I Don't Typically Do This

The #1 Reason Non-Techies Should Upgrade to iOS 5

The latest version of the iPhone and iPad operating system, iOS 5, comes out today and is available for third and fourth generation iPod touches, all iPads, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S.

There are a ton of great features included in the update, but the feature that will have the most profound impact, especially for people who don’t plug their devices into their computers every day, is free iCloud backup. In addition to copying any new content to the device, iTunes also backs up your device’s data to the computer. The type of data that is backed up includes:

• Photos and videos in your Camera Roll
• Messages
• App data
• Device settings
• Home screen layout

If you ever lose your device and need to get a new one, you can restore the device using the latest backup and the device will look exactly as it did at the time the last backup was taken. The key here is “at the time the last backup was taken”. If you haven’t plugged your phone into your computer in a month and then need to replace it, all of the photos, videos, text messages, and notes taken in the past month are gone. Even better: you can restore the device from anywhere there’s a WiFi connection – you don’t have to wait to get home to get up and running.

With iCloud backup, your device is backed up to Apple’s servers daily, as long as it’s plugged in and connected to WiFi. BOOM You no longer have an excuse for not having an up-to-date backup of your phone.

HOW TO GET IT

In order to get iOS 5 and iCloud backup, you do need to update to iTunes 10.5 and you do have to plug your device into iTunes one last time (future software updates come directly to your phone – another benefit of having iOS 5). Once you plug the device in, iTunes will tell you that a new version of iOS is available and ask you if you want to upgrade. If it doesn’t, you can check manually by clicking on your device on the left hand side and then click “Check for Update” near the middle of the screen.

After the upgrade is complete, go into your device’s Settings, tap on iCloud and follow the instructions on the screen in order to set up iCloud and iCloud backup.

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The iPhone 4S Upgrade Conundrum

Ben Brooks has a post up describing the situation most of us are in: despite being loyal AT&T customers for at least the past four years (thirteen years in my case), we aren’t eligible for the full discount on the new iPhone 4S.

Instead, AT&T offers a smaller subsidy for those close to the full discount date, but not quite there yet. Ben, along with most people who bought their iPhone 4s on Day 1, aren’t eligible until November 18th. In my case, I’m not eligible until March 10, 2012 as a result of family members having used upgrades recently. If you have upgrades available on other lines in your family plan, the upgrades are pooled and can be used for a phone on any line, so you can use one of those to get your shiny new iPhone 4S and you can stop reading now if you want.

PAYING THE ETF

The full subsidy for an iPhone 4S is $450 and the smaller subsidy is $200. For a lot of people, the early termination fee of $325 minus $10 for every month you’ve been under contract is less than the difference between the two subsidies, meaning that it makes more sense to pay the ETF and start a new contract with AT&T. Unfortunately, AT&T has policies in place to prevent this from being an option. First, there is no way to pay the ETF without canceling your account. Second, if you do cancel your account, you have to wait 90 days until you’re considered a new customer. If you open a new account before the 90 days have elapsed, AT&T will just reactivate your old account.

GOING UNLOCKED

Since the small subsidy is only $200, one might be tempted to just pay the no-commitment price for the iPhone 4S and save the upgrade for the next iPhone. For the iPhone 4, the unlocked price and the no-commitment-but-locked-to-AT&T price are the same, so it made more sense to buy the unlocked iPhone. I tried to see if the same is true for the iPhone 4S, but I couldn’t find the pricing for the unlocked iPhone 4S. I started a chat with an Apple rep who told me that there would be no unlocked iPhone 4S at launch.

OUR OPTIONS

Now that Sprint is joining the fray and Verizon has the iPhone 4S at launch, it’s curious that AT&T is going to such great lengths to inconvenience their customers. Taking a longer-term view of things, and assuming that the iPhone 5 pricing will leave us in the same boat, here are the options available to us (these are numbers for 16 GB models; add $200 for two 32 GB models or $400 for two 64 GB models):

• $640 - Switch to Sprint or Verizon, then switch to the other or back to AT&T for the iPhone 5 and paying a $240 ETF. Probably not worth it.
• $650 - Switch to Sprint or Verizon and get half-subsidy pricing on the iPhone 5.
• $850 - Pay no-commitment pricing, and then get the full-subsidy for the iPhone 5.
• $900 - Pay the half-subsidy pricing, re-up for two years, and then get the half-subsidy pricing again on the iPhone 5.

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It’s not about what it is. It’s about what it does.

Amazon just announced the Kindle Fire, a 7” tablet priced at $199. In contrast to the existing Android tablets out there, Amazon doesn’t focus on specs. In fact, Amazon offers just as many specs on the main Kindle Fire page as Apple does on the iPad page – they tell us that the Fire has a dual-core processor (but no mention of clock speed, amount of cache, model number, etc) and that the Fire has a 7” screen with IPS technology, “similar technology to that used on the iPad” (their words, not mine).

For example, the Motorola XOOM page tells us (if we have Flash installed): “The dual-core process MOTOROLA XOOM has a larger screen, more pixels and higher-quality front- and rear-facing cameras than the competition.” These types of marketing messages have questionable value because they require consumers to assume that “better than” comes with no strings attached and assumes that consumers can draw the conclusion that better specs imply higher utility.

