Category Archives: Mobile UI
KALQ touch keypad invented for tablets @ St Andrews
Rating: Thumb typing 34 per cent faster for tablet users
The traditional QWERTY was designed for a specific purpose – the typewriter. So researchers at three separate institutions: – the University of St Andrews; the Max Planck Institute for Informatics and Montana Tech have done what researchers do. And come up with a KALQ keyboard – created especially to make it easy for tablet users to ‘type’ on a touchscreen using their thumbs. The trio claim that using the KALQ, thumb typing can become 34 per cent faster. Continue reading
GoMo swings passed Swedish pavilion @ MWC 13
Rating: Some Astonishing discoveries
As we were attending MWC 2013, it seemed rude not to go to visit some of our old friends who were hanging out at the Swedish pavilion in this show. One of them was Charlotta Tonsgard who GoMo last met when she was with TAT (The Astonishing Tribe). Regular GoMo readers will recall that TAT was acquired by BlackBerry to work on the Playbook, etc. (See our previous story here). Charlotta is still in the UI business and is currently CEO with Lund based Zimpl. We also bumped into Joakim Nydemark and Rickard Martensson from Crunchfish. We also had an interesting little chat with Jonas Andersson from tactel. Continue reading
iPhone no longer the UI leader says On Device
Rating: Actually Motorola RAZR users are happier
Another clear sign that Apple is losing its way and that Android based handsets are winning out has been provided by On Device Research. It has mined data gathered from 320,000 mobile and tablet users across six countries to produce a user satisfaction table taken from 92, 825 mobile users in the USA. The report shows the iPhone coming in fifth place behind four Android based handset. Coming as no surprise to GoMobile News, the Motorola Droid RAZR M took second place behind the Motorola Atrix HD. Continue reading
Guest Post: Samsung shows latest version of Android 4.1 – Jelly Bean
by Fenix Raw, freelance blogger and publicist
Here, Fenix gives us his take on the introduction of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean by Samsung …
A recent meeting of Google’s designers began with the introduction of the then up and coming version of Android – 4.1 Jelly Bean. This threatens to become quicker plus it includes a better voice-driven browser. Continue reading
Flow UI of BlackBerry 10 is impressive
Rating: Enterprises will like flip from work to personal function
Now GoMobile News understands the remarks made by RIM’s new CEO, Thorsten Heins, when he first took the reins. He talked about a focus on the business/enterprise side. Having seen RIM’s BlackBerry 10 mobile OS in action, there’s one feature that will impress and that’s the ability to flip between a ‘work’ profile and a ‘personal’ profile on the same handset. It’s perfect for BYOD usage because not only is the ‘work’ mode entirely secure, it’s also completely separate from the personal side. It’s impossible to cut and paste from work apps into personal apps. So you can’t post sensitive company data on your Facebook page. We also now understand why the BB10 ‘flow’ based UI is completely different. Continue reading
Developer Economics the mobile developer research report
I just read a PDF of the latest report from Vision Mobile (sponsored by Blue Via). It can be downloaded here.
What we think?
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Filling the gaps in the Android UI
Rating: Nokia spoilt us with something that worked
It’s a bit of a mystery as to why the shortcomings of the bog standard Android UI don’t attract more attention and criticism. However, GoMo News isn’t afraid to highlight how it has managed to patch some of the gaping holes. Mostly this is achieved using freeware but in some circumstances, we’d actually be prepared to pay for the apps. That is, if it wasn’t so difficult to do pay as a member of the ‘unbanked’ masses. We’ve also discovered fixes for gaps in Android’s Bluetooth support and easy access to user ‘profiles’. Continue reading
N2manager app makes money out of SMS
Rating: Admirable business model if your app is free
One of the key benefits of having an ‘Open’ mobile OS like Android is that the user can readily change the parts of the system or even UI that he or she doesn’t like. A classic example here is SayMyName from Tom Tasche which uses text-to-speech conversion to indicate (from the addressbook) who is calling. The snag is that consumers don’t want to pay for such utilities, reasoning that they should have been built-in in the first place. So what’s the point of creating a better ‘SMS Manager’ utility for all versions of Android, when the payback should be zero? Well, N2manager seems to have found the answer by hooking up its users with cheap SMS/texting. Continue reading
Lots of nuggets buried in Strand’s 2011 predictions
Rating: In 2011 operates will promote what service a handset can run
How about this for a brave quote? “Unlike many others, Strand Consult has no problem in being held responsible for what we said in the past would happen in the future.” This quote prefaces Danish analyst firm, Strand Consult’s predictions for 2010. As luck would have it, however, GoMo News published Strand’s predictions for 2010 precisely a year ago today here. And actually the company scored a couple of direct hits. Our favourite concerns entrenched handset manufacturers’ attitudes towards Android which proved to be spot on. Less luck on the Nokia front, though. “Nokia’s new UI for the Series 60 will be a positive surprise.” We must have blinked, then. Continue reading
RIM snaps up The Astonishing Tribe
David Yach, Chief Technology Officer at RIM announced today via a Blackberry Company Blog that RIM have acquired The Astonishing Tribe (TAT) a User Interface design company for an undisclosed fee.
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Magic cleaning fluid for handsets & tablets Gadgetcare
Rating: Where there’s mobile muck, there’s Brasso
Bizarre products of our time- how about a cleaning fluid which is designed absolutely specifically to clean up mobile phones and mobile devices such as laptops and tablets? Sounds totally unlikely or impossible? Just what we thought until we actually tried it Gadgetcare from Brasso. And with today’s mobile phones being almost entirely reliant on touchscreen input, having a nice clean screen in the first place is becoming an absolute must. Continue reading
eyeSight eyes up handset vendors for gesture interface
Rating: Smash hit on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic so far
Building on the success of the Moove MP3 player – which is only available for the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic at present, eyeSight is looking to offer other handset vendors its Hand Gesture Interface. The company is painting gesture as the next evolution in UIs now that touch is so well established. In particular, eyeSight sees its UI as highly suited to the operation of music players on smartphones. Continue reading
Dell and Vodafone highlight huge iPhone advantage over Android
When Dell launched its Aero smartphone last week, most observers collectively sighed and rolled their eyes. The device, while small and inexpensive, was also packing a very old version of the Android software. This messy release from Dell, along with a recent updating catastrophe from Vodafone, has shown exactly why iPhone has a massive advantage over Android when it comes to consistency. Continue reading
Nokia promotes nextgen touchscreen shell on Ovi
Rating: Carphone Warehouse pushes Android in newspaper ad
It’s interesting to see that Nokia has decided to promote the benefits of the SPB Mobile Shell to its Ovi users offering them a ‘next generation user interface’ without changing their handset. Providing they have a touchscreen Nokia, of course, Meanwhile the Carphone Warehouse has been promoting the joys of Android apps to readers of the Sun in an newspaper ad. Continue reading
Nokia knocking becomes a sport
Rating: Is the giant really slipping as PhoneLot thinks?
A fresh approach to estimating how demand for mobile handsets is really holding up is being offered by Dublin based, PhoneLot. The company says that prices for Nokia handsets are falling while Blackberries and iPhones go up. Is this just another version of Nokia knocking? Continue reading
