Don’t get me wrong, I’m not bashing iPhone fans- I’m just saying for a phone that has so much hype and fanfare, its refreshing to see it kicked down a notch every now and then. The ads were very clever and entertaining, even if you’re the type to have posters of Steve Jobs in your bedroom.

In any event, some of the ads needed to be pulled when the 3G iPhone came out, since they were no longer relevant. More specifically, the ones talking about lack of 3G, GPS, etc. since the new iPhone had addressed those.

However, Sprint seems to be working hard not to miss a beat by finding new ways to poke fun of the fruit phone, and replacing those videos with a few new ones.

I sorta miss some of the older ones (”somewhere in this GINORMOUS circle?“), but even the most die hard Apple fan might find himself chuckling at some of these.

Its a shame because Sprint is kidding themselves thinking this is an iPhone-killer. Whether it really is a superior device or not, I don’t think anyone could make a dent in the Apple marketing machine’s success.

Click here see Sprint’s new videos.

This year I have a panel on a different theme. Quite frankly I want to have a real discussion about Mobile Marketing and about whether its a purely organic structure or something that can be organized and created in a board room.

My panel is called Beyond the Mobile Hype: A Real Look At The Implementation of Mobile Technology and it is in the marketing/advertising panel not the mobile panel which is kind of cool.

Since the iPhone it appears that America has begun to awaken to the power that is mobile technology. Since then there has been a lot of hype surrounding corporations, politics and marketing in terms of how to harness the mobile medium. This panel promises to avoid any hype talk and get nitty gritty with what the mobile medium is good for and what it is not good for with stellar examples from multiple industries. We will examine technical as well as anthropological and sociological issues.

Anyways, head on over to the SXSW Panel Picker and vote for mine as well as other panels. You have to create an account to do so.

It works differently this year in that panels are rated by stars so 5 stars would be nice!

Voting will end at 11:59 pm on Friday, August 29.
Also, if you are interested being on the panel let me know
Extra Note: A lot of the SXSW logo’s have been sporting a hand holding a calle phone. Is this the year of a mobile SXSW?

Technorati Tags: mobile marketing, sxsw

So, in his absence, I’ve decided to post this bizzare use of SMS technology.

According to an article in the Irish Times, a malfunction in a small aircraft carrying 5 people caused it to lose all onboard electrical power, communications and weather radar.

The pilot, who was unable to communicate with the air traffic controller using the plane’s equipment, decided to try using his cell phone to call and inform traffic control of his problem and intention to land “blind”.
However, the signal was not strong enough to maintain a voice connection, and the call was dropped shortly after describing his situation.

The air traffic controller, thinking fast, switched over to SMS texting to continue their conversation instead of trying to initiate a new call. Since SMS only needs a very brief moment of signal to deliver its message, the pilot and air traffic control were able to communicate even though the in-and-out signal made a voice conversation nearly impossible.

Using text messages, the air traffic controller was able to guide the twin-engined Piper plane to a safe landing.

Now THAT’s cool!

The European HTC Touch Diamond is trying to break that mold by giving it a minimalist sleek glossy front, and oddly angled back with jutting out triangles (that’s supposed to remind you of diamonds, I think).

Here in the states, however, they decided to keep with a more traditional (normal?) looking back for the CDMA version. But, to try and keep things stylish, Sprint is releasing it with a Burgundy/Red color.

Normally HTC picks colors from grey to black for their housings, so this could be an interesting new trend to market towards “fashion” phones. Palm and Blackberry have been releasing various color options for years, so its only common sense that HTC start doing this as well.
I suppose its only a matter of time before Apple offers colors other than Black or White for its iPhone cases.

Read More.

In a move that is raising quite a few eyebrows, Hush has told ZDnet that HSBC is considering replacing their corporate Blackberrys currently in use with 200,000 new 3G iPhones.

According to ZDnet:

Global banking giant HSBC is considering ditching the BlackBerry and adopting Apple’s iPhone as its standard staff mobile device, a move that could result in an order for some 200,000 iPhones.

Wow. Not sure what to make of this one, but lets see if it actually happens first…
Click here to read the whole article.

Even the Apple haters out there usually admit that Apple creates polished products- they tend to not cut corners on manufacturing, and give their users a high quality product that is user friendly. This, at least, was the justification for the higher price tag on Apple products despite being proprietary and often lacking competitive features.
Apparently, that trend is changing…

In Apple Forums across the internet, rumors have emerged that the white 3G iPhone body starts to crack without reason.
At first this was dismissed as rumor, but now even Engadget’s model (which they claim has been babied in their labs) has started to develop cracks!

Between this, the horrible battery life, the activation issues, and the whole Mobile Me fiasco (which Jobs even apologized for in an internal letter! - thanks Fabrizio for posting this somewhere I can link to!), its hard to say Apple has the same higher standards for their product and user experience that they appeared to have before.