Instead, Amazon sets aside those assumptions and clearly articulates the utility of the device: you can read books and magazines, watch TV and movies, listen to music, check email (a jab at the email-less RIM Playbook, no doubt), use apps and play games.

Rather than telling us what the Kindle Fire is and expecting us to figure out what it can do, Amazon saves us the trouble and tells us what it does. And what it does is extremely compelling.

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One Area Where Samsung Isn’t Copying Apple

From Chris Ziegler’s review of the Samsung Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch (yes, that’s the real name):

Sprint and Samsung appear to have shown a lot of restraint regarding third-party apps and crapware. Besides the typical TouchWiz apps, the phone throws in a shortcut to download a trial version of N.O.V.A. 2 HD ($4.99 for the full game), NASCAR, Sprint ID, Sprint Mobile, Sprint Music Plus, Sprint Radio, Sprint TV & Movies, Sprint Zone, and TeleNav GPS. Some — NASCAR and Sprint Music Plus, for instance — can be uninstalled, but some cannot.

Nine pre-installed apps, six of which can’t be uninstalled (assuming the N.O.V.A. 2 shortcut can be deleted), shows “a lot of restraint”? Man, Android and iPhone users live in two completely different worlds.

HP Kills webOS

It all makes sense now:

HP reported that it plans to announce that it will discontinue operations for webOS devices, specifically the TouchPad and webOS phones. HP will continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS software going forward.

Given the current legal climate, “optimize the value of webOS” most likely means selling off the patents HP took ownership of in following its acquisition of Palm.

It’s a sad, sad day for Palm and webOS fans.

(via The Next Web)

Another HP Launch Blunder

Not even a couple of hours pass since my post yesterday about HP’s launch problems that HP goes and fails at yet another launch. This time the victim is the white TouchPad. The new color is more than a cosmetic change, since the white version also features a faster processor than the black TouchPad and a doubling in storage to 64 GB. The new TouchPad was discovered by PreCentral last night:

[T]rue to HP form, they’ve up an unceremoniously revealed it in Europe. A small footnote of a button has been added to HP France’s TouchPad landing page, advertising the “The all new HP TouchPad white lacquer 64GB, available soon.”

C’mon, HP, not even a jab at Apple for taking ten months to launch the white iPhone when you can launch a white TouchPad with upgraded internals in two? Weak.

HP’s Two Problems

Matt Rosoff thinks the solution to HP’s mobile woes is for them to license webOS. This is the wrong way to go as is made evident by Google’s acquisition of Motorola. Unless HP wants to continue Palm’s decline in the mobile space, they need to fix two things: their devices and their delivery.

The big takeaways from my experience with the Pre 2 were that the OS was great to use and there are plenty of apps out there in the App Catalog (and even more apps and tweaks in the homebrew catalog), but that the screen was too small to be useful as a long-term phone. The Pre 1 and 2 have 3.1” screens, while the Pixi and the first HP-branded webOS phone, the Veer have microscopic 2.6” screens. I just couldn’t get enough information on the screen at once, and scrolling and pinching got annoying quickly.

Further, there’s a glut of 10” tablets on the market. The iPad dominates the market and the ten or so 10” Android tablets do nothing to help HP’s situation there. 7” tablets are completely different when it comes to portability, there isn’t as much competition at this screen size, and Apple has stated that they have no intentions to build a 7” tablet (which means that it’s coming, but it’s not here yet and doesn’t have 80-95% market share like the 10” iPad does). A $250-$300 7” tablet has the opportunity to give HP a nice foothold into the market, and once they do, they can go back and fight for 2nd place in the 10” market. Building 7” marketshare and building consumer mindshare to eliminate also-ran status is the only way HP (or anyone else for that matter) will have a fighting chance in the tablet space.

The recent price drop and subsequent news that Best Buy has sold only 25,000 TouchPads of the 300,000 they were shipped make clear that the TouchPad is a bust, much to the dismay of many who were hoping that HP could save the world from the iPad’s complete domination and Honeycomb’s complete mediocrity. Most, if not all, of the TouchPad reviews made these two points: that the TouchPad has its share of performance and stability problems and that a patch in the following weeks would fix all those problems. The patch came and many writers posted small updates, but the damage from those initial reviews was already done. Why didn’t HP wait those few weeks and launch the device with the patch?

Today, there were quiet rumblings that the Pre 3, originally announced back in February, had launched in the UK. Brad Molen at Engadget reports:

Pop quiz: what’s the best way to launch a phone that’s left us waiting with anticipation for seven months? HP’s answer is to quietly release it on its European store without any pomp or circumstance. We have no idea why the company chose to start selling the Pre 3, its new flagship phone, without any media buzz.

It was only after PreCentral noticed the Pre 3 on Palm’s online store did they receive a statement from HP:

HP is excited to begin its regional rollout of Pre3, the only phone today that offers users a slide-out keyboard coupled with a large touchscreen and the fastest speed (1.4GHz processor – the fastest on the market). We expect to share additional information for U.S. customers soon.

Unbelievable. I know HP is used to releasing new DeskJets and Pavilions without much more than a packing slip, but the mobile market is hardly commoditized (especially when you’re not the one shipping yet another Android phone) and HP needs to turn things quickly in order to save their ticket to future, because we all know it isn’t printers and Windows.

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