In December 2009, I bought my first Blackberry, the Bold 9000. Throughout that month I took the time to learn the intricacies of the Blackberry OS and learn its strenghts and weaknesses. The last three years of iPhone ownership has blinded me to advantages offered by the Blackberry; chief among these is true OS multitasking. Using applications such as Pandora and the Wall Street Journal reader simultaneously, makes the single tasking iPhone look archaic at times. After a month of using the Bold 9000 I was able to exchange it for the Bold 9700; and thats when things got interesting.

Design
The Bold 9000 was a dramatic departure from previous Blackberry devices; it proved that Research In Motion could make stylish smartphones just as good as Apple or Nokia. The 9700 attempted to solve the few complaints Bold users had, these included the large size, minuscule memory capacity, and the lack of a significant OS upgrade. On paper the Bold 9700 accomplished everything it set out to do, which is to be the flagship Blackberry, but in actual real world usage things are more nuanced.

The biggest change with the Bold 9700 is the device’s size and weight, its slimmed down considerably and has roughly the same dimensions as the Blackberry Curve 8900. The smaller size means smaller keys and screen, although the screen resolution has been raised from 480×320 to 480×360 pixels. The result is a physically smaller screen but sharper fonts and images.  Gone are the chrome side key accents and leather battery cover, instead replaced with a partial faux leather back with “Bold” embossed on it. Another big difference between the two phones is the transition from a trackball to an optical pad. Longtime users may complain about the removal of the trackball, but in the past Blackberries came with scroll wheels and people lamented its removal at the time. The optical pad should end the issues of clogged and disgusting looking trackballs for a much more reliable input mechanism.

Keyboard & Internals
Other than the OS, what makes a RIM device a “crackberry” is the keyboard, and its a mixed experience. Curve and Pearl users will love the raised keys and travel space, Bold users such as myself will miss the Cadillac spaciousness of the 9000’s keyboard, even if our typing doesn’t suffer with the 9700’s smaller buttons. Internally the 9700 has 256 megabytes of memory which is double that of the 9000 and other Blackberries such as the Curve and the Tour series. 256 megabytes is laughable compared to every other major smartphone platform. Mitigating this issue somewhat is that Blackberry apps are several hundred kilobytes apiece so your storage can be stretched out a bit. The 1500mAh battery has withstand two days of push email, internet surfing, messaging and several hours of voice calls before it reached 20% -my threshold for immediate charging. There is an included 2gig SDHC(Secure Digital High Capacity) microSD card, that can be “hotswapped” i.e. accessed without removing the battery and accepts up to 32gigabyte cards.

Voice and Data
Perhaps the most overlooked aspect of a smartphone is its function as a telephone. In this capacity the 9700’s sound quality was much better than the mushy sound I experience with the iPhone 3GS and comparable to my at&t voice quality champion, the Nokia e71. The 3G signal has been consistent throughout the New York City metro area, but overall the internet experience feels slower than any other smartphone I’ve used. The included web browser does a poor job rendering Javascript heavy sites such as the desktop version of the Wall Street Journal. As an alternative try Opera Mini and Bolt for a much faster internet surfing experience.

Blackberries are known for their superior email capabilities and in this regard the hype is deserved. Using an at&t BIS account, I was able to setup a POP3 work email, several Google Apps and Gmail accounts without configuring any server settings; very impressive. Emails consistently arrive on the 9700 before they reach any other service, again demonstrating Research In Motion’s dominance over rival platforms.

Overall Impressions
The Blackberry Bold 9700 is a microcosm of the Blackberry platform as a whole; its a throughly dependable, yet rapidly aging smartphone OS living on the momentum of its popularity. Research In Motion makes superbly crafted devices that are improved in small increments with even smaller improvements to its operating system. Blackberry App World, which is RIM’s answer to Apple’s App Store, pales in comparison in regards to the volume and sophistication of available applications. For example the Blackberry version of Beejive (the superlative instant messaging application on any platform) was double the price than that found for the iPhone- with similar functionality (The price has now been reduced to $9.99). Another major issue is the lack of storage for applications; as mentioned earlier the 9700 has 256 megabytes of internal memory which must be used for the OS, applications and emails. The micro SD card can only store media such as music, video and photos. There are iPhone games such as Myst that use more application space than the Bold has internal memory. This will severely hinder developers from porting their apps to the Blackberry platform unless this is remedied in the near future.

