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josh_bentley
Developer Advocate
Developer Advocate
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COLLEAGUE:   “What does it say about the mobility guy for SAP if he is carrying a Windows Phone?”

 

ME:  “It says that I enjoy having a device at my fingertips for the functions I need professionally
and personally.”

    

And then the fanboy, who is a biased, pseudo-technologist, myrmidon attacked…..(not that I call anyone names)

    

     (Give this a listen while reading this longwinded yet overly concise blog)

    

Fast forward a few days and I decided to accept fanboy’s challenge:  “I am 100% positive you can’t stop yourself from writing a blog on your mobile phone choice and I would love to read it.” 

I can spout of facts and figures, or I can point you to other more respected blogs in the technology space, oh wait, that’s me for both,right?  What I can’t do is justify pressuring someone into something against their nature.  When I was responsible for over 22,000 BlackBerry smartphones I didn’t consider it an achievement that I had personally sold each of those people on the merits of the technology and hardware.  So why now would some of my over 50,000 iOS using colleagues expect me to explain my choice of a Windows Phone 8 as if it should be the phone for them?  It’s as if swapping smartphones is such a scary prospect more than once in someone’s life.

It’s often said that your biggest purchase will be a house and then a car.  Maybe you buy a few of these in your lifetime.  I think people often forget to mention what I think is the biggest purchase or purchases you may make, children.  To raise a child can take hundreds of thousands of dollars or more over usually 20 something years (clothing, food, health, school, entertainment).  So that is a lifestyle choice.  You choose to buy a certain house in a certain area with a certain ecosystem around it (city, suburb, near office, low crime, and nice ice cream shops).  You choose to drive a car with certain features and it comes with an ecosystem of its own (sporty, 4 door, heated seats, SUV, hybrid).  You can’t choose your children, but if I could I would have chosen mine (low crime, like ice cream, heated seats).   So my family members, home area, car, all interconnect into my ecosystem, that is, until I attach to the internet, apps and social networks.   

Now, what do the car, house, and kids have to do with my Windows Phone 8 Nokia Lumia 1020?  Well,when you read the list below I think you will see how I interconnect them and I believe the combination of hardware best meets MY needs.

MATH WARNING + GEEK WARNING

    

I will now rattle off my decision process.  It’s a pro/con kind of thing.  Here’s a scorecard of what I want to do with my smartphone with most important features at the top. I used a simple ranking from my usage on four devices from major smartphone OS providers (a rank of 4 is highest, 1 is lowest):

and here is a chart to show the features most used by device:

(clearly the green and purple lines are hugging those features on the outside of the chart, they are the best, but it’s misleading when not weighted)

Highest score would be a 4 in all categories added to 24 and divided by 6 for a simple 4, if I evenly weight each item then the winner is the iPhone 5,  except I don’t weigh each feature equally, instead I rank on how much time I spend using each feature.  Like this:

    

Feature                   %time using            weighted value

E-mail                                     45%                         .45

Camera                                   20%                         .2

Photos                                     15%                         .15

Web browsing                        10%                         .1

Music                                      5%                           .05

Social networks                      5%                           .05

                                              100%

Again, a rank of 4 is highest, 1 is lowest for feature performance.  So for best email score I use email (.45 *4 = 1.8) etc.  If it’s too confusing use the page up/down feature or just look at the graphs.  I also put in BOLD the best score on each line and the worst in red ITALICS to show that iPhone won three rows
and Nokia won three rows and BlackBerry didn’t do so well but Samsung lost because of email performance. 

And here is a weighted feature chart:

(as you can see I don’t spend as much time on the lower side of the graph with any of my devices tested, but when applying a rank the purple of the Nokia      Lumia 1020 is closer to the features on the outside of the chart)

It is equal for winners with 3 each iPhone 5 and Nokia 1020. The phone for you may be an iPhone if you care more about web browsing than photos, or your last name is Novak.  But in my ecosystem, I want to save pictures for a long time. I can always browse the web later but can’t get life to re-pose for that perfect shot.  I mean I would love a better browsing experience and posting to Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn, and they will come to the WP8 (they better!!!!).  The BlackBerry is a great business email device, but a Windows mobile Outlook experience is more native and better for me.

