Why Android 'Honeycomb' Matters

The 2011 Consumer Electronics Show was packed with a number of tasty gadget announcements last week, but the biggest news came courtesy of Google at Motorola's press event. Android 3.0 (codenamed 'Honeycomb') has finally been unveiled, and it's headed straight for smartphones and tablets in March. 

One of my biggest complaints about the Android OS has been the lack of a consistent user-interface design and an over-reliance on hidden menus to reveal basic functionalities. I'd heard last year that Palm's Matias Duarte (an industry veteran in mobile UI design) jumped ship to Google, and I was very interested to see when Duarte's work would manifest itself in Android's user experience. The results of months of UI development can be seen in Google's preview of Honeycomb.

For starters, there's a brand new art direction coming to Android; with Honeycomb, we can see a clear shift to a futuristic, 'authentically digital' aesthetic, reminiscent of the futuristic art design in the new Tron: Legacy film. In fact, the new gesture action for unlocking a Honeycomb device involves a glowing, Tron-like circle in the center of the screen.  

Current Android phones and tablets rely on physical buttons that are fixed into the hardware - Home, Search, Back, and Menu. In a few months, we'll start to see some devices do away with those hardware buttons, as Honeycomb will have a Windows-like 'taskbar' with Home, Back, and Menu buttons displayed on the touchscreen. 

The tablet build of Honeycomb will also come with a new dedicated Gmail widget, as well as a spruced-up calendar view that will let you scroll through calendar events from the home screen. Oh yeah, and there's also a sexy new 3D panoramic Youtube app, a powerful new Chrome-like web browser, an improved touchscreen keyboard, Gtalk-integrated video chat, and an incredibly elegant multitasking solution that will allow users to see what apps are running at all times. 

A slick new way to surf Youtube

Bottom line, Honeycomb looks stunning. While it's currently unknown as to how many of the new improvements will make it into the phone version of Honeycomb, it's very clear that Google's put a lot of work into making Android a more consumer-friendly OS that will scale beautifully to a variety of tablet screen sizes. The fact that Honeycomb will enable electronics makers to put out actually-good tablets with very competitive prices is an incredibly exciting prospect; based on what was shown by the various makers at CES, 2011 is going to see a massive armada of iPad-hunting Honeycomb tablets. 

Somebody needs to port Starcraft onto one of these. I'm dead serious - somebody do this before I storm the offices of Blizzard with a briefcase full of stolen cash. 

In Review: Android, Blackberry, iOS, WebOS, and Windows

Loyal readers of WordsFinest know that I'm a gadget hound, tirelessly searching for the perfect phone. The phone has become the most essential iteration of the personal computer, and consumers are caught in an epic war between some of the biggest names in the tech industry. The stakes are high - the very future of mobile computing rests on the successes and failures of these bizarrely-named phone religions: Android, Blackberry, iOS, WebOS, and Windows Phone 7. In the past year, I've had the opportunity to try every smartphone platform on the market, and there are certain trade-offs with every platform and piece of phone hardware that you're going to want to be aware of when choosing your next phone.

Lots of choices...but how many good ones?

Apple's iOS

We have to start with Apple because the iPhone has become the sore benchmark by which all other phones are judged. You can't pull out a phone with a touchscreen without having someone ask you if it's better than an iPhone. I've spent quite a bit of time with an iPhone 4 and iOS this year, and here are my thoughts:

Buy it: I found the iPhone 4 to be the most premium-feeling, quality-built piece of hardware on the market. I hate using iTunes, but it helps give iOS the best media importing and playback experience of any phone. iOS also has the best-stocked app store, and there are a number of awesome apps that you simply can't get for the other phones. Lastly, iOS has the most consistent and reliable user-interface; you can never get 'lost' in an iPhone, and it's always easy to navigate through the various menus and functions. 

Toss it: There's no hardware diversity. Apple only makes one version of the iPhone a year, and they're all going to have the same screen size and form factor - and you still can't even get the white version because they've had trouble manufacturing it; apparently Apple has never ever shipped a white product. Additionally, Apple's iOS keeps you chained to their 'benevolent' restrictions: very little customization, and no ability to purchase or install apps anywhere outside of Apple's totalitarian App Store. 

Google's Android

In past articles, I've caught a lot of flack from Android fans. Without a doubt, Android has the most vocal and oddly defensive fanbase of any smartphone OS - but with generally worthy cause. I got to play with a few Android phones this year, including a Nexus One, T-Mobile G2, and Galaxy S phone.

Buy it: Android can definitely feel liberating if you've been trapped in Apple's claustrophobic little world. There's an incredible diversity of hardware, enabling you to find your dream device with just the right screen size or optional keyboard. On the software side, I thought Android was incredibly customizable, [typically] open for installing apps from any source (including Amazon's upcoming app store), and beautifully integrated with Google services like Gmail and Voice.

