cost me if I move calls from the regular mobile network over to Skype over 3G.

Doing VoIP over 3G is a non-issue from a political standpoint here in Switzerland as there are no unlimited data plans available and the metered plans are expensive enough for the cellphone companies to actually be able to make money with, so there’s no blocking or anything else going on over here.

To see how much data is accumulated, I hold a phone conversation with my girlfriend that lasted exactly 2 minutes in which time, we both talked. Before doing so, I reset the traffic counter on my phone and immediately afterwards I checked.

After two minutes, I sent out 652 KB of data and received 798 KB.

This is equal to around 750 KB/minute (being conservative here and gracefully rounding up).

My subscription comes with 250 MB of data per month. Once that’s used, there’s a flat rate of CHF 5 per day I’m using any data, so I really should not go beyond the 250MB.

As I’m not watching video (or audio) over 3G, my data usage is otherwise quite low – around 50MB.

That leaves 200MB unused.

With 750KB/minute, this equals 4.4 hours of free Skype conversation. Which is something I would never ever reach wich means that at least with skype-enabled people, I can talk for free now.

Well. Could.

While the voice quality in Skype over 3G is simply astounding, the solution unfortunately still isn’t practical due to two issues:

Skype sucks about 20% of battery per hour even when just idling in the background.
Skype IM doesn’t know the concept of locations so all IM sent is replicated to all clients. This means that whenever I type something for a coworker, my phone will make a sound and vibrate.

2) I could work around by quitting Skype when in front of a PC, but 1) really is a killer. Maybe the new iPhone 4 (if I go that route instead of giving Andorid another try) with its bigger battery will be of help.

Sticking to the iPhone

Recently, I got a chance to play around with a Nexus One phone and I was using it as my main phone with the intent to use it as my new main phone. I had enough of the lack of background apps and the closedness of the iPhone, so I thought, I should really go through with this.

Unfortunately though, this didn’t work out so well.

People who haven’t tried both devices would probably never understand this, but the Nexus One touch screen is really, really bad. The bit of squigglyness you see on the picture in the linked article seems like no big deal, but after one week of Nexus One and then going back to the iPhone, you can’t imagine how smooth it feels to use the iPhone again.

It’s like being in a very noisy environment and then stepping back into a quiet one.

Why did I try the iPhone again?

While I got Podcast listening to work correctly on the Android phone, I noticed that a lot of my commuting time is not just spent by listening to podcasts, but that some games (currently Doodle Jump and Plants vs. Zombies) play a huge role too and the supply of games on the Android plattform is really, really bad.

And don’t get me started on the keyboard: Neither the built-in one nor the one I had switched to even comes close to what the iPhone provides. I’m about 5 times as fast on the iPhone than on the Android. Worse: After switching to the Nexus One, I again began dreading having to write SMSes which usually spells death to any phone for me.

Speaking of keyboard: The built-in one is completely unusable for multilingual people: The text I write on a phone is about 50% english and 50% german. The Android keyboard doesn’t allow switching the language on the fly (while the english and german keyboards are quite alike, the keyboard language also determines the auto correction language), and it couples the keyboard language to the phone UI language.

This is really bad, as over the years I bacame so accustomed to english UIs that I frankly cannot work with german UIs any more – also because of the usually really bad translations. Eek.

So, let’s tally.

	iPhone	Android Device
Advantages	Working touch screen Smoother graphics and thus more fluent usage. Never crashes Apps I learned to depend on are available (Wemlin, Doodle Jump […]) No background noise in the headphones	Background-Applications (I wanted this for working IM as the notification based solutions on the iPhone never seemed to work) Built-in applications can be replaced at will Ability to buzz pictures (yeah. I know. Who needs this?) On-the-fly podcast download.
Disadvantages	Can’t replace internal apps by better ones Needs iTunes to download podcasts No background apps No buzzing of pictures (at least not if you want a location attached to your buzz)	Really bad touch screen (jumpy, inaccurate, sometimes losing calibration until I reboot it) Very mediocre applications available UI sometimes slow Very bad battery life (doesn’t make it through one day even when not heavily used) Crashes about once a day Did I already write “really bad touch screen” – I guess I did, but: “really bad touch screen” Sometimes really bad, sometimes just bad background noise in the headphones. According to HTC, this can be fixed by periodically turning off the phone and removing the battery(!). No audible support (I know I could probably remove the DRM, but why bother at the moment?)

