While Russell and I are still honing our predictions for 2007, I thought it would be a good time to take a look back at 2006, following the best and worst in mobile reviews I did last year.
The most heartening thing to happen all year was 3’s launch of the X-Series. Nice services, fantastic price, and flat-rate data. While some of the kinks are still being worked out, it’s hard not to look favorably on the X-Series and its precursor, T-Mobile’s Web’n'Walk offering.
Contrast that with the most disappointing development of the year: the continued glacial pace at which innovation trickles down to the mass market. There’s no doubt that there are a lot of people doing cool things on mobile — in particular, a lot of small companies and developers — but their progress is continually stymied by the hurdles at which this industry is so adept at throwing in front of them. But maybe, just maybe, we’ll start to see some change on this front in 2007.
Last year, Russell and I settled on the Sony Ericsson K750i as our favorite handset, if for no other reason than we’d both seen fit to buy one. Using similar criteria this year, I’ll have to go with the Nokia E61 (ok, I didn’t buy one, but the unit I was given has suitably impressed me and i’m using it quite a bit these days). It’s not a perfect device by any stretch — I quite miss having a good digital camera built in — but the full keyboard is solid, the landscape-oriented screen is great, and having Wi-Fi is a definite bonus. And while S60 still isn’t perfect either, it’s made significant progress.
My favorite mobile application of the year still has to be ShoZu, with Opera Mini once again near the top of the heap. Coming up quickly, though, are Google’s mobile applications: Gmail Mobile and Google Maps for Mobile. Google’s clearly starting to pay more attention to mobile, and its resources are starting to bear some fruit, as Gmail Mobile’s one of the more impressive Java apps I’ve used in some time.
The best “couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of folks” moment was the EU’s announcement that it would begin regulating international roaming rates on the continent. While I tend to think that this sort of heavy-handed interference in the free market isn’t a great idea, it seems pretty obvious that the market has been unable to engender real competition and its attendant benefits for consumers in this case. I’m not optimistic that the new regulations will help me much, but still, it’s something.
My biggest mobile annoyance of the year (and this will certainly be a surprise to regular readers): .mobi. It’s a joke and a money grab. Any potential value I could see in it on a theoretical level is destroyed by the way it’s being administered. And in case you were wondering, the high-dollar flowers.mobi domain still isn’t compliant with .mobi’s rules, and is still nothing more than a useless parked domain.
What were your highs and lows in mobile for 2006?
Carnival Time!…
Photo by Rick Takagi Some rights reserved.
After a long holiday break, the Carnival of the Mobilists is back. I’m honored to host it here at Wap Review with a great selection of posts from all areas of the mobile scene.
History and Prognostication: …
The E61 as your phone of the year? How so?
Almost everythng about it is unfinished and poorly thought through. Just simple stuff, like configuring settings, requires serious gadgetry skills.
The Windows phones and PDAs are much easier to use.
I like Nokia phones (I have N70 for personal use), but E61 is their first qwerty and it’s “ruff”.
ShoZu, Opera Mini, and Goggle Maps are all good picks thou’.
I’m ramping up as the new dotMobi CTO, and I guess I need to say a few words about your review of our progress
In one part of your article you reflect on the disappointing uptake of mobile in the mass market.
The reason I took on the opportunity at dotMobi is that I truly believe that the .mobi domain can be a way to kick start that consumer acceptable of the medium.
The yeast that might mix with all the other mobile ingredients (that mostly already exist!) to make the bread rise.
If dotMobi is viewed as a domain-selling exercise only, it may be hard to see how that can be the case. But we have a lot of initiatives underway (some very young!) to supplement that and help make the mobile web a success.
So for example, we have the mobiReady report at http://mr.dev.mobi. Not perfect (yet!) but a valuable tool for checking the chances that a site will work on mobile.
And then there’s our fledgling development community at http://dev.mobi. It’s designed to be an independent set of resources, forums, and tools for web developers tackling mobile.
Now, if one is a mobile veteran, some of this may seem familiar, and maybe even uneccessary. But we think it’s important to bring expertise in the mobile arena to a broader and broader audience of regular web developers in order to bootstrap the mobile web.
And there’s so much more for us to do, and lots more on the way. Watch this space.
But I think we’re working hard - in our own way - to make this medium (that you are clearly passionate about!) a success.
Gabriel - While S60 certainly isn’t perfect, I personally find it far easier to use than Windows Mobile by a long shot.
James - Thanks for the comments. I don’t doubt your passion or the benefits you hope to provide with your developer resources, but I find it hard to reconcile with most everything else mTLD has done to this point.
Fair enough - but I can vouch for the future
…sounds like a challenge to surprise and delight you.