Toss it: I'm going to invite more flack, but I still think Android is aesthetically unattractive. With Froyo and Gingerbread, it's been making some slow user interface improvements, but the sum of the experience is still incredibly frustrating. I hate how it allows app icons to look disorganized, and all the sophisticated functionality of Android is buried in these incredibly frustrating menus, blocking out even the simplest functions (Example: If I'm writing an email, I shouldn't have to open a menu to send it - there should just be a 'Send' button right in front of me). Another frustrating point is the 'splintering' of software updates. When Google puts out a new update for Android, they expect the hardware makers to make the update work for their phones. This is just stupid, since hardware makers have no incentive to provide these software updates for 'older' phones if they're trying to sell newer models. It'll be frustrating for people who buy brand new Android phones and find out that they aren't "new" enough to come with the new Gingerbread update. 

RIM's Blackberry OS

Blackberries still hold the highest market share and demand the respect of countless professionals. I used a Curve for a long time and borrowed a friend's new Torch for a few days.

Buy it: Actually, don't buy it. Seriously. 

Toss it: I know Blackberries have great hardware keyboards and everybody loved their Pearls or Curves, but the Blackberry OS has become seriously dated with old user interface paradigms and incredibly sluggish performance. Even with a new web browser and better app support, the new Blackberry OS 6.0 is still a mild improvement that just doesn't take Blackberry phones far enough to compete with iOS, Android, and the other major players. RIM is investing heavily in the new QNX platform for their tablets, and I seriously hope we see QNX replace the ancient Blackberry OS that RIM is still cramming into their phones. 

HP-Palm's WebOS

I have a serious affinity for the old Palm PDA devices, and I was definitely excited when Palm first announced WebOS and the Pre phone in 2009. I used a Palm Pre Plus for a week to give WebOS a spin. 

Buy it: Multitasking has been the most-talked about feature in smartphones this year, and I can comfortably say that WebOS has the best multitasking solution in the group. Unlike Android, nothing 'hides' in the background to kill your battery. WebOS operates on a 'card' paradigm, similar to opening and closing windows on your PC - this is how it does multitasking. All of your running apps are shown in front of you as 'cards' that you can focus on or flick away to 'kill'. It's very elegant, and supported by slick UI design.

Toss it: WebOS suffers from a very small app store and a really weak selection of hardware. Since 2009, our choices have been various rehashes of the Pre and Pixie phones, and neither of them suited my needs.

Microsoft's Windows Phone 7

The new Windows phones just came out, and I haven't spent as much time with them as I would've liked. However, I did get to get spend a bit of time with the new HTC HD7.

Buy it: I hate saying it, but I think Windows Phone 7 has the most attractive user interface at the moment - but you'll definitely have to see it in motion to believe it. Its live-updating 'tiles' metaphor is wonderfully streamlined and futuristic-looking, and every screen offers really stylish transitions and aggressively-large, clean fonts. The touch experience is superb; I was shocked that this Microsoft product was responsive and easy to control. Xbox Live integration and a solid media playback experience through the Zune player makes WP7 a pretty impressive play for Microsoft. 

Toss it: Unfortunately, it lacks multitasking for 3rd party apps, and Microsoft seems to think people will prefer to navigate to their apps in a ridiculously long alphabetical list, rather than in organizable pages or screens (which is what everybody else is doing). I was also underwhelmed by the hardware selection for Windows phones. It's nice that they're offering various screen sizes and optional physical keyboards, but none of the phones I've played with have premium-feeling hardware. Most of the phones felt cheap and/or bulky, and often wrapped in fingerprint-loving glossy plastics (which I can't stand). I've heard the Dell Venue Pro is the exception.

Phew. That was a lot. At the moment, there's no 'best' phone platform here. I can see reasons for using any of them, and I can see problems with all of them that might keep me from pledging allegiance to any one 'camp' in the near future. The important thing is to avoid brand prejudices and ask yourself what you want from your phone...But seriously, don't get the Blackberry. Please?

Experiment: Seven Days In The Browser

By Aaron Ting

I embarked on an experiment recently to see whether I could make it a full week using only the web browser on my PC. To be clear, I promised you readers that I would not use any locally-installed applications. The advent of full browser-based computing with efforts like Google's Chrome OS raises an important question: Does the internet offer web-based solutions to every task I perform on my computer?

The answer: Not yet, but we're close.