Users of older model Blackberry’s will find a lot to love with the 9700, but I’d recommend happy Bold 9000 owners to find one the many leaked OS 5.0 firmware updates and not purchase the Bold 9700, or as I call mine, the “Blackberry Bold Mini”.

Specs:

Display: 480 x 360 pixel TFT 65k color LCD. Screen size diagonally: 2.44″.
Battery: Rechargeable cryptographic lithium cell battery. Battery is user replaceable. 1500 mAh. Claimed GSM talk time: 6 hours, claimed UMTS talk time: 6 hours. Claimed GSM standby: 19 days, claimed UMTS standby time: 15 days.
Performance: 624 MHz Marvell processor. 256 megs RAM. 256 megs Flash ROM.
Size: 4.29 x 2.36 x 0.56 inches. Weight: 4.30 ounces.
Phone: GSM quad band with UMTS. GSM on 1900/1800/900/850 MHz. UMTS on 2100/1900/850/800 MHz (Bands 1, 2, 5/6), 2100/1700/900 MHz (Bands 1, 4, 8). UMA Wi-Fi calling supported.
Camera: 3.2 MP camera with autofocus, a flash and 2x digital zoom. Image resolutions include 2048 x 1536, 1024 x 768 and 480 x 360 pixels. Camera comes with image stabilizer, white balance and color effect options. It can also shoot video in 480 x 360 and 176 x 144 resolutions.
Audio: Ringtones 32 polyphonic – MIDI, SP-MDI, MP3 and WAV. Built-in mic, speaker and a 3.5mm stereo audio jack. Music player onboard and can play music in 3GP, MP3, WMA9 (.wma/.asf), WMA9 Pro/WMA 10, MIDI, AMR-NB and Professional AAC/AAC+/eAAC+ formats.
Networking: Bluetooth v2.1. Mono/Stereo Headset, Hands-free, Serial Port Profile, Bluetooth Stereo Audio (A2DP/AVCRP) and Bluetooth SIM Access Profile supported. Integrated Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g.
GPS: Integrated GPS with A-GPS (assisted GPS) ready. BlackBerry Maps included, TeleNav is available on retail devices provisioned with BES.
Software: BlackBerry OS 5.0. BlackBerry push email with service integrations to Exchange, Lotus Domino and GroupWise. BlackBerry Messaging, SMS and MMS. BlackBerry Maps, Documents to Go Suite, web browser, media player for your MP3 pleasure and video playback. PIM apps include address book, calendar, tasks and memo. Also Alarm, voice notes, calculator, Password Keeper. Games: BrickBreaker, Word Mole, Texas Hold’Em King 2, Sudoku and Klondike. BlackBerry Desktop software for PC included for syncing and software installation (PocketMac for BlackBerry Mac software can be downloaded for free from RIM’s site).
Expansion: 1 SDHC microSD card slot. 2 gig card included. Supports up to 32 gig cards.
In the Box: Bold 9700, charger, USB cable, stereo earbud headset, a 2 gig microSD card, case, software CD and manual.

Finished business card design and logo for Fair Little Enterprises.

Each week I write a tech article at The Retrospective.com; this week I wrote about Evernote, a hybrid desktop/website web clipping application. Feel free to read the entire article and leave a comment.

Salient Drift is sometimes commissioned to do a rebranding campaign. S and R Communications Plus is a Brooklyn, NY telecommunications company that needed a total revamp. Salient Drift designed a new logo, color palette, and is now hard at work on a new website.

Market share Trends

The mobile operating systems to target are Apple’s iPhone OS 3.0, RIM’s Blackberry 4.6+ and Google’s Android. These are the largest growing mobile OS platforms; others such as Symbian and Windows Mobile are experiencing slower growth in market share and also suffer from platform “fragmentation”, further lowering their effective market share. Of all the competing operating systems, only the iPhone/iPod Touch allows for near universal application development.

The Risk of Fragmentation

Software fragmentation simply put, is the incompatibility that arises from software that starts from a common codebase and over time through updates and revisions, forks into multiple sets of unique code. A non-tech example would be the English language; today there are numerous dialects of English around the world. Some are easily recognizable, while others are beyond comprehension without a translation. Fragmentation, makes it impossible to create one version of an application per platform, instead the developer needs to craft multiple versions, each one tailored to a specific device or operating system.

