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WF.com – Wells Fargo’s mobile banking site. Very minimal. Very functional. The surprising thing is the whole “WF” brand. Silmilar to WaMu I suppose.

BBC Podcast for the iPhone – This one is iPhone specific, but it’s a great show case of how a “big brand” can take advantage of the buzz of the iPhone and creating something that’s actually useful and with lasting appeal. The site also point to the weakness of the iPhone as well, the lack of 3G is really killing the multi-media side of the deal. iPhone needs to get 3G speed, like um, now.

Earthcomber Mobile – I don’t even remember how I found this. Another iPhone specific “mobile Web app” with a very attractive interface. If I am not using Yelp mobile, I like to play with this to find places to eat. Did I say, the UI is very attractive?

Spent a few hours playing around with Android SDK and here’s some quick find:

• Wurfl identifies the device as “SideKick II” (pretty interesting consider the Android folks are SideKick folks too), and Luca should have an update for Wurfl repository soon.
• Yahoo! GO 2.0 set the trend on Carousel. OpenWave copied. AOL copied. Now it’s Google’s turn. To be fair, Carousel is not such an “out-there” design so it’s great to see the Carousel UI is becoming popular.
• I am very happy to report the SDK and emulator setup is very quick and painless – compare with how I used to have set up jar files and jad files in the Symbian world… Granted, things are a lot more “rich” and complicated in the Symbian world. Like having 200 devices to deal with.
• The Android UI is a mix of super simplified Windows Mobile 6 + a little bit of OS X and then a few Palm like rounded corners here and there. There really isn’t a distinct visual style, and I am sure that’s intensional so it can be “skinned” easily by operators and handset makers.
• The built in Google Search is not the mobile version nor the full Google home page, although one can still access those 2 via the built in browser. The best way to describe the “built in Google Search” as a custom mobiles search page for Android.
• Although the UI is not full i18tn, but one can view double byte content easily (maybe because my host system already have the resource built in?)
• FlashLite is missing of course.

iPhone firmware 1.1.2 is coming soon enough with the promise (among many other new features) of Chinese input methods.

But if you have a jail-broke 1.1.1 iPhone around, and you are looking for Chinese input method, you should check this out….

Disclaimer: I’m just point out the link. Do it at your own risk. Of course, you better can read / write Chinese as you follow the link. 😉

1. While the announcement is all about “Phone”. Google is actually trying to creating the “ubiquitous mobile computing platform“. Lofty goal I’d say.
2. Mobile Designers and Developers will have one more OS to deal with – and that’s not necessary a good thing. Have to download yet another SDK and making sure yet another emulator running correctly on your dev system is not fun.
3. Fragmentation of the whole Mobile User Experience continues for the consumers. Android is not going to fix that.
4. Android is clearly a part of Google’s 700MHz strategy (in the US). First real Android (hardware) will be out by 2nd half of 2008, and 6 months later (2009) just in time where we’ll see 700MHz goes live. Perfect timing as far as Google is concern.
5. Google did not demo any prototype, yet. That means “things are not ready” in the most literal sense.
6. General consumers expectations and hype are WAY high, and that’s a bad thing for Google. Android better live up to the hype.
7. It takes years for S60, Windows Mobile, RIM etc. to get to where they are at as far as their market standing is concern. It will take at least a few years for us to find out if GPhone will be successful. Apple is not a good reference point of comparison since they worked on the first gen. iPhone for 2.5 years and have both the hardware and software controlled tightly. Android is a very different animal.
8. Motorola, LG, and Samsung of the world are not likely to switch their entire platfrom to the Android. If Google’s lucky, they might get a major manufacturer to produce 5 handset types for the year, and that trickle down to, say, 2-3 Android enabled handset from your friendly local carrier. Not to mention, the carriers are tier 2 or tier 3 players (in the US). I don’t see “iPhone Phenomenon” on Day One.

Extra Credit Reading: Gizmodo’s Analysis by Wilson Rothman. Nice quote, “Why will Android succeed where Symbian, Palm OS and Windows Mobile have failed?”. I don’t think those OSses totally failed but it’s certainly something interesting to watch.

Wow, didn’t expect that. AOL’s own new mobile client software. Looks like the Y! Go 2.0 client up side down. 🙂

Disclaimer: I worked on Y! Go last year. 🙂

Good thoughtful insight on the business side of FlashLite in Japan.