Music
Ditching iTunes was a pleasure. To be clear, I pretty much hate iTunes. It's a bloated and frustrating experience, like having to store your music inside the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

I usually mix it up with Windows Media Player, Zune Player, and VLC. For the past week, I abandoned all of those programs and dusted off my Pandora and Last.fm accounts. Both are extremely versatile, but I started getting tired of 'recommended' music; for the record, Taylor Swift should not be played on my Train station. Also, I dislike commercials - even if they're implemented sparingly.

I also checked out Grooveshark, an interesting Pandora alternative which allows you to save and retrieve songs in a traditional playlist. I played with SoundCloud for a bit, which is an awesome platform for discovering a lot of independent music.

Unfortunately, I just couldn't find a decent cloud-based service that provides on-demand music. Spotify needs to come to the U.S., because until I can pick the actual songs I want to listen to, Pandora and Last.fm will only be an alternative to playing stuff out of my own music library - not a replacement. They're great for discovering new music, but aren't well suited to my musical ADHD. I'd like to see a web service that allows me to upload and play my personal music library from the cloud. I hear HP might do something like this.

Productivity

In my last piece, I was pretty honest about my fear of having to use Google Docs. I've had bad experiences with it in the past, but I decided to give it another shot. I have to admit, Google Docs has improved a ton since I last checked it out. I liked the ease of having my documents made easily accessible on the cloud without having to use a middle-man solution like Dropbox. Unfortunately, Docs still lacks a lot of richness that the standard Office suite provides. A lot of extras are available like footnotes, tables, and paragraph alignment, but none of them felt as precise or customizable as your typical Microsoft Word program. Similarly, creating detailed presentations and spreadsheets with Google Docs is totally plausible - but it just never felt preferable.

I also checked Microsoft's Office Web Apps - a suite of very simplified Office programs that run in the browser. Two major problems:

First, Microsoft blocks you from trying to use these web apps unless you're running Internet Explorer. This was ridiculously frustrating as I almost never use Internet Explorer. This was an incredibly incompetent implementation choice on Microsoft's part, and they need to resolve it if they want to become a serious player in the the web-based productivity war. If Office is available for Macs, then its web-Office should damn well be available to Chrome users.

Second, this web-based version of Word is pretty limited. It's like using Microsoft Office 95 - it just doesn't have enough rich functionality, which is unfortunate because that's really the best thing going for Microsoft's standard Office suite. I didn't get a chance to try out the beta of Microsoft's upcoming cloud-based Office 365 suite, which will replace their Web Apps to compete more closely with Google Docs.

Communications, etc.
Google Voice is great. Video chat quality was excellent, and making free calls and sending free text messages was spectacular. In fact, I really prefer it to Skype, but I'm going to continue using Skype until Google Voice becomes mass-adopted. Put simply, Voice isn't fun if you don't have as many people to talk to.

I really hate the clunky/buggy feel of Facebook's built-in chat and prefer using a separate IM client for chatting with Facebook friends. To replace my local instant messaging clients, I used Meebo. It's a decent browser solution for doing IM with Facebook and AIM contacts. Likewise, I ditched Google's locally-installed Talk client and just used Gmail for IMing my Google friends. I'm still not sold on browser-based IM. Meebo was pretty decent, but Facebook's built-in chat tool is so terrible and buggy. It really shouldn't be that hard to implement something better. Seriously, Facebook's own site shouldn't be offering the worst Facebook Chat experience on the internet.

I used a few other web services like Scripped and Adobe's browser-based Photoshop tool. In general, I was pretty impressed. I'm still looking for a good browser-based video editing tool.

Verdict
Sorry, Google fanboys, but I don't think the internet is rich enough yet to support exclusively-browser-based computing. There's a ton of stuff you can do in a browser these days, but I don't think we're at the point where you'd prefer to do a lot of this stuff on the web. Services like Picnik and Google Docs show that we're definitely headed in that direction. Running programs through the browser should be happening, because there are a ton of benefits. The consumer can gain a lot in regard to ease-of-access, software costs, and performance. Being able to edit heavier media like photos and sound files without having to leverage any of my own laptop's resources is fantastic - I really wish we could see more browser-based video editors to give Final Cut and Premiere a run for their money.

But until these offerings mature and provide benefits which eclipse the functional richness and high performance of locally-installed programs, we'll be stuck using Windows and Mac OS for a while.

Seven Days In The Browser

Today begins a seven-day experiment, loyal reader. For seven days, I will compute exclusively in the web browser. 

I was talking with a friend at dinner about how aggressively the internet has matured, providing countless browser-based solutions to tasks that used to require the installation of large programs on your computer. Basic photo editing, for example, used to require heavy (and expensive) tools like Adobe Photoshop. Today, there are a number of excellent sites like Picnik that allow you to upload and edit photos quickly and easily - all without having to create an account. The notion that computers would one day run exclusively in the web browser (meaning no other local programs installed/available) has been proposed countless times; Google's Chrome OS is an aggressively toward that vision of the future.

