Technorama

Mobile phones have come a long way in the last 10 years in the UK. I remember when my friend got his first analogue mobile back in 1995 and how impressed I was! I've got a K800i myself now, it's the CyberShot 3MP camera model. A really impressive feature set over the K700i I had. The K800i's screen is bigger, web browser renders clearer in anti-aliased fonts and it even has an M2 memory card slot, hungry for MP3s and photos - going to be great rocking to some fab tunes on the ski slopes with this phone come new year ;) Now all the French Alps need is a snowfall!

There are a few things which could be improved though. The stability and reliability isn't perfect; PhotoDJ crashed while saving my edited photo, and it even crashed when I added Nite (langue à la mode?) to my words list! Interestingly it auto-restarts when it crashes, also restarts when engaging file transfer mode, it could just be rebooting into "File Transfer" mode though?

Now what would be cool is if Sony published the source code, I'd love to get the opportunity to write some features for this phone. Here are a few ideas I've had :-
General:

• Integrated search box on main GUI of the phone, which searches with Google.
  
• Modify Camera View and PhotoDJ to make the Zoom function always accessible.
• Optimise Next Word Prediction, a cool feature, but too slow to be usable at present.

Compose message features:

• Add a way to set the Subject on TXT and MMS messages.
• Revise the input mode to not switch the last letter to CAPS when I switching from abc to Abc input.
• Add a some words to the dictionary and share the list online, Blog and Nite etc. (or use the Mozilla dict?)
  
• Keep the order of msg in Drafts, at present it changes when they are viewed.
• In the Web browser jump into input mode when a key is pressed (need to press Edit each time atm).
• Know that peoples' names and cities first letter should be capitalised.
  

Past use statistics:

• Address book search using past usage stats, like I mentioned in 2004. Also stats for non dictionary words, just add them automatically to a local list.
  
• Unify and sort the extended character list by their usage frequency, atm there are two different orders in use on different dialogs in the phone!

Add Contact dialog:

• When you meet someone and get their mobile number you always enter the number first and then the name; so the Add Contact dialog should highlight that field first!
• Know that 079* is a mobile number, and add it as that rather than Home in the Address book.

Finally, I know mobile phone companies make money out of chargers and other accessories to cover their discounted phones, but it would be sooo much simpler if phones cost slightly more and had standard connectors. USB, headphone jack and charger connectors are pretty much standard on other devices, but even between my Sony models the connectors change! Korea and now China are leading the field with standardised mobile charger and USB sockets; they are even mandating USB chargers! Now we just need a standard headphone/handsfree/music player control port ;)

A positive development is the announced Linux-based Motorola Rokr E2, it shuns the 100 song limit Apple hobbled the Rokr E1 with to "protect" their iPod music player market. The more open and DRM-free approach of the E2 looks v.promising; let's hope it gets released eventually. Many interesting things forward to in the mobile arena, I can't wait ;)

Labels: Coding, Mobile, Tech