A reality check on mobility?

There probably aren’t many who are more enthusiastic about mobility than I am! I own a Sprint Mogul with EVDO, rev. A and UNlimited SMS as well as an HP Pavilion tx2000 Tablet PC which I found via one of my favorite mobility blogs from James Kendrick. I even bought my 12-year old daughter a Palm Centro instead of any old phone. After all, I wanted to get my money’s worth from all of those Palm OS apps that I STILL have after I migrated to Windows Mobile a few years ago!

Recently, I got a Starbucks Card in order to use WiFI after I gave up my AT&T WiFi when I switched from AT&T Yahoo! DSL to Comcast High-Speed Internet which will be the topic of another post someday after the "dust has settled" on that decision. My start page on my Internet Explorer Mobile browser is my .mobi home page under the .mobi category of my online identity.

Being an avid Web 2.0 fan, I use BrightKite, Twitter, and FriendFeed a lot (I’d like to be able to use them even more :^) and I use the mobile versions of those services more than I do their desktop counterparts. Actually, I use BrightKite via SMS and sometimes I use Twitter via SMS, but that’s a problem when you follow as many people as I do.

I share all of these "qualifications" in order to provide some perspective on my comments. I started this posting before Nokia’s announcement of its purchase of Symbian which will become open-source software. In light of that announcement, I am even more motivated to finish this posting. I started this posting because I wanted to share about how I have been using my Windows Mobile device in a very different way lately. I had realized that my feelings were certainly favoring Apple’s approach to mobility as demonstrated by the iPhone. Since I had last performed a hard reset on my Sprint Mogul, I have installed very few third-party applications compared to the number of Windows Mobile applications for which I own licenses in order to ‘add value’ to the limitations of Windows Mobile! As a matter of fact, about the only application that I have been using is Spb Mobile Shell which improves navigation on Windows Mobile. That reveals a major flaw of Windows Mobile’s poor user interface which (of course) is where the iPhone happens to shine!

Because I have installed few third-party applications, I have depended on Web-based services to take up the slack. That explains my earlier comment about Brightkite and especially Twitter and Friendfeed although lately I have become quite fond of Tiny Twitter which IS a third-party application that i DID INSTALL after I found myself using Twitter more since its performance has improved (somewhat) of late. Of course, I’m ONLY able to use Web-based services that have mobile-friendly sites such as (mobile) Twitter and fftogo.com for FriendFeed. That’s because Windows Mobile doesn’t have any browser comparable to the iPhone’s Mobile Safari browser. Earlier in the spring, I tried the Mobile Safari browser on my University’s Learning Management System and I was impressed by how well it rendered the site.

So, WHY don’t I have an iPhone? Of course, the "easy" answer is that the first-generation iPhone didn’t have 3G data service so my dependence on Web-based services would have suffered from either EDGE speed or the unavailability of WiFi which is still a significant problem in most places. So, will I get a second-generation iPhone? I thought about upgrading to the Samsung Instinct, but that’s not an option because it’s not available with the discounted SERO plan that I have with Sprint. Anyway, I doubt that I would have been happy with the Instinct as this article asserts.

What’s the big deal of this post anyway? After all, I haven’t said anything that hasn’t already been said by many commentators. What is notable is MY (early-adopter) willingness to admit it! To me, it doesn’t matter whether or not Steve Jobs is "right" or whether Microsoft is going in the right direction with Windows Mobile or whether Nokia’s recent move is "too little, too late" BUT what does matter to me is my willingness to keep an open mind and to be willing to adapt! After all, I never thought that I would abandon the Palm OS for Windows Mobile because I had such a significant investment in Palm applications (ironic, isn’t it?)

Whether I "wait" for Google’s Android while I "stay the course" with Windows Mobile, I am convinced that mobility is where the action is!