Is it possible yet? Does the internet offer solutions to every task I might want to perform on my PC? This is what I'll be investigating for the next seven days. A week of delightful living. A week using only a web browser. 

For seven days, I will only open Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox on my PC, and no other program. I already migrated from Outlook to Gmail a couple years ago, but some other applications will be difficult to replace on a full-time basis:

For music needs, I'll be ditching iTunes and Windows Media Center for Pandora and Last.fm

I consume most video on my PC through the internet anyway, and I'll be making use of the usual suspects: YouTube, Hulu, and Netflix Instant Play.

As a full-time law student, I find myself constantly running various Microsoft Office apps - especially Word and OneNote. Since I do my email/task/calendaring through Google, I'll be trying Google Docs again for the next seven days. This is a bit nerve-wrecking, as I've had some terrible experiences with Docs in the past. I may also experiment with Microsoft's browser-based Office Live suite.

Homework requires me to do a lot of PDF-reading. I'll be ditching Adobe Reader and Foxit, substituting them with Google Docs Viewer.

I use Google Talk and AIM for my Facebook/Gchat/AIM instant messaging. This week, I'll be trying out Meebo, a browser-based instant messaging site that lets you log into multiple accounts at once.

I usually rely on Skype for voice/video calls. This weekend, I'll finally make some calls and send some texts with my Google Voice account.

Screenwriting is a hobby of mine, and I most often use Final Draft. I'll be ditching Final Draft and revisiting Scripped this week. From what I can tell, it's improved a lot over the last year.

There are probably a few other programs that I'm going to have to learn how to replace (or more likely, go without). I'll be back next week to let you all know how it went, and what I learned. And probably bitch about Google Docs. 

Cheers!

Thoughts on Google TV

The prospect of a TV-connected computer in every living room is a frequent obsession in the technology industry. It's been attempted countless times. Microsoft allegedly started the great Xbox experiment in order to prevent Sony's Playstation line from taking over the living room PC experience. Tivo, Roku boxes, and high-end media streamers have been available for years, but all have failed to achieve mass-market adoption. Apple tried a new approach recently with its new aggressively-priced $99 Apple TV, a simple media streamer with access to on-demand television and movie rentals. But even Apple remains skeptical of its adoption, referring to it as a "hobbyist" device.

Google TV represents a pretty ambitious leap forward. The idea is simple: create a TV-optimized operating system with online connectivity and have all the electronics manufacturers design new TVs or external boxes to support this new OS. It's a dream that Microsoft has been attempting for over a decade, and when it comes to mass-adoption, Google may beat them to it.

Taking what they learned from Android, Google created an open-source software platform for television. The possibilities are endless; take all the limitless functionality of a smartphone, and multiply it times the size of your 46" Sony Bravia. Imagine televisions with built-in app functionality. No need to pump Netflix or Hulu through your PS3 - just download the apps directly to your TV. Imagine turning your TV into a live-time CNN news ticker or conducting a four-way video chat from your living room - these are some of the things that become possible. A slick, web-browsing PC running on the largest display in your house. 

But Google TV's often-overlooked potential is in its potential as an integrated gaming platform. Just as the iPhone and iPod Touch are on a war path to obliterate Nintendo and Sony gaming handhelds, Google TV has the potential to replace your Wii or Xbox. While the graphics capabilities of a Google TV box would be initially underwhelming to a current 360 owner, the convenience of downloading games inexpensively and quickly instead of having to go buy them for $50 from obnoxious Gamestop employees is an advantage that deserves the serious attention of Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony. If Google succeeds and everyone has a cheap box or new TV running the Google TV platform, some families may choose to divest from dedicated gaming consoles - particularly since Google TV will support Bluetooth standards, which would enable a variety of different game controller options. 

There is, however, a major flaw in Google's strategy. Having new televisions come with Google TV built-in is a smart move, but most consumers would likely have to purchase an external box to experience Google TV. This is problematic, since external boxes have typically failed, and companies like Logitech and Sony aren't helping by announcing box prices of $400 or more. Moreover, if Android OS on phones is any indication, Google needs to be extremely wary of how much it freedom it gives to electronics manufacturers. If Google doesn't set proper compatibility guidelines and every manufacturer makes highly-customized versions of the Google TV software, we could see a massive splintering effect occur, similar to what is currently happening with Android phones. Essentially, an uninformed consumer could potentially buy a box that is unable to install future Google TV updates.

Bottom line, the 'smart TV' is coming. Whether it's Google TV, a future Apple TV, or some Windows-packing behemoth, expect this battle to be drawn out and full of fart-sound apps.