I do use apps, and iTunes has tons of them.  I just don’t use miscellaneous apps and want to count that as a feature in my top 6. I get that Apple has a great ecosystem, but every time I went to the windows store they either had an app I wanted, or a close enough competitor (6tag for Instagram).  Honestly, I am on
my smartphone too damn much as it is and don’t need a new category.  So back to the ecosystem.  My kids are only this age once.  I may only visit a customer in a certain city one time this year.  I can do my work and capture memories better with the Lumia 1020.

Will I try the iPhone 5s or 5c, no.  I will have an iPhone 6 though.  But, will the iPhone 6 be for demo or my primary device with at least a 4.5” screen, that is the question in 2014…..

       

I would ask all of us who think we know everything to either observe the interaction of a young family member or friend’s child.  Seriously try to take a few mental notes from what they do on the device.  They are a pre-cursor to new functions to come. 

    

Closing question for you, if just existing as a human was an app, would we need a smartphone to do that? Here are some pictures from my Nokia 1020, enjoy them while thinking about a human app.

See you in the Matrix,

 

Josh

p.s. This is Version 2 of this BLOG, here is Version 1:

 

“COLLEAGUE:   “What does it say about the mobility guy for SAP if he is carrying a Windows Phone?”

ME:  “It says that I enjoy having a device at my fingertips for the functions I need professionally
and personally.”

 

And then the fanboy, who is a biased, pseudo-technologist, myrmidon attacked…..(not that I call anyone names)

    

Fast forward a few days and I decided to accept fanboy’s challenge:  “I am 100% positive you can’t stop yourself from writing a blog on your mobile phone choice and I would love to read it.” 

I switched to the Nokia Lumia 1020 because it does email and photography better than any other device at this moment in my opinion. 

  

The End”

p.s.s.  I wrote this blog on a PC, but was it a W8 tablet???

p.s.s.s. I promise I won’t use math in my next blog

p.s.s.s.s. My wife hates that if I have a cold I say I feel about 82%...it’s just my brain’s way

p.s.s.s.s.s Thanks to DC and MC for proofreading

7 Comments
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Hi Josh,

it was really fun to read your blog. I am a math fan too but in the end every phone decision is an emotional one. So I bet that you can justify another choice as well, just fine-tuning your weighthings a bit.

Would love to see a similar blog from you about your choice of a tablet.

Best regards,

Bernhard

josh_bentley
Developer Advocate
Developer Advocate
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Thanks for the comments Bernhard.  Yes, I chose my variables, so the fix was in once I found an amazing camera-phone that I could do work on.  If a new feature like pinkie-toe recognition was important to me and someone esle has it I may have to re-evaluate.  As for tablet, I am waiting to decide on testing with Surface Pro-2, or a full Win-8 tablet later this year.  Time to toss the T520 for short business trips.

Former Member
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Have to smile at your solid blog as my 14 year old ditched his Apple fan boy obsession this weekend for a Galaxy S4 phone.  Not only could he not stop rattling off all the mobile apps offered by Google Play but he went on to show me the IR capabilities of controlling the Comcast Cable box as well as the very crisp gaming capabilities.  The coup de grace was the S4's impressive 13 megapixel camera.  He had my wife thinking twice about the amazing size and ability to still easily hold it in your hand and read.

josh_bentley
Developer Advocate
Developer Advocate
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Thanks for the comments Adam.  I was sipping a w-odka (wine-vodka) one night and thought to myself:  Self, what do you really need with 41 megapixels?  Of course if I had raw format I would love it, but i have to tell you, a 30 +megapixel camera is amazing when i zoom and re-size.  That said, apps and a 13 megapixel camera are enough to entice some, and my wife reads kindle books a ton so the large screen of the WP8 and other androids are making her iPhone 5 look, dated.  All that said, we make and use mobile apps for business, and the consumer look/feel and business app combination is the really missing link that I can't wait to see till next year, maybe 2015 at the earliest. 

