George Chen DOT COM

3GSM is ON at Barcelona now (I know the name is now Mobile World Congress, but old habits die hard…).

The big news so far is the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1. You can find pretty good pics here at Hong Kong Phone Daily, which both Gizmodo and Engadget fail to come up with any good stuff (Sunday evening PST).

Sure it’s a nice phone, and many anti-iPhone fanboyz already claiming this as the end of the iPhone, but those people forget XPERIA X1 is still powered by Windows Mobile 6…. I have nothing against Windows Mobile 6 and I am actually a fan of Windows Mobile’s Today screen…, but skinning something on top of WM6 is not the right approach to solve the Windows Mobile (over all) UI problem.

“Eat your own dog food”. I am such a “mobile geek” so I try to look up local movies show-time and purchase my ticket via the Mobile Web.

I point my browser to mobile.fandango.com. You’ll see your standard XHTML mobile site. The “check out” flow went just fine, but I have problem completing the final step of purchase.

The error page I saw was “Order Failed”. “Your order could not be completed. Please check your
billing information and re-submit.”

Note: I abandoned the process and went back to my computer and finished the purchase on the regular Web. So is it me or just the mobile site’s broken?

It here in the US. One less reason to get all “Japanese Envy” whenever we talk Mobile. We need to see this for all carriers.

With 1.1.3 iPhone update, users can easily add mobile safari shortcuts to the iPhone springboard screen. This is a BIG DEAL in the mobile world – especially for the designer / developer community.

Different handsets tend to have different requirements on the launcher icons or the so called “9up menu” (since majority of the feature phones can only display 9 icons at a time).

The specs of those icons usually are not very well documented either. Some support PNG. Some claim they support PNG but only in 8-bit with no alpha channel. Some support advanced SVG 1.1 Tiny (i.e. S60 Symbian) but that’s a lot more technical and requires much closeer working with the developer to have things implemented. Some follow the standard J2ME icon size and specs, but might still ended up a few pixels off (I am looking at you Samsung, and LGs). Not to mention different screen size / view could result in multiple icon files with multiple versions.

In short. It’s a mess (if you want to get premium “face time” with your mobile users / customers).

On the business side, it’s even tougher.

Getting your app / web app in front of the consumers usually means “kowtow” to the carriers or the handset manufactures. I am not saying they are “evil” or “bad”, it’s just difficult since they have different concerns on manufacturing, and distribution reasons.

The new iPhone 1.1.3 allows users to add Mobile Web apps directly on the launcher screen just like adding a bookmark. For the designer / developers, it’s super easy (60×60 PNG icon on the server). Apple even handle the reflection and rounded corner for you. Not revolutionary, but it saves developers hours of even days of trial and error and rework.

To help the Mobile Web to grow, this is one of the many of the little things iPhone is helping the ecosystem. We want more.

If you are looking for QRCode reader for iPhone do give the current release of iMatrix a try. Their original release (about 3 weeks ago) does not support the standard QRCode, but version 3.03 fixes that. You are still required to get a “User ID” first but it does not require the ID to decode the QRCode.

Watch some of the keynotes here. Of course, it’s much nicer to be there in person… Looks like S60 is getting a new UI too… Good times.