With
so much competition in technology these days, and such similar
specifications, everything is trying to add value to differentiate
themselves.
Take
smart mobile phones. The hardware is not terribly dissimilar. Almost all
phones have a front facing 3MP camera, and a back-mounted 8-10MP
camera. The processors they use are pretty much the same; most have
16GB of internal storage; they mostly use the same operating system.
The differences are mostly as to whether you want to go Apple or Android, and if the latter: a 4” screen, a 5”
screen or a 6” screen.
So
they try to differentiate by ‘adding value’. Samsung phones come
with a particular suite of apps which is what they say makes the
phone a Samsung, and therefore they say a better buy (though ultimately frustrating). From their perspective,
once the app has been created, it costs them noting more to put on 1
phone or 10 million. And as anyone who has used iTunes will be aware
– once they become reliant on your (proprietary) app,
they’re stuck with you. They can’t go elsewhere without losing
their music / contacts / life. It’s sticky added value. In a kinda nasty-sticky way.
But
how useful are they? Or, more particularly, not the app but the
features?
My
reason for pondering is that I regularly get prompted by Dropbox to
set up auto-synching for my photos; so that when I take a photo with
my mobile it automatically uploads it to my Dropbox account. The
Samsung app has a similar function, but to upload it to my Samsung
backup account. Facebook has a similar function too.
But
the problem with the Dropbox, is that the function is very limited in
scope. Why?
Storage
Well,
primarily because of the limits of the Dropbox account. I’ve
‘maxed’ my free account. You initially get given 2GB of space,
but can get up to 18 GB of space to share. Cool. Except that my photo
collection on my computer amounts to almost 100GB. This means that I
don’t share all of my photo collection, just a selection. As such I
don’t want every photo that I take storing on there. With Facebook
your space is unlimited; but then the photos are compressed, so it
doesn’t function well as a backup (we’ll ignore the privacyissues!) I have no idea about the Samsung account. But if it wants to
act as a true backup, it has to store the original uncompressed file;
automatically and provide sufficient space to be a full backup.
Otherwise I have to undertake active space management. Which brings
me on to…
Access
If they are going to limit my space, it has to feel natural and
intuitive for me to want to access the account on a regular basis.
For example, when I was a Facebook user I would be landing on the
Facebook page on a daily basis, so whilst it may have been slightly
out of the way to access a possible ‘uploaded but not shared photos’
page, it wasn’t as though I was having to go out of my way to open
an app, wait for it to load and then perform the maintenance of
deleting useless files. Or worse – having to select each file
individually that I want to upload, instead of tickbox selections, or
select all. Which brings me nicely onto…
Functionality
That
the actual functionality of the app doesn’t reflect the use. What
do I mean? Well, it’s all very well uploading every single photo
that I take; but that doesn’t reflect how people use the camera
these days. With massive gigabites of storage, people take 3, 4, a
dozen photos of the same thing at the same time and then select the
best photo to use. Particularly considering the storage restrictions
on Dropbox, I don’t want it filled with scores of photos of the
same four scenes, just filtered, framed or focused differently by me.
Indeed, the ‘added value’ that a lot of manufacturers are adding
to their apps is the ability to take bursts of photos; dozens at once
and combining them, adjusting the effects or offering them up for
selection. So other apps clearly know how we use the camera. Perhaps
Dropbox could add further function to their app which – on
shut-down of the camera app – gives you a choice of which photos
you want to upload to Dropbox.
Connectivity
And
finally, certainly in this country, mobile data is a problem. Whilst
we eagerly (?) await the roll-out of 4G networks, you will still be
hard-pressed to find many places with a wide ranging and stable 3G
connection. Travelling is a massive problem in this regard. Whilst
the mobile network providers concentrate their signal on built-up
areas, this often leaves large areas of intercity transport
infrastructure uncovered. Even if not, there can often be a problem
whereby the upload or download request fails as you switch from one
cell to another. Whether this is a problem with the mobile
registering the connect/disconnect, or the app for not retrying on a
drop of a piece of data, I don’t know.
Even
if you do find a stable connection, the network operators often still
have very restrictive data allowances which means that you don’t
want to be uploading 3 or 4 MB pictures without reviewing each of
them. Currently I get 500MB of data per month on my plan with O2… and I use
it all. Usually by around the 20th
day of the month. I then have to buy extra allowance. Indeed, Ofcom suggests that the average monthly data usage is 424MB
meaning that the 500MB is exceeded by almost half of users. Hardly
‘fair usage’. But this is – very slowly – changing as newer
providers like Giff Gaff start offering unlimited data (Three, after
some criticism of its marketing, offered genuine ‘all youcan eat’ data, but again has since railed back on that so that - for new customers - it is only available on their more pricey plans.). But apps are already eating up data usage without
telling you. My Twitter downloads tweets hourly with no input from
me. Thank goodness I don’t use Facebook any more! But at least
those downloads are insignificant compared to a photo transfer.
In what must be the craziest move of all, my mobile operator - O2 - has, for new customers, DRASTICALLY slashed not price - like you might expect under competition - but data capacity. Instead of 500MB per month they offer you 100MB. Progress?
Capacity
And
finally, is the upload/download speed. With an 8-10MP camera as
standard on smartphones; and masses of internal and expandable
capacity, everyone is creating 3-4MB pictures. The best HSDPA+
signals around have a maximum transfer rate of around 370Mbit/s with
an actual transfer of around 300Mbit/s. It does frustrate me how we
measure the size of a file in megabytes, but the transfer rate in
megabits, but essentially you are getting around 35 megabytes per
second; so transfer rate on the very best, stable 3G signal should be
less than a second – but that is not many of the connections around
at all. Only the very very best. If you are using EDGE (best of 60kbit/s) then your 4MB
picture will take around 8 minutes to upload if uncompressed. Now,
most mobile signals are somewhere in between, and most pieces of
software use some sort of compression; but still – if you’re
trying to upload an album, that’s a lot of heel kicking.
So
I’ve had to turn off a feature that - potentially - could well have
been a very useful feature and instead wait till I get home, go
through the album and perform a tidy up: upload those that I want to
Flickr, and transfer all of the rest to my storage. A few simple
changes would make the app ideal – upload over wi-fi; pending
upload (so that you can select all photos and it will hold them to
upload once a stable wi-fi connection is established); the easiest
multiple upload selection tools; unlimited storage; the moon on a
stick. This should be where a little ‘real world’ alpha and beta
testing allows effective feedback and development.
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