Former Member
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You don't have "Phone operation" as a category?  Is that just not as critical an area for you, or do all these models perform basically the same there?

For me, it's the little things that make a difference when using the phone, like dialing from contacts, voice control ("call my wife on her cell"), volume control, switching audio sources easily (headset to car bluetooth to speaker), and so on. 

josh_bentley
Developer Advocate
Developer Advocate
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Someone else asked me this and I really tried to come at it from this perspective, if you can't sell something that does the basics, well, that would just be sad for the manufacturer.  Sure the WP8 is a different basic phone, but so was Android to all the people using BREW who didn't even know what a BREW OS was but they cared about dropped calls more than how to dial them, I hold the same true for voice calling today.  I would actually be scared if I had to pick up a smartphone today and ask "how is it for dialing".  It should just work. But how is it for GPS navigation, that's a little better test but still not used enough for me to make the list.  As for what's most inmportant on my list, it's up above.  If you want my file to plug in your own metrics I can send to you.

Ken_Landau
Explorer
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Thanks for the well thought out article. I'd be interested in your file to plug into my own life (if I ever find the time).

Being THE former Sybase mobile guy, I felt I had to chime in with some of my own thoughts. First off, I've had every mobile device known to mankind and most given to me by carriers through the years. Palm V with Omnisky modem, Palm 7, Windows Palm Treo, Samsung SCH-i700 (windows), Blackerries, and of course the iPhone.

Much has changed through the last decade and the experience is certainly progressing at a steady pace. I'd second what Paul says above in that my smartphone is truly a multi-funcion device and I take way more into consideratoin than your six catagories. At one point, battery life was a key feature but it looks like we've all given up on that. Perhaps have more access to charging stations than we ever have. Maybeis due in part to telecommuniting.

I'm not really an Apple fan to be honest but I do like the iPhone. It's a good swiss-army knife of a phone. While I hear your love for the Lumina camera I'm not really on the same page. I am in fact a big camera buff and while I hope not to start the Canon/Nikon debate, I'd suggest poceting something like the Canon G15 in your bag ... and ALWAYS shoot in RAW. (If the kids are around I carry the SLR). My iPhone camera is mainly used for taking snapshots and for show-rooming (yes, doing price match shopping or sending shots ot my wife to say "do I need this?" Guilty as charged).  Yes, the lumina may be great camera phone but I'm still not on board with losing that much granular control there. Yes, I'm still a techie, lol.

The reason I'm not jumping to a MSFT phone is in fact the apps. I'm sure that some have WP8 variants but many do not. Today, few SAP apps run there so I don't think I'd be doing much demo'ing. I do sync multiple accounts to the device including Gmail email and a Google shared family calendar. In fact, it's interesting just how much Google I make use of. Still use them for navigation, forwarding some phone/voicemail with Google Talk, etc...

If I find some time perhaps I'll create a blog post of my own and figure out what apps I most use but for now, here's a quick snapshot for the group:

Messaging (txt way more than I use the phone or even email these days) (I include whatsapp and YIM here too)

Contacts/phone

Email

Web and Apps for... Engadget, Dealnews, Woot, eBay, Amazon, Craigslist

Google Family Calendar (so I know who has what practice on which day)

Bank Check Cashing/monitoring accts/card services/etrade/paypal

Monitor remote garage door and house CCTV

Facebook (mostly stalking not posting)

Photos (and to a large extent Genius Scan PDF scanning)

Check weather/flashlight/calculator/Music/Youtube

I have no category for this last one which I'll just call Voice processing.

I'm not a big user of Siri from a request perspective but I dictate far more than I ever have. texts, emails, commands, etc... In fact, my 2 year old steals my iPad to watch Barney on youtube and she uses the voce dication to get what she wants. Being that she doesn't like the responsiveness of the Galaxy Tabs I have (7 and 10) I know what she's be voting for.

Since I know that you travel and like photography, an app you should consider is Panoramio:

http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/panoramio-image/840a4368-8994-4d39-9b5d-62bebd687a63

It's a terrific resource for finding cool locations to take photos wherever you may find yourself.