Hmm…

NBC, who has exclusive coverage of the games here in the US, has done exactly that with the help of mobile content provider SinglePoint.

Olympics enthusiasts can opt-in to receive daily news alerts or real-time information, including breaking news, athlete alerts, medal results, or event reminders. In addition, users can select to receive multimedia alerts, including video highlights and a photo of the day by sports category. Fans can sign up for alerts by visiting NBCOlympics.com ( www.nbcolympics.com/mobile/alerts) or the NBC Olympics Mobile site (m.nbcolympics.com). Subscribers of all domestic U.S. wireless carriers, including AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile, can participate.

Sounds like a solid offering for fans of the games!
For more info, follow the official MarketWatch press release link:
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/singlepoint-powers-mobile-alerts-nbcs/story.aspx?guid=%7B5EA3E6F7-87F6-43BC-B085-963208BCD3C2%7D&dist=hppr

The folks over at tmonews.com have managed to get a picture of a sign posted outside a meeting, presumably of T-Mobile execs or some such. The sign clearly states that T-mobile will be rolling out its high speed 3G network in 27 major cities across the country, with service officially on Oct 1st.

This makes T-Mobile officially the last of the big national carriers to get 3G. This is sad because other carriers have had 3G for years, and are already announcing plans for 4G data. T-mobile’s rollout by Oct only includes 27 cities, and a fuller rollout will probably take them well into 2009- But by then, I wouldn’t be surprised if some form of 4G were already here.

The irony as I blogged about here recently, is that T-Mobile was once regarded as up at the top of the data network game. Back in the days when 2G was standard, they brought us the first Blackberry with voice, the first Pocket PC phone, popular exclusives like the Sidekick and Dash (Excalibur), etc…

The other big GSM networks got EDGE (2.5G) first, and then T-mobile sorta dragged its feet into last place with that too. Now its like they’re reluctantly bringing 3G because they’re the only ones who don’t have it yet.

I was sort of hoping that they’d just skip and jump straight to 4G or something. *Sigh*
Its almost like, why bother, T-Mobile? Your network will be obsolete by the time you finish!

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What was once my clean iPhone interface with just the few basic essential widgets (does Apple Mobile use the term widgets anymore?) was now an application organizational nightmare.

I began to try and make some sense of it. For starters I put all my games on page 3. I put all the applications I am experimenting with on the last page. Updates kill my structure as the applications do not update where the old version resides but rather in the next place where there is space. Hey, Apple, I put my Facebook app second on page two for a reason! sigh.

It made me yearn for my Nokia’s. Could you imagine if Nokia just dropped every Symbian application you downloaded onto the home/idle screen. What a mess it would be. Instead Nokia allows you to choose 5 applications to have on your idle/home screen (albeit not in the easiest manner). Symbian applications get downloaded to applications folder and, if you use the application a lot, can be brought up to the idle/homepage.

I understand that immediacy of use is an important issue when it comes to mobile but that is really important to a few chosen applications. I mean, honestly, how many people use more than 5 applications on a regular basis.

That is of course if they are not already overwhelmed by the application store to begin with. As I am writing this there are 126 applications in the Entertainment category, 147 in the Utilities Category, 93 in the productivity category and a whopping 367 applications in the Games category.

All of them seemingly alphabetical somewhat rate based dumps.

Now do not get me wrong, the iPhone application store has proven that the mobile application is not dead. That all it needs is ease of access. And in the beginning “ease of access” is exactly what the iPhone application store was. But what happens when 367 turns into 500 or 1000. When the “Featured” and top “25″ section gets repetitive the only alternative is the exhausting search/slide of game after game after game. Maybe it is possible to have to many developers.

If they are not going to categorize within a category they should at least let you flag games you find interesting as you look at the other 366 games.

Anyways, it occurred to me that sooner or later Apple is going to have to deal with this iPhone real estate problem. In reality this is a problem across the board and on both sides of the equation. Categorizing things under many layers also creates a user interface nightmare. To many clicks divided by the smallness of the screen is a recipe for disaster. But so is an application dump (even if its on several home screens). Having loads and loads of applications getting dumped on the home screen not only looks ugly (very un-Mac) but also gets confusing and less user friendly. It also overwhelms the user and probably leads to applications getting forgotten about or used less frequently.

Perhaps this will lead to people only downloading what they need and thus forcing the market to shrink. Perhaps mobile widgets are the answer.

What is needed is a happy medium which, I can only imagine, will come about via the combination of a killer cross-functional app and mobile user-ability studies.

Hopefully we are not to far away. The fact that Apple had it right in the beginning is a sure sign that they will be one of the firsts and figure this mess out.

Technorati Tags: iphone, nokia, symbian