Mobility wars heating up
Posted by Rod in Apple, Communications at 1:27 pm on Saturday, 26 April 2008

The phone wars are about to heat up again with the 3G iPhone just around the corner.

The 3G Blackberry has been delayed slightly but their issue will be their browser.  No developers I know develop specifically for the BlackBerry browser, but with the iPhone having a mainstream browser you do think about how your app might render on an iPhone.

It also seems that one of the major iPhone developer limitations, the ability for apps to stay resident in the background, has been fixed in the recent sdk builds.

Active Sync makes the iPhone accessible in the Enterprise (some would argue killing Windows Mobile in the process) and we’re starting to see some neat little ‘meshed’ productivity apps coming out that live both on your Mac, Phone and Web like EverNote.

I use a number of BlackBerry apps but they are not as easy to use, and screen constrained.

I still prefer the hard keyboard of the Blackberry but I have both a BB and an iPod Touch with me most of the time. So as apps get delivered on the iPhone I might trade off the keyboard.

I’m sure Apple has learned a lot about their soft keyboard over the last year so seeing how that performs in the new version of iPhone software will be interesting.

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Comments(5)

    Comment by James at 6:40 pm on 26 April 2008

    Heat up? They’re already over from my point of view.

    Put it this way, I don’t know anyone who is in the market for a “smart” phone who is not getting an iPhone when the 3G version arrives.

    Poor RIM.




    Comment by Kieran at 7:21 pm on 26 April 2008

    Rod what are your list of ‘must have’ BB apps? I have tried a few but the only ones I could really put a tick next to are Opera Mini and Twitterberry.




    Comment by Rod at 9:04 pm on 26 April 2008

    NewsGator
    Google Maps Mobile
    TwitterBerry
    GMail for Domains

    All have or will have iPhone alternatives.

    I should try opera mobile.

    Cheers




    Comment by Kieran at 9:50 pm on 26 April 2008

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2Oxg8vir68

    Opera Mini overview.




    Comment by Seth Wagoner at 9:14 pm on 27 April 2008

    The android platform also shows considerable promise, depending on how good the new phones are that come out to support it. There were 1788 entries in the first round of the android developer challenge (which probably means our little 5 day effort is sadly, not going to win anything) Android is *considerably* more “Open” than Apple’s platform, which will at least make things interesting by allowing for more rapid iteration and innovation within the development community.