While I thought I could live with the touch screen, the moment I turned on the iPhone again to play a round of “Plants vs. Zombies” that just came out for the i-Devices, I’ve seen how a touch screen is supposed to work and I could not bring myself around to going back, but I still wanted some of the one big iPhone disadvantage, which is lack of non-SMS-based messaging fixed for me, so here’s what I’ve done:

WhatsApp on the iPhone works really well as an SMS replacement (something I was after for a very long time)
meebo so far never disconnected me on the iPhone which is something all other iPhone IM clients have done for me – and even on the android, meebo tended to disconnect and not reconnect.

For me, that’s it. No more experiments. What ever I tried to get away from Apple’s dictate, it always failed. The N900 is a geeks heaven but doesn’t support my expensive in-ear iPhone headset and doesn’t provide any halfway interesting games. Android has a bad touchscreen, next to no battery life, is slow and crashy.

It’s really hard to admit for me as a geek and strong believer in freedom to use something I bought for whatever purpose I want to use it for, but Apple, even after two years, still rules the phone market in usability and hardware build quality.

Can’t wait to see what the next iteration of the iPhone will be, though they don’t have to change anything as long as their competition still thinks it’s ok to save $2 on each phone by using a crappy touchscreen and a crappy battery.

Sonos news

Today, Sonos announced their new 2.7 software version for their home appliances with some additional web radio features in which I’m not particularly interested as I’m more or less only listening to one web radio station. What they’ve also announced though was much more interesting: An iPhone Version of their Controller application (iTunes Link).

The thing doesn’t just look nice, it also works perfectly well and provides all the functionality you are used to have in your sonos controller, but without the controllers bulkyness (the thing is heavy and quite large). I’m constantly carrying my iPhone around anyways and it’s constantly connected to the WiFi network in my home, so it’s the perfect fit to be a sonos controller.

The application starts up quite instantly: It does show a splash screen for around three seconds, but that is still way shorter than a controller booting up from deep sleep, which you have to put it into if you want it to last longer than a day or so.

Functionality-wise the iPhone application provides everything a real controller does – well… nearly everything. I truly miss the alarm functionality, but I’m quite sure that’ll come soon enough.

Aside of that, I’m inclined to say that this little application more or less obsoletes the original controller. And in every case but the 32GB iPod Touch, it’s always cheaper to buy any Apple device and install the application than it is to buy the original Sonos controller (here in Switzerland, you can get an 8 GB touch for half the price of a Sonos controller) – if you can live with setting up alarms in the desktop software. It’s certainly possible (and thankfully much quicker than with the original controller) to cancel a running alarm in the iPhone controller.

Very nice indeed.

On related news: I have updated my ogg to mp3 stream converter to stop looking at the url to decide whether the url to play is a stream itself or a playlist, but instead to fetch the information from the HTTP response header themselves, thus making the script to continue to work with Rainwave despite them having changed the URL for the tune in link.

Which phone for me?

I’m a quite happy user of my Sony Ericsson W880i / iPod Touch combo: The touch is for listening to podcasts and watching video, the W880i is for SMSing and making a phone call here and then, though it’s mostly for getting called these days. Skype exists and works well.

Now with all the new toysinteresting devices coming out all over the place, maybe it’s time to reevaluate the different options. 3G iPhone? Something Windows Mobile based (though the touch diamond seems to be the way to go)? My old phone? Or a combination of any of them?

I tried to make a tabular comparison, where I’m listing the phones by use cases. And I’m only listening features interesting for me. Your points may differ from the ones presented here. This is, after all, a guide I used to pick a solution.

