Observations as a mobile web user...

[newdomainer]

Ok, I know what you're thinking... you want to know what the hell I've been doing for the 2 years since I started buying dotmobi!?

Well, I've been the average Joe... not a trend setter, nor a sheep.. I pick up on things when they seem to add something to my life - simple as that.

Up until now the mobilenet has added nothing to my life.. my investments have been speculative and 'futurist' as I had a hunch that the mobilenet would come to the masses eventually.. in 2006 I had already owned a WAP enabled phone for over well over 5 years... Nokia communicators (various models) and other more recent handsets.

I now own a proper, usable device that is intuitive, smart, compact, powerful and is to put it simply; a pleasure to use.

(the link is another thread where I posted the details)
http://mobility.mobi/showthread.php?t=16247

Now... for the first time I am a mobile web user... I have checked the weather, read the news and done my email... I have looked at this forum on it.. I have checked out some other dotmobi sites and others.. I am guessing that google are using their dotmobi now as a redirect as I entered that into my phones browser and it eventually came up with google.com/mobile etc. etc. & then asked me if I was outside the US - I now have a saved Google UK mobile search tool.. & dotmobi or google.anything no longer matters as it is bookmarked.

However, I have some observations... and I know each device is different but I will make some comparisons..

I took out a contract for a mobile broadband 'dongle' to connect my laptop to the web whilst on the road..

Guess what... it disappointed... badly! Internet via mobile modem is very slow indeed - even in decent reception areas the loading time for some pages was well over 30 seconds.. even a minute outside of 3G coverage!

Wi-fi hotspots etc.. fine, no worries.. laptops are cool - big screen, good speeds.

But on the road... on GSM or even 3G... slow, slow, sloooow!

My new phone... HTC... slower processor than my laptop but loading mobile specific content... I've been very pleased to find that many pages are loading in 4 to 7 seconds... some 10 to 12 seconds plus the odd 'straggler'
This is a vast improvement on what I found using my broadband dongle with the laptop.. and there is little point accessing mobile compliant stuff on the laptop... as there's little benefit to be had doing it that way..

So as a comparison... the PDa smart phone beats a laptop + dongle combo... and that came as a surprise to me, it really did!

The other observations are using touch screen keypads.. the small 'on screen, touch screen' qwerty has the standard main interface for lower case and then a 'shift' interface for your uppercase & further characters and a numeric interface...

Big deal... what you getting at Gary? :confused2:

The fastest way to access a multiple choice mobile compliant site is which?

Lets take www.generic.com (http://www.generic.com)

& assume that they have m.generic.com generic.com/mobile and generic.mobi

The m.generic.com is easy enough to type... but even Jeff will see that the extra m + the extra . makes the sum total of one more keystroke than dotmobi... and we know all about how serious a problem that extra character is don't we.. :laugh:

but generic.com/mobile is not only so so loooooong but also requires going from lowercase to numeric to lower case again...
Or... lower case, tap on the address bar and then add the 'mobile' to the end of the main url (as the device automatically adds a / to the address)

Auto-detect; does this work via wi-fi / routers / modems / networks etc i.e. do these lumps of hardware mask the identity of the device? & thus stop the auto-detect working properly?

& of course.... keying in generic.mobi... is easy peasy! :biggrin:


Maybe other members can note their observations here too...

(it could even make a sticky? - what do you think?)

it'll give us a user 'experience' that we can all learn from.. everything is better tested in the real world rather than relying on emulators and simulation all the time..

(& hopefully this thread won't get confused with an argument about the same old same old that we've done to death a 1,000 times..)

[newdomainer]

Small Screen + full web page = Horrid!

Ok, no surprise there... but the whole point of the 'whole web' / 'one web' argument is based on the ridiculous notion that using a small screen to view a full web page is a pleasurable / desirable experience..

Wrong!

It sucks... even with 'touch flo' you still need to know where you want to go on a page before you can make the decision to go there...

e.g. You have a full page & can see maybe 1/8 of it at any given time... it's easy to scroll sideways & up / down... (seriously, it's not that hard)

However... if you scroll in one direction only (i.e. compliant sites) you know that you haven't missed any content by making a single pass (scroll) through the page.. when you are going sideways down, sideways, down, sideways down.... you get disorientated and you are never sure if you didn't miss a bit!

Also.. you cannot know (generally speaking) where it is on the page that you want to be until you get there.. unlike the 'war games' where you often have a mini-map 'screen in screen' to help you navigate, you are just scrolling blindly..

I don't care what technology does for speed etc.. in the future - it is screen size that dictates the need for mobilenet - I accept that roll up 'fabric' screens will be available in a few years but who's going to use them? seriously - if you want a 7" or a 10" monitor you'll get a mini-notebook computer..

Phones are small because pockets are small... unless dungarees come back into fashion (outside of Texas) then I really can't see screens getting big enough to view the 'one web' dream (or should I say 'daydream'?)

Anyone else got any comments... it's these little anecdotes that form dotmobi sales pitches!

I did some trial & error adult searching yesterday... the mobile sites are good for pictures but video clips still seem very tempramental; I'd say 3 out of 4 wouldn't load properly - they couldn't be associated with an application on the handset; the MP4 specific content did better but in my opinion the porn industry needs to do a lot of work to convert files to be compliant with portable media devices... and I'm pretty sure that they will because there's big money out there - todays tech mad 12yr olds are 2014's 18yrs olds... and they will be very mobile savvy and I'm sure boys will continue to play with themselves regardless of what their parents think! ;-)
(sorry ladies... it's true... little Johny does get up to all sorts when you're not looking.. and it's not always his homework ;-)

Mobile content must be compliant with devices & apps... it is not good enough to simply remove a few 'frames' from your standard web pages & call them 'mobile'

Interestingly enough... it's only when you check your email via a Pda that you realise how 'rich' email content is these days.. it's amazing how many company logos start to mess up the layout on-screen and banner ads etc.. I think this will have to change too..

I wonder what the Blackberry uses do to address this? - anyone here got one?