Mobile Archives

  1. iMessages on the Desktop

    One of the things I love about Google Voice is the way I can receive and send text messages from my phone, iPad and laptop. To borrow from “the best camera is the one that’s with you”, the best device for messaging is the one you’re currently using. It’s blindingly obvious that this sort of…

  2. Interaction Consistency

    iOS Shortcut Form

    Many people, myself included, blast Android for UI inconsistency; but it’s a problem in iOS too. Here we have two screenshots from the built-in iOS settings screens. In this one, you see a Back button and a Save button in the toolbar. Clicking Save will apply changes, while clicking Back will act as a Cancel…

  3. Clear Out Your iPhone Camera Roll

    Since getting my iPhone earlier this year, I’d kept all of of the photos I’d taken in the iPhone’s camera roll. I’d accumulated over 1200 of them. It was handy to have a bunch of photos with me, but there was a cost on several fronts: storage and speed. This past week I’ve completely revamped…

  4. iPhone Tethering on Verizon is now a Plan Change

    One of the things I’ve liked about Verizon with my Droid and iPhone is the ability to flip on the HotSpot feature via the My Verizon app. I click on Plan Features and turn it on/off. Easy. Last month I made some account changes and added some family members to my plan. I discovered that…

  5. Modernizr.touch and BlackBerry Browsers

    If you’re using Moderinzr to detect browser support for touch events, be aware that non-touch BlackBerry devices claim to support touch events. As you might expect, the touch events are pretty much impossible to trigger on a non-touch device. I worked around this by making the check for touch vs. non-touch browsers also test for…

  6. webOS : HP (Apotheker) :: Newton : Apple (Jobs)

    I’ve been a mobile tech junkie for a while now, and watching HP recently kill their webOS devices (effectively, webOS itself) has given me an interesting feeling of deja vu. The situation here has some strong parallels to the plight of the Newton. Both the Newton and webOS were considered to be good technology, with…

  7. Sketches 2 = Skitch for iPhone

    If you’re looking for an iPhone app that gives you the ability to annotate and draw circles and arrows on screenshots the way the excellent Skitch app for the Mac does, I recommend trying Sketches 2. It’s not quite as good as Skitch, but definitely the best of the ones I’ve tried for iOS. Thanks…

  8. The Android OS Update Problem

    The reasons that Android phones are either slow to get system updates, or fail to get them entirely are pretty clear. The process of getting an update ready to push to a handset is decidedly non-trivial: Google creates, tests and releases a system update. Handset manufacturers take the system update and apply their vendo-specific tweaks…

  9. iPhone 4 on Verizon

    Can’t wait for that iPhone 4 on Verizon? If you aren’t already a Verizon customer and don’t want to wait until Feb 10th, here’s what to do. Go sign up for a Verizon account today and purchase the cheapest phone they have, without a subsidy. Don’t use the cheap phone. Get online at 3AM US/Eastern…

  10. New vs. Unread

    Corey mentioned it on Twitter a few weeks back: @alexkingorg it’s the whole concept of new vs unread. I knew to open mail for new mail. Unread is a meaningless number. BlackBerry, Android and Palm all have a notification system that allows the user to know when new email has arrived. The notification remains present…

  11. iPhone, Android and BlackBerry Strengths

    A little background: I spent the last few months with a Droid 2, just switched back to a BlackBerry and I expect to have an iPhone again pretty soon (currently sporting an iPod touch).1 My experiences across each of the platforms has shown me the strengths of each. Or put another way, it’s made it…

  12. Things to Expect on Verizon

    In the last 5 years I’ve spent time on all 4 of the major US carriers here in Denver.1 During that time I’ve also done some traveling while carrying phones on multiple networks. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned, it’s that mobile coverage is a very dependent on location. In Denver you can’t connect…

  13. iPhone vs Android Apps

    The Perception iPhone apps are beautiful and exhibit consistent user interface conventions while Android apps are functional, but lack elegance, polish and consistency. The Truth iPhone apps are beautiful and exhibit consistent user interface conventions while Android apps are functional, but lack elegance, polish and consistency. The false promise of Android is that any day…

  14. Samsung Galaxy Tab User Agent

    If you’re trying to sniff the Samsung Galaxy Tab, here is the current User Agent string1: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.2; en-us; SCH-I800 Build/FROYO) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1 It looks like SCH-I800 may be the best thing to look for. Would it have killed them to add “Android Tablet (7 inch)” in…