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T-Mobile PPC Phone Edition - Developer Impact
Written by Dwayne Lamb  [author's bio]  [read 35494 times]
Edited by Derek

      

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Hey, you got your phone in my PPC… no, you got your PPC in my phone…

I was fortunate enough to get a hold of a T-Mobile PPC Phone Edition device and play with it for a couple of weeks. I have spoken with PPC enthusiasts at user group meetings and at trade shows like the PPC Summit and I have been surprised by the lack of enthusiasm about this anticipated “integrated” device where the phone and PPC become the “chocolate and peanut” butter of the technology industry. Talking to folks who are big on gadgets and the like, I expected most of them to be in favor of the all-in-one PPC Phone Edition, however, a surprising number balked at the idea and instead claimed that they would prefer a separate cell phone for reasons of size, cost or battery life. Now, it is important to mention that none of these people had seen or used a PPC Phone Edition device beyond the glimpse offered by the occasional presenter showing off their personal prototype. After talking to a number of these naysayers I began to rethink my position on the all-in-one PPC Phone Edition. Being the gadget lover I am, I figured that instead I would be best served with both a PPC Phone Edition and a Smart Phone so that I could take the appropriate device for the situation. I figured PPC Phone Edition for meetings, travel and times when I might need the extra computing power and the PPC Phone for times when convenience of form factor was more a concern. I was wrong.

After having a couple of weeks of hands on experience with the T-Mobile unit, it is clear to me that professionals are going to be drawn to this device, and if a number of stars align, it may share a bigger piece of the smart phone market than some of the industry pundits have predicted. The main reason is that this single device serves both needs well. The form factor is surprisingly nice to handle as a phone, even if it doesn’t fold in half. The full power of the PPC and the growing number of PPC apps is there as well. The one integrated device is definitely easier to carry around than both a PPC and a phone. One could argue that they don’t always need the power of a PPC with them but in turn I would argue that if you just happened to have it (because it is built into your phone) you might find yourself with more occasion to use the robust functionality of the PPC. There is also the fact that the basic phone functionality is rather nicely integrated with things like the Contacts and Inbox when working with features like speed dial or SMS messaging. Eventually, when the software we develop for these devices supports line of business and enterprise data connectivity, professionals may just find themselves using the data functionality of the PPC part of the device as much or more than the phone portion. In time, I believe, that with the combination of innovative and compelling software and services, as well as lower device and connection charges, the same may hold true for the average consumer. Take the example of the success of SMS messaging in Europe. Personal communication devices of tomorrow will be about a lot more than just phone calls. You have heard examples of potential functionality like being able to check the weather, highway conditions or flight schedules from your device. The list of really captivating applications for personal mobile connectivity is limited only by the imagination now that real devices are hitting the streets at affordable prices subsidized by the carriers.

Preparing for Tomorrow

What does this mean for us, the developer community? As new platforms develop or significant changes occur in the existing platforms we target, developers and software companies are presented with new challenges and opportunities. In some ways, the success or failure of many of these new industry initiatives relies heavily on what we, the developer community, end up doing about these opportunities. The T-Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition is a great device and will undoubtedly enjoy a certain amount of success due to its ability to address multiple needs in a single, slick, well-designed package. The opportunity for us to create applications that support the device is in and of itself worth looking at. A whole different league of opportunity presents itself when you consider the potential synergies of the power of PPC, the mobile connectivity of the cell phone, and the network access it provides. There is an opportunity to innovate and be the first to create new ways of doing things that may not have even been imagined before now.

If you are going to be one of the developers to create one of those truly innovative applications your idea will be more original and detailed than anything you will see here. I did however, find that carrying around a T-Mobile for a couple of weeks helped me get a feel for some of the areas that we as developers might want to consider paying some attention to so that we can take full advantage of the trend towards integrated devices.

The Web

The first thing that I think a Pocket PC Phone user might notice is how very few of the many millions of websites out there are really Pocket PC friendly. If you are responsible for development of a web site you will want to start paying more serious consideration to the fact that telecom carriers like Verizon are going to be arming web surfers with Pocket PC Phone Edition devices and that those surfers are potential traffic to your site. Yes, Pocket IE will try and squeeze a standard web page down to the ¼ VGA of a Pocket PC screen but that is really less than ideal. Pay special attention to the types of content available on your site. Some types of content are more relevant to these mobile surfers than others. These surfers are much less likely to do extensive research while surfing on their T-Mobile and are more likely in search of quick look up and time sensitive information. Build accordingly. You don’t need to make your entire site PPC friendly but many sites will have some content that would be appropriate for the growing mobile community. Consider making your home page browser-aware so that PPC users automatically get the PPC version of pages when they hit your site. The magic size for web pages in Pocket IE is not simply the ¼ VGA size of 240 x 320 pixels. After you take into account scroll bars, tool bars, navigation bars and address bars you might be ready for the bar yourself. The actual real estate inside Pocket IE is something closer to 215 x 225 when all is said and done, so experiment with sizes and different modes to minimize the need for the Pocket PPC surfer to scroll around just to see or navigate your site. Of course, you also want to be very careful to minimize your use of graphics and use any and all practical methods of reducing the size and download time of your pages since the current speeds of GPRS are sill similar to the dial up experience. Pocket IE is currently only HTML 3.2 compliant and does not support things like DHTML or animated GIF format so don’t rely on some of the fancier features to get across your message and for that matter strip them out of your PPC pages to improve performance. For those of you who have made the move to ASP.NET you should probably take a look at the Microsoft Mobile Internet Toolkit that may help open your site to an even broader audience of mobile users. Most importantly, simple well thought out designs will make for happier mobile surfers. One other hurdle that early PPC web surfers face is finding suitable content. Better PPC friendly web directories and even simple referral link pages to other PPC formatted sites will help users find their way around while on the move.

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