This is Swipe, a blog by pinch/zoom about mobile, design, user experience, usability, development and the future of technology.
I demo what can best be called a “Slurpee-coin Android device” that uses a glasses free 3D effect.
Anyone that believe Android will become the long term titan of mobile needs to use this device. The OEMs are already resorting to cheesy gimmicks to try and entice users. This phone makes Android feel like a fast race to the bottom.
We take a look at the new LG Slate and get a walkthrough of Android Honeycomb for Tablets.
I give a favorable review of the Samsung Nexus S 4G but I mix up the Android codenames. Can I just call them all “Gingercomb” from now on?
While it might not seem all the relevant anymore, Symbian is still the top smartphone platform in the world. We get a glimpse of a low cost smartphone hitting T-Mobile.
(I’m trying to get all the videos we shot at CTIA posted. This short bit was one of my favorites as it highlights the disconnect between mobile buzz and the reality of the mobile industry.)
While the buzz is certainly around apps, at CTIA the designated “App” area of the tradeshow floor was a no mans land. There were no app makers, no frameworks, no cross platform, no mobile web. Is it that people that go to CTIA don’t care? or is it that people that make apps don’t care about the CTIA audience? or both?
We are big fans of Micro-Javascript frameworks for mobile at pinch/zoom. They are lighter, faster and gives you a lot more control—so we spend less time debugging someone else’s code and more time debugging our own.
Thomas Fuchs author of pinch/zoom favorite zepto.js provides us with a list of a number of all the popular micro-javascript frameworks out there.
Microjs.com helps you discover the most compact-but-powerful microframeworks, and makes it easy for you to pick one that’ll work for you.
The bigger libraries are handy when you just need to do something quickly, like a prototype or proof of concept, but not something we often take into production. The reality is you rarely need the full library, you are only using a few parts. From our experience those extra parts just add more time and cost to projects we don’t need.
Or as Thomas says:
How much library code do you really need — 50K? 100K? 150K? More? How much of that do you really use?
A handy tool to measure the performance of localStorage vs. Objects. Good tool to pre-flight the performance on your devices before you start coding.
(via @obiwankimberly)
Apple and Google have finally updated their algorithm rankings in their app stores to factor in user loyalty and usage. Previous rankings used to be based on downloads alone, whereas they now take into account downloads, time spent using the app, high user engagement, and the difference between daily active users vs monthly active users.
According to the Guardian, it means that free apps such as Facebook, Netflix and Pandora are back in the top free charts, however I’m wondering if this is just a UK based change as the US iTunes App Store doesn’t show this. Depressingly, the ABCs of Boobs is sitting at the number 10 spot, with Facebook clinging onto 13. Yes, that is an app about boobs that 2060 people have rated 1 star sitting as the 10th most downloaded app. For the sake of my belief that we’re a civilised society I hope they are not taking into account user engagement (and that everyone downloading it is a 13 year old boy).
This change in algorithm is a significant one as it’s taking into account user stickiness and rewards applications that users find useful and engaging rather than apps that manage to get a lot of downloads quickly (ahem ABC of boobs). Apps that are downloaded and then deleted or never touched again will quickly fall through the cracks, and less sexy but useful apps will hopefully enjoy a rankings boost, which will lead to more downloads and usage.
This is great news for our clients and all app creators alike. It means apps that have a slow burn in terms of user uptake will still benefit from word of mouth in the app charts. It hopefully means less ‘gaming’ of the system for rankings, allowing creators to focus on producing a quality, engaging app.
I’ve been a user of DeviceAnywhere for device testing since day one. I talk about how awesome it is, but I always have to describe it, which never does it justice. It is another thing to see how it works, where they jack into real phones so you can remote control them anywhere in the world.
At CTIA we had a chance to talk to a few folks in the booth. They wouldn’t allow us to interview the staff about the current state of device testing and fragmentation, but we had a great off camera chat.
Some of the things we heard:
85% percent of our mobile sales come from the mobile Web and not apps