Phone usage
	iPhone	Touch Diamond	W880i
Quick dialing of arbitrary numbers			yes
Acceptable battery life (more than two days)	?	?	yes
usable as modem	probably not	yes	yes
usable while not looking at the device		limited	yes
quick writing of SMS messages			yes
Sending and receiving of MMS messages¹		yes	yes
PIM usage
synchronizes with google calendar/contacts²	maybe		yes. Contacts limited
synchronizes with Outlook	maybe	yes	not reliably
usable calendar	yes	yes
usable todo list		yes
media player usage
integrates into current iTunes based podcast workflow³	yes
straight forward audio playing interface	yes
straight forward video playing interface⁴
acceptable video player⁵	limited	yes
hackability
ssh client	maybe	yes
skype client⁶	maybe	yes
OperaMini (browser usable on GSM)		yes	yes
WLAN-Browser	yes	yes

Notes:

While I’m not using it often, here and then I come across something funny which I want to share with my parents or my girlfriend. MMS is the optimal medium for that. I send about one MMS per two months and I receive around 2 MMS per month, so this is probably not as important.
Using Services like GooSync it is possible to synchronize the W880i with the Google services, though Google’s Contact API currently isn’t in a state where it would be useful for actually using it to synchronize contacts with the pone – mainly due to not providing an option to synchronize only certain matching contacts.
iTunes not only downloads Podcasts but also keeps track of playback position and the new/not new state across devices and computers. I’m subscribed to more than 20 podcasts, so such features are essential for me.
Neither the iPhone nor the WinMob devices provide an user experience for playing video that even comes close to match the one the iPhone would provide for Audio files.
The Video player on the iPhone is limited to MP4-packaged H.264 files, whereas there are Media Players for WinMob that can handle whatever you throw at them.
Skype is available as a JavaME application, but in addition to the (horrendous) GPRS charge, Skype also charges you, whether you make or receive calls. This is why I listed skype support as missing on the W880i

What’s missing in the comparison table is one of the upcoming large Windows Mobile devices with built-in keyboards like the Sony Ericcson XPERIA or the Touch Diamond pro. This class of devices does provide more convenient typing, but their usability still doesn’t even come close to matching a pure phones one. You’d still have to browse through menus, search special keys (like umlauts) and stuff. It’s just that typing has become a bit easier.

These little usability benefits do not even come close to offset the weight and especially thickness of these devices which is why I’m not listening them in the table above.

But let’s discuss the tables content for now:

First the obvious: The best phone in the list is… well… the phone. Neither of the two smart phones is capable of bringing a pure phone user experience that comes even close to what a real phone with a real keyboard can provide.

In case you wonder: I’m a heavy user of T9. Typing with a 10-key keypad assisted by T9 feels completely natural to me and the W880i provides really nice T9 functionality with quick access to suggestions and other shortcuts, so I’m actually inclined to say that I’m quicker to type on that phone than I would even be with one of the larger keyboard-based smart phones, mainly due to shorter distances to travel with the finger(s). With my ~100 SMS per month, I consider myself to be a heavy user of SMS, so quick and easy SMS writing and reception is a key feature for me.

Aside of that, the phone is more or less just that: A phone. It doesn’t really shine in every other aspect. Music kind-of works, but is unusable for Podcasts due to not saving playback position between launches of the media application, let alone synchronizing the playback position across devices.

Video, applications and even just browsing beyond the means of what OperaMini can provide are out of the question.

As such, the W880i basically is like grep. Or sort. Or uniq. Or like any other of these little UNIX utilities: It does one thing and it does it well.

The WinMob phones provide not much better media support (they do play video, but for Podcasts they are still not as good as iTunes), but they shine in the realm of hackability and, of course, the PIM synchronization, though there they more or less only work with Exchange. Also, the larger screen provides the user with a lot more possibilities UI-wise.

So while the W880i is the better phone, the WinMob devices are the better PIM solution and better platform to hack on which appeals the geek in me quite more – obviously.

The iPhone is limited in its capabilities as a phone, provides next to no hackability and will probably come with some enforced phone contract here in Switzerland. It does shine in the media department though, but that part is also perfectly well handled by my current iPod Touch to which I can easily (at the cost of $10) add the limited hackability the iPhone is going to get – should I need it.

Looking at this, the iPhone certainly looks like an uninteresting solution: All it would provide I currently have in the touch, aside of the phone, for which I currently have a better solution anyways.

