Smartphones Growing Up

This isn't about what you'd first think - about phones getting older - but about "olders" getting phones.

Apparently I haven't been paying close enough attention to the demos on wireless penetration but I got shaken into reality at a wedding brunch of all places.  It was the morning after a relative's marriage.  All of the out-of-towners who had collected at hotels or the bride's house were in attendance and my best guess is that 70 percent or more were over 65 years old.

All of them carried wireless devices.  And none were bricks.  There were iPhones and Androids and a couple of tablets...and get this:  they talked intelligently about their phones, including one 70+ female being upset about her 4G access.  A bunch were checking email and one punched onto IMDB to settle an argument.  (FYI it was Pat Buttram in Green Acres, not Pat Brady.)

So I got to snooping.  Found one chart (below) which sums things up and really makes you think - once again concentrating on the 18-34's is missing a lot of folks.

Now, granted, the "gotta have the latest" gene may not be developed in the 65+ but they all seemed to have just about the latest.  And, again, they knew how to use them.

I tossed out a couple of questions.  Words with Friends was popular with females, seemed like it was just below the importance of their Facebook interaction.  some guys liked WWF but more were interested in email and finding restaurants.  Hey, maybe the whole "guys don't ask for directions" is going the way of the bag phone. 

So we all may want to rethink penetration.  The percentages within each demo (percent ownership based on income) track almost linearly.  Yes, there's less interest above 65 than among 34 year olds, and the whole article quoted below capitalizes on it... but it's sure there!

Worth a look.

From BI Intelligence, http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-smartphone-demographics-still-skew-young-and-moneyed-2012-7

EAS - Take a Giant Step "Back to the Future"

The national EAS test has come and gone. I’ve been through about 400 or so posts about what went right (the event did happen, it brought the tech community a lot closer together and spotlighted the common goal of success, a majority of decoders did trigger, there was no Mercury Theater of the Air panic by the citizenry and no actual attacks were initiated during the test period) and what went wrong (missed relays - including an entire state, daisy chains that looped back on themselves, cable and over-the-air test info either duplicated or non-existent, dropped audio, poor audio, reverb/echo/feedback audio and a few others).

The recommendations for moving forward are coming from every direction:

• Scrap the whole system and start over

• Keep the system as-is, the test went well

• Modify the system to (place your favorite verb here) and then ____ (about 50 different ideas)

• Make it smartphone-centric

• Make it satellite-centric

• Make it Internet-centric

• Increase the number of PEP’s

• Decrease the number of PEP’s

• Run more frequent national tests

• Take it away from the government

• Turn it all over to the government

After fielding calls from a number of clients – before, during and after the test – it becomes abundantly clear that KISS (keep it simple, stupid) was made for this.

First, stop and think of what the test was about. This wasn’t CAP. It wasn’t a series of chlorine tank cars on their sides in Omaha or Denver. It was national. It was to see how the system works when there’s an emergency that affects the entire country. That’s it. It sought the answer to a simple question: Can the POTUS (or his/her designate) get a message to all of us in case of emergency. This message may take 30 seconds or it could continue for days or even weeks. After all, we don’t know what the emergency might be and/or what instructions need to be given or citizen actions need to take place.

So now think about KISS. We’re certainly not doing that. The relays and daisy chains work – to a degree – but they take time and every level is subject to error. If you know that you’re going to have a 5% error factor in every layer of relay, which is better: 10 layers or 2? Doh!

So how do you do that. Whew-boy. Here’s where I get pummeled for talking about that positive step backward…to AM radio. To AM being the platform for launching all national alerts.

I must be kidding, right? Well would a kidder go one step further and suggest reexamining 500 kilowatt operation. Now I must really be kidding. Nope. Here’s the thinking:

As was proposed years ago, many of the clears could operate at 500kW. Yes, some may have to directionalize to protect neighbors to the north and south. A few would have to protect one another. But with a little study, we could get to a .5 mv/m or at least 100uv/m coverage* of the entire country with few – very few – facilities. Fewer facilities means fewer mistakes. Remember, this is for national alerts. Yes, the “PEP’s” (not so primary anymore) would be involved and each station would be part of a chain, but with all stations monitoring the 500kw operators, there’s be only two – count ‘em, two – links. Not bad.

