S60 User Experience

September 07, 2006 Location rules Posted by at 02:41 PM | Categories: Applications, Innovation

New technology leads to new innovations and application concepts. When the technologies mature and become commonly available, users can reap the benefits and enjoy the new services and experiences.

One of the things I personally look forward to is the continuation of the location-based services boom. As the writings on the wall suggest, device manufacturers are taking steps toward increasing the focus of location services - perhaps the time of having integrated GPS/Galileo-capable devices from major manufacturers is sooner than we think!

New technology brings new concepts and killer applications. With something as revolutionary as location data, there are plenty of innovative applications out there, waiting to be discovered.

Example. Being an enthustiastic photographer, I just love the idea of combining digital photos with geotagging (basically, adding location metadata to the image - technically quite simple). So, a few years from now, when look on my collection of thousands (and thousands) of unorganized digital images, I can smile and enter queries such as: "Organize the images according to the city where the picture was taken" or even "show me all the pics I've taken in Europe, excluding that awful trip to Manchester in 2002". So simple, so effective.

What could the next mobile big hit be?

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If you ask me this is going to be presence. Currently SMS is (at least here in The Netherlands) almost more popular than voice calling. Texting is appropriate in a lot of situations, it's less intrusive, can be quicker, there is a lower threshold.

If you add presence and proper instant messaging to telephones this can be a pretty big hit as long is it's affordable. Currently SMS-ing is pretty expensive (0.30 euro cents for a simple text message is just insane if you ask me). Same with GRPS/UMTS subscriptions.

If there are proper ways to enter text (for those that loath T9) and if the costs are reasonable then I see a pretty bright future for IM on mobile phones. This becomes even cooler if it's based on an open standard (like XMPP/Jabber) and if it's integrated with location, mood, current song, availability, pictures, etc.

Alas the operators are the biggest problem in the mobile arena. They want to earn money with just about anything and the charge way too much for almost all their services. This is a great way to kill new technologies. A nice example is MMS, no-one uses it. The main reason for this (according to me :D) are the prohibitive costs. I don't know what the going rates are but last time I looked it was something like 2 euros for one message... Go figure :)

I'd be happy just with an app on S60v3 that switches profiles based on cell info... :o) Currently no such application on S60...

Using location APIs on S60 3rd edition devices requires expensive and time-consuming application signing. Enough to suppress grassroots innovation, I think.

Case in point: http://www.gsmloc.org - NOT available for newer phones.

True, I've read somewhere that to get cell info just from Python with a simple API function requires that signing torture, so freeware apps won't provide this probably... Grrrr

S60 Open to new features

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