There is significant platform fragmentation with non Apple devices, notably the Blackberry OS, with a large roster of legacy devices such as the blackberry 8100, 8700 and 8800 families. For example the Blackberry Storm 2 runs os5.0, has a touchscreen, accelerometerc and Open GL for 3d graphics.  The Blackberry Bold 9700 however, launched at the same time uses the traditional keyboard/ non touch screen layout, does not include Open GL support and uses a different screen resolution. Things are potentially worse with Google’s Android, due to its open source nature and lack of standardized models. Each manufacturer can build a totally unique Android phone running on a variety of OS versions, ranging from Android 1.5, 1.6, 2.0, 2.0.1,and 2.1.

The iPhone line can be drawn into three main groupings; the original iPhone, the iPod Touch and the iPhone 3GS. The vast majority of software written for the platform will run on the original iphone, except for applications that use the compass, MMS, or GPS. The iPod Touch does not have a camera, so any app that needs a camera will not function. The iphone 3GS is the newest model and is becoming the baseline model for app developers, especially those utilizing live video and location based services.

When developing native apps for the Blackberry, the largest pool of compatible devices are the Blackberry Curve 8300, 8900 and the 8500 series, followed by the Bold 9000, Bold 9700 and the Blackberry Tour.

Android OS has a large number of devices, but models marketed under “with Google” can be thought of as reference phones with common specifications and functionality. The T-Mobile MyTouch 3G, T-Mobile G1, Sprint Samsung Moment, all fall in this category. HTC’s customized Android devices are also popular; these include the HTC Hero and the Verizon Droid Eris.

App development tools

Native iPhone apps are built with Apple’s Objective C language using Xcode and then submitted to the “App Store” for distribution to the general public. There are several third party tools that allow development with other languages such as Actionscipt (Flash CS5), Lua, and Javascript. The third party development tools take higher-level scripting languages listed above, coverts the code into Objective C and also exports the finished app as a .ipa file for submission to the App Store. Each of these third party tools supports at least several unique iPhone features such as the accelerometer, multi touch input to varying degrees. Other features such as GPS location and the camera may be limited until these tools mature.

Blackberry apps can be built with the Blackberry JDE plug-in for Eclipse using the Java language. Applications can also be built with the Javascript based Phonegap, which may lower the level of developer experience needed to begin development. Blackberry apps can be sold via the official app store known as Blackberry App World or they can be sold through 3rd party providers such as Mobihand. Android is also based on Java, and it too uses Eclipse IDE with the Android Development Tools plugin. There is no oversight by Google on the types of apps that can be built for Android, Google, however does reserve the right to remove malicious apps.

Types of apps to create

On the iPhone, the majority of apps currently available are games; they can range from Adobe Flash games ported with minimal functionality to full 3d games using Unity 3d. Outside of games, many iPhone apps are mobile extensions of websites utilizing open API’s. Examples include Tweetie 2 using the Twitter API, and Insight, which provides two-way syncing with Basecamp. These apps can be built by single person/small teams and don’t need custom designed artwork or interfaces. Today’s independent game developers are being obscured by large studios with 3D artists, modelers and programmers with access to brand name IP’s.

The majority of non gaming apps are complex widgets that communicate with 3rd party API’s and follow Apple interface guidelines reducing the need for graphic artists. Android roughly parallels the iphone in with games being the most popular downloads followed by general interest apps. Blackberry apps are primarily business applications Poynt, with fewer games on the platform compared to Apple and Google’s offerings.

Currently, technology such as augmented reality, which overlays internet data, live camera feeds and GPS into a seamless experience, will begin to mature in the next year and become mainstream. Apps that utilize the camera to read barcodes for price comparisons will also gain prominence. This article hopefully has given you a clearer understanding of the smartphone market and their associated ecosystems.

In addition to working on Dan Balan’s official website Salient Drift is also working on a website for Love Anthony and her online tv series Love2Eat.

We’re are busy working on a new site for Romanian performer Dan Balan. In the meantime you can watch his new Hype Williams directed video Chica Boom.