Now, a couple of other advantages:

Contrary to using satellites, the web, or cellular as the base platform, 500 kW transmitters with tube modulators and finals are much less susceptible to EMP. Many AM towers are some distance away from cities’ population centers…less likely to be affected by nuclear or EMP attacks (wow – this IS going backwards). In fact, the only real danger would be if an enemy attacked us with CFL light bulbs.

Now the forgotten selling point: give me a little wire, let me unwrap a 1N34A from its lead-foil package and attach it to a crystal headphone and I’m listening to AM. No discriminator, no limiter, no D/A converter, NO BATTERY. Now someone’s going to say that I need a tuned circuit – and offer to sell me a 365mmf variable – but, believe it or not, in many cases, one station will dominate, at least enough for communication to take place. Yeah, if you live in Itasca, IL, halfway between the WBBM and WGN towers, I don’t want to hear from you. Go buy yourself a ferrite loop and tuning cap. And don’t bring up preemphasis. It’s not a factor here. The words will get heard.

Heck, you could even go digital! CW that is. I just don’t want to be the telegraph operator if they direct cathode-key the final.

Your counter to that argument should be, “Wait, you said national emergency and that AM’s should be the primary platform.” That’s true. The recommendation is that the super power AM’s provide the initial link. So the entire discussion of individuals and their 1N34a’s shouldn’t apply. Well, take the whole emergency thing one step further. It’s an actual emergency. EMP or other types of non-ionizing or, worse, ionizing radiation has limited or prevented travel while, at the same time, wiping out all those MOSFET gates, TWT’s, and maybe even good old bipolar transistors. Let’s hope it never gets to that point but if it does and my local FM’s and lower power AM’s are off the air, I’d sure like to unwrap the lead from around that little gem, hook it up, and find out if it’s safe to drive the heck out of town.

OK, back to EAS. High power AM can work. Because it’s just simple. Now – why won’t it happen? The filings and counterfilings, suits and countersuits that will ensue as stations seek upgrades, the jealousy of owners locked out of a power increase because of an overlap, and the thinking that complex is better than simple. Or the thinking that complex employs more people than simple.

But remember, to reach the entire country, the fewer hops the better. And this one has just 1. That’s probably its downfall. The president communicates to the 500 kilowatters and everyone monitors them. Just doesn’t sound complex enough to work.

Then I think of DaVinci’s words, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” If you do a study of 1400’s Italian you find the translation actually means KISS.

*Important to note that man made noise certainly has impact here. Power lines, ignition noise and those great compact fluorescents will definitely be a problem. But then, there’s a lot of this country where power lines and ignition noise aren’t problems…and CFL’s can at least be turned off – if there’s any electricity at all.

Gone in Sixty Seconds

The star of this one isn’t Nicolas Cage and the title really isn’t as above but rather, Obsolete in 18 Months.

Technology keeps marching, for sure but now it’s double time or better. Maybe it’s the technology or maybe it’s just churning the masses and generating new purchases.

Hey, I can understand true advances but the one I’m writing about is not. It’s an “upgrade” by what you want to think is one of the good guys. Google.

Google and T-Mobile launched the MyTouch and Android pairing. Pretty good competition for iPhone. Worked great. I bought one. The Android platform is open source and thousands of folks are developing apps. I’m amidst one right now.

Well I was – until awhile ago. The phone slowed to a crawl. Sometimes locked up, even rebooted on its own. But the biggest annoyance is that the touch screen runs slowly, often responding to a touch long after a finger has left it. And with that, slow screen changes including over a minute for the screen to rewrite itself after dialing a phone call or reading an email.

Calls to T-Mobile were a laugh with the first one beginning with, “Have you turned your phone on and off?” Well actually, it didn’t begin there. It began with them asking if I was aware of a certain promotion…I had to remind them that they shouldn’t be pushing anything on me while my phone was misbehaving.

