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INTERVIEW: Paul O`Brien |
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Written by beersoft
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Tuesday, 09 March 2004 |
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Continuing or series of interviews, we present to you Paul O'Brien
MSMobileNews.com Who are you and what do you do?
MoDaCo I'm Paul O'Brien, founder / admin of MoDaCo Smartphone (http://Smartphone.MoDaCo.com), the online forum for Smartphone owners.
MSMobileNews.com How long have you been involved in smartphones?
MoDaCo Since their launch on Orange in the UK, when, as a typical early-adopter-gadget-freak, I bought one as soon as they came out!
I've been interested in mobile phones and in particular mobile data for many years now, and have been an Orange subscriber since the very earliest days of the Nokia 2140!
MSMobileNews.com Do you own a smartphone? if so which one?
MoDaCo At the moment, I own an E200 and an MPx200, along with a number of non 'Smartphone' phones (Treo 6600, XDA 2, Nokia 6600, Blackberry etc. etc.) About the only 'Smart' phone I don't own at the moment is the P900. I had a P800, but sold it in frustration - it didn't work for me. The P900 seems an improvement however... I'm also intrigued to try the Siemens SX1 and Sendo X.
MSMobileNews.com whatÂ’s the most useful program you have on your smartphone?
MoDaCo I'm a heavy Exchange / Outlook user, so I'd have to say Activesync (if we're allowed to include built in apps!) The Exchange Server 2003 Activesync functionality is excellent!
If we're talking additional apps, then probably Developer One Power Tasks, for reasons as above!
MSMobileNews.com Which phone do you use as your day to day phone?
MoDaCo I've been asked this many times, and the honest answer is, any of the above! At the moment it's probably the e200 (with a beta version of the forthcoming update) more than anything, but at one point it was the XDA 2, and I've used all my devices for a fair amount of time.
The truth is, I choose the most appropriate device for what I'm doing (work, down the pub etc. etc.)
Maybe this is a symptom of the fact that there's no perfect device yet?
I strongly suspect if I could have a Smartphone with great battery life, a decent camera and Bluetooth, that would be my perfect day to day phone.
MSMobileNews.com What where your first impressions of the smartphone? Most people I have spoken to had very low opinions of it until they used it, and now they all have a smartphone
MoDaCo My first impressions of the Smartphone were good, I loved it, but I was also pretty annoyed at the whole 'signing' thing. I bought the original SPV pretty much as soon as it came out, based on the fact that as a software developer, I wanted to be able to write code and run it on the phone. Upon learning I couldn't, I looked for somewhere online to have a rant, and couldn't find anywhere... and MoDaCo was born ;-)
Of course, when the E100 came out I realised how great it would have been if that had been the first Smartphone, and when the 1.61 update came out, ditto, but hey...!
MSMobileNews.com Do you think that smartphones will replace the low end PDA market? And if so how long do you think it will be before Smartphones and PDA's merge as one?
MoDaCo It kinda depends what you class as the low end PDA market. If you mean do I think Smartphones will replace Pocket PCs, then no.
There are definite benefits to both platforms, and clear differences (touchscreen on Pocket PC, one handed operation of Smartphones, form factor etc.), so I think they can happily co-exist.
I do imagine however that more and more features will become common (as is already happening with 'Phone Edition').
MSMobileNews.com Can an all in one device such as a Smartphone succeed against its separate counterparts (MP3 player, camera, pda etc)
MoDaCo Yes and no. A converged device is always going to be a compromise. By that I mean that a phone camera will likely always be lower quality than a dedicated camera, the MP3 functionality will always suffer as the phone will exhaust the battery quicker than on a dedicated music device, and the PDA functionality will always be a compromise compared to dedicated devices (i.e. Pocket PCs) because of screen size etc..
Where it WILL be a winner is where the user places convergence top of their list of priorities, or is not a power user of that technology. For example, a reasonable camera, with a half decent MP3 player and pretty good PDA functionality will suit me fine, and the benefits of it being in a convent phone package outweigh any limitations.
MSMobileNews.com As a mobile gaming/application platform, do you think the smartphone platform is viable, comparing it to all the JAVA, BREW and N
Gauge/symbian based platforms?
MoDaCo Absolutely.
I think that Java and Brew have their plus points of course, but there is simply no substitute for native code from a performance point of view.
Smartphone has a great advantage in the gaming arena purely because of the kind of specifications on board. With a large memory, fast CPU and with dedicated graphics chips in the works from ATI and NVidia supporting Mobile DirectX, I think we'll see some Gameboy-thrashing releases in the near future.
Series 60 and N-Gage have the advantage that the Nokia brand can sway big name developers, but for me it just doesn't cut it - the S60 platform has comparatively low power hardware, and as for the NGage, I just don't get it... I've used one and absolutely hated it, both for games and as a phone!
MSMobileNews.com When do you think Microsoft Smartphone will possess the power to become more of a PDA?
MoDaCo The Smartphone already is a pretty competent PDA, and with third party applications like Power Tasks and Power Calendar (I know I'm raving on
about them, but I think they're great!), the PDA functionality is almost
complete for me.
I think we can expect incremental improvements in the forthcoming
releases of the Smartphone OS, but I wouldn't expect any major changes
in this area.
MSMobileNews.com Out of the current smartphone games released, which do you play?
MoDaCo Toki Tori is still a favourite of mine, as was Done in 50 Seconds until I finished it! Mini Golf is a very classy release, and great for showing
off the phone!
I'm helping to test a couple of games that are under development by
'Alien Invention', and they are a great illustration of the power of the
Smartphone platform. It makes me chuckle to play their first release and
then think how people raved over interstellar flames ;-)
MSMobileNews.com The smartphone market is mostly aimed at men, have you developed or plan to develop software which is aims to attract more women to
smartphones?
MoDaCo Not specifically, although I think it's an important part of the market.
I think that rather than attracting women specifically to the platform,
we need to attract more 'standard users', as opposed to the gadget
freaks that we may be considered ;-)
By maturing Smartphone into a platform that normal users can trust, we
will widen the audience, and thereby attract more women to Smartphone.
MSMobileNews.com Now that we have windows mobile 2003 with .net framework on thelatest phones, do you think it's a good thing for development? Or do you think java is better suited to mobile applications?
MoDaCo It's a GREAT thing for development - as a .net developer myself, it's very exciting being able to deploy my own applications on the phone.
I'm quite excited to see .net on the phone as there are millions of
legacy VB and .net developers out there that will find porting
applications to Smartphone very straight forward.
Java too is valuable, for similar reasons.
It would be great to have a high quality Java VM that worked across all
mobile devices, then maybe it could work. At the moment, despite J2ME
being a 'standard', there's not enough stability to enable cross
platform development in this way. I think .net and Java can happily
coexist on Smartphone.
MSMobileNews.com Will we be seeing more ports of pocketpc applications on the smartphone platform? Or more original titles?
MoDaCo Absolutely.
I know of a number of Pocket PC developers who are considering porting
to Smartphone, but want to see the platform mature before making the investment. As shipments increase and overtake Pocket PC sales, I imagine we will see a large percentage of Pocket PC developers supporting Smartphone.
MSMobileNews.com Out of all the applications and games released over the last 20 years which would you like to see on a mobile platform?
MoDaCo I would like to see Smartphone development become more accessible to the everyday user. If we look at the early 80s, the ZX Spectrum days, it was
a time when program listings were printed in magazines, and there was a
really hobbyist programming movement.
I would like to see a free and 'beginner friendly' BASIC language and
development toolset for Smartphone, in the mould of ZX Basic.
Who knows, maybe I'll develop one... ;-)
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