Replacing the W880i/touch combo with either an iPhone or a WinMob solution seems like a stupid thing to do as I’d lose the good usability of the phone and/or the nice Media capabilities of the touch.

So in the end, I have only a couple of options which would work for me:

Replace my W880i/touch combo with a W880i/iPhone combo and use the iPhone as an always-connected surf station with limited hackability. This, frankly, is just too expensive to be of any value as it would mean to get a second mobile contract just for surfing here and then, while still forcing me to keep the data option for my W880i because the iPhone is not usable as a modem in case I need to emergency-repair a server or something.
Replace the W880i in my combo with the Touch Diamond: With every earlier model of WinMob devices, this would have been completely un-doable due to the thickness of the devices. The Diamond is not much thicker than the W880i, so the Diamond and the iPod Touch would still fit the same pocket in my trousers. I would lose the kick-ass usability of the W880i, but I would gain a real in-bed media player (without transcoding), an emergency SSH client and a completely working PIM with totally working synchronization.
Keep my solution as it currently is, while keeping in mind that ever since I got the touch, it provides all the features I would ever need: A kick-ass phone, an acceptable video player, a kick-ass music player and two browsers – one for each type of usage: The OperaMini when I’m forced to use the slow GSM and Safari on the Touch when I have WLAN (you would not want to use Safari over GSM – I tried).

It’s funny: I’m so much in love with technology and gadgets. I’m always on the lookout for new stuff, always trying out new, so called revolutionary technology. I’ve tried to many phone solutions in my life (just look at this blog), but I finally think that I have found a solution I’m willing to stick with.

The current W880i/Touch combo works so well that I don’t see any other solution that would only provide me with advantages. Each and every other new device comes with inherent drawbacks.

I guess, for once, I pass. I’ll stick around with my outdated solution and I’ll wait for the next revolution. What I currently have just works too well.

Mail filtering belongs on the server

Different people who got their iPhone are complaining about SPAM reaching their inbox and want Junk Mail controls on their new gadget, failing to realize the big problem with that approach:

Even if the iPhone is updated with a SPAM filter, the messages will get transmitted and filtered there, which means that you pay for receiving the junk just to throw it away afterwards.

Additionally, Bayes filter still seem to be the way to go with junk mail filtering. The Bayes rules can get pretty large, so this means that you either have to retrain your phone or that the seed data must be synchronized with the phone which will take both a lot of time and space better used for something else.

No. SPAM filtering is a task for the mail server.

I’m using SpamAssassin and DSPAM to check the incoming mail for junk and then I’m using the server side filtering capabilities of our Exchange server to filter mail recognized as SPAM into the “Junk E-Mail” box.

If the filter is easy enough (checking for header values and moving into boxes), even though it is defined in Outlook, the server can process them regardless of which client is connecting to it to fetch the mail (Apple Mail, Thunderbird and the IMAP client on my W880i in my case). This means that all my junk is sorted away into the “Junk Email” folder just when it arrives. It never reaches the INBOX and I never see it.

I don’t have an iPhone and I don’t want to have one (I depend on bluetooth modem functionality and a real keypad), but the same thing applies to any mobile emailing solution. You don’t want SPAM on your Blackberry and especially not on your even simpler non-smartphone.

Speaking of transferring data: The other thing I really don’t like about the iPhone is the browser. Sure: It’s standard compliant, it renders nice, it supports AJAX and supports small-screen-rendering but it transmits the websites uncompressed.

Let me make an example: The digg.com frontpage in Opera Mini causes 10KB of data to be tranferred. It looks perfectly fine on my SonyEricsson W880 and works as such (minus some javascript functionality). Digg.com when accessed via Firefox causes 319 KB to be transmitted.

One MB costs CHF 7 here (though you can have some inclusive MB’s depending on contract) which is around EUR 4.50, so for that money I could watch digg.com three times with the iPhone or 100 times with Opera Mini. The end-user experience is largely the same on both platforms – at least close enough not to warrant the 33 times more expensive access via a browser that works without a special proxy.

As long as GPRS data traffic is prohibitively expensive, junk mail filtering on the server and a prerendering-proxy based browser are a must. Even more so than the other stuff missing in the iPhone.