At first, the person denied that it was a common issue – until I pointed to pages on T-Mobile’s own forums and all of the problems and complaints posted. Then she admitted that, well, there have been some other calls. Well, if the calls were like the posts, people aren’t happy. In fact, they’re angry at both T-Mobile and Google

There were no improvements after the first call. Reset a lot of things, turned off one app that had decided to run all the time, but no improvements.

I made a trip to the T-Mobile store. “You’re not alone,” the kind guy behind the counter said. “I probably had five or six others just today.”

“So what is it?” I hoped for an instant fix.

“Google.” Well, Android 2.2, to be specific,” he smiled.

I wasn’t smiling as he continued, “1.6 was fine but when they went to 2.2, the MyTouch 3G saw all sorts of problems. Looks like your phone has most of them.”

“How do I fix it?”

“Go back to 1.6,” he said. But you don’t have long on your contract…stick it out and get a different phone.”

That wasn’t the right answer. Especially when he said the alternative was to go back to 1.6 which meant wiping everything on the phone, reverting to the old version of Android and reloading it all. I asked if there was a patch coming for 2.2 which would fix the problems and he said it wasn’t likely.

OK, off to the web. The guy was right. Lots of folks getting burned by a non-caring Google. At least that’s how it seemed. Apparently, I was lucky. At least my alarm still worked and I could get text messages. But as I read the complaints and checked them out, I found I had even more issues. Battery life, for sure and keyboard freezes. Now I get the battery life issue – a newer OS may be running more items in the background and it’s all those cycles in CMOS that suck current – but keyboard freezes? C’mon, Google. A $600 stock price doesn’t give you the right to ignore your customers…unless your goal is a $300 stock price!

Next came another call to T-Mobile. “May I have your phone number?” he asked.

“You mean the one the automated system already had me type in?”

“Yes.”

“XXX XXX XXXX.”

“And the last four of your social…”

“And you mean the ones the automated system already me type in?”

“I’m sorry. That information doesn’t come over to us.”

“Why?”

“Uh…”

“Never mind. I know it’s not you. Let’s hope someone actually listens to the recording you’re making for ‘training’ purposes. Where do we start?”

“First, let’s turn your phone off and back on.”

I resisted the urge to stick my hand through the phone. “OK, but if you have any of my account history in front of you, you know this is going to take some time.

“That’s OK.”

So we waited…and waited. Did get to talk about weather.

“OK. We’re back up. I counted almost four minutes. How about you?”

“I’m sorry sir. How is it working? Can you open an app?”

The first one opened perfectly, as fast as I touched it. But when I closed it out and opened another, it slowed to its usual crawl. After some investigation, he was hard-pressed to believe that no one had told me that 2.2 allowed me do move apps from the phone to the SD card and that that should clear everything up.

The migration started…and stopped. “These apps have the “Move to SD Card” option greyed out,” I told him.

“Yeah. Some don’t work except on the phone.”

One after another gave me no option but to leave the app on the phone. But convinced that moving the apps would free up needed phone memory, I made a mistake. I told him that I could do these changes without holding him up and I’d call back if there were further problems. He thanked me, promised he had noted everything in my account history and hung up.

I moved another eight or 10 applications to the SD card then restarted the phone. The house of hope fell in on reboot. No better. I mean no better.

Another browse session just showed more disappointed users. I called T-Mobile customer care again and, as you would expect, went through the same restating of my information as before. I got to an unsympathetic lady who

• Read my account history

• Confirmed that a lot of people were having the problem

• Asked if I had turned the phone off and back on

• Disagreed when I asked her if she thought that Google and T-Mobile have rendered my phone obsolete (“…after all, you can revert to Android 1.6 and your phone will work…” she said.) – as if somehow asking me to spend hours fixing a problem brought about by an “upgrade” was fine with her

• Told me she didn’t know how to get my message (that Google and T-Mobile have to provide support for their products or say goodbye to consumers) to her supervisor or others in “management”

So, with an 18 month old phone, I’m on the make again. This time, though, it’s for a new service provider as well as new phone. I’d say, “Farewell, Android, [Aquarius] and we thank you,” but the astronauts on Apollo 13 were saved and Aquarius helped. Android burned up on reentry.