Twitter's recent(ish) developer crushing announcement got me thinking. While a lot of independent developers might not like their new rules, Twitter do have the right idea in as much as they want to deliver a consistent experience across all platforms and devices. Shame there's no sign of that in their own mobile & web apps just yet but that's another conversation.

Consistency

These days I'm an Android user, not by choice but I'm going to live with it for now. I used to have an iPhone and since switching I've (where possible) downloaded the same apps for my Android that I had on the iPhone, only to find that they are in every single case so far, completely different. Why are they not the same? Where is the consistency? Why should I have to learn how to use something all over again? I shouldn't. The same app, even if offered on a different platform should offer the same user experience.

Cross platform is an after thought

I suspect the reason for this lack of consistency is that going cross platform is an after thought for most developers. A developer will make an app, say for iPhone and if successful will then go about creating an Android version or getting someone else to do it for them and so on. This leads to two (or more) completely different apps which share one commonality, their name.

Getting it right

Getting it right by creating a consistent experience across devices isn't going to be easy because the development platforms and the physical limitations of Operating Systems and their associated SDKs vary so much but that shouldn't make it impossible. Surely it's just a case of sitting down and planning your app first with all options in mind. Think about how each feature or function would work and what you would have to do to achieve that same experience across all platforms.

Am I wrong?

I'm certainly not an expert in mobile app development so I'm happy to hear any comments from those that are and wish to put me right on this one. I'd also like to see some examples (if they exist) where there is complete consistency across devices.

Like this? You may also be interested in some of my other posts:

• I am now an Android user
• MiFi as a home broadband solution
• The iPad = the perfect home computer?

Last week, much to my disgust, my iPhone decided to give up the ghost and present me with nothing but a white screen. The phone still worked but the display was no more. After trying various suggested fixes and failing, I came to the conclusion that it was dead and due to its age, not worth repairing. This left me sans smartphone... Not a respectable situation for a respectable geek to be in so I toddled off to the O2 shop and bought a Sony Ericsson Xperia X8 Android phone.

First impressions

My first impressions of the unit were that it felt really slow and clunky. After using an iPhone for a couple of years, I guess most things would but this felt particularly bad. Out of the box it runs Android 1.6 so I set about upgrading to 2.1 as soon as I got home. Unfortunately, I needed to borrow my sister's PC for this because the upgrade couldn't be performed on the unit its self (although subsequent upgrades now can) and there are no compatible drivers/software for the Mac. With Android 2.1 installed, it felt a lot snappier (provided I didn't try to do too much). I didn't feel quite so let down after that!

Hardware

What can I say about a resistive touch screen that hasn't already been said? It's spongey and not as nice as a capacitive touch screen! Having said that, I was surprised at how responsive the screen is. It actually works very well and with a pretty high degree of accuracy. In other hardware news, the case is very plasticky and even the smallest drop causes bits of case and battery to fly around the room like crazed banshees on crack.

Task management

One of the things that slows this phone down is the poor task management. Basically, out of the box there is none to speak of. Lots of applications build up in the background until the phone grinds to a standstill. Fortunately there are plenty of apps available on the Android market to fix this.

Apps

There are lots of aps available on the Android market so it didn't take me long to get back up and running with Twitter, Facebook and all the other services that I used on my trusty iPhone. One thing I did notice is that from a user experience point of view, none of the apps seem to be as good as their iPhone counterpart.

Phone

As an actual phone (remember those?), the X8 works really well. In this department it beats the iPhone hands down. Calls are clear, clean and the earpiece is loud enough to actually hear what's going on. The call management stuff on the phone is pretty good too. Thumbs up in this department.

Camera

It's only got a pin prick of a lens and as far as I can see, it appears to be fixed focus so I'll go gentle on it. The overall picture quality is OK but feels like I've gone back in time about 5 years with the technology. It doesn't seem to deal with changeable ambient conditions very well and in anything other than good clear sunlight (something we've not had much of lately) it produces a pretty dull and lifeless result.

Music

As an MP3 player, it's OK. It's certainly not an iPod but it works. The built in music player gets the job done and the supplied earbuds even manage to make it sound pretty good. One criticism I do have is the inability to segue from one track to the next without an audible gap. Very annoying when listening to a DJ mix compilation.

Gameplay

With lots of games available from the Android market, there was plenty of scope to see what this thing can do. Actually not a lot. If you don't clear all tasks it struggles even to play Angry Birds and even if you do, playback is jerky on some levels and will occasionally freeze altogether. Simply put: Don't buy this phone if you're into gaming.

Overall

I'm going to go with "Okay" on this. For the price it's a pretty capable unit but the fact that you need to do quite a lot of work to get it functioning in a respectable manner means many a less savvy customer (most like the kind of person that would actually buy this phone) may be left with a bad taste in their mouth. It lacks finesse but packs plenty of functionality for a very low price tag. Unfortunately, I will be replacing it as soon as I can and probably not with another Android.

When I heard that O2 were putting a £1 per day cap on their over limit data charges I got as close to jumping for joy as you're ever likely to see me get. I'm a social media junkie so running over limit is pretty easy for me and pretty regular too. I'd often find myself spending literally hundreds of pounds a month on my gratuitous data consumption. Not good and for me, not sustainable.

Now that I only get charged £1 per day for my excess data, it's unlikely that my total monthly bill will ever run to much more than about £40 which is great news.

So you're probably wondering why it makes me sad. As I said before, it was not uncommon for me to spend hundreds of pounds per month. Now, I doubt the cost of data to O2 has decreased by such orders of magnitude so it leaves me with one simple conclusion. For all that time I was being ripped off by O2. Not just ripped off but financially raped and I feel violated.

I hope the shareholders have been enjoying my money as much as I'm now going to enjoy not spending it. How about a free iPhone 4 for my troubles?

Didn't think so.

If you follow my tweets at all you will have seen that I have been having constant connectivity issues with my BT Total Broadband package and to add insult to injury their Twitter account always pops up and sends me to their online troubleshooter...  First time this happened, that was fine.  I followed the troubleshooter, an engineer came out, he ran some tests and in a nutshell told me that while my connection was crap, it was working and that was good enough.  I'm afraid it actually isn't, not for the £40+ per month it is costing me so I am going to jump ship.

I could just go to another broadband provider but I'll still be on the end of the same crappy wire as before and it will still be BT that own that piece of wire.  Not only that but I'll still be paying £20 per month for a land line that is never used for anything but carrying my broadband.  Seems pointless to me so I'm going to try something different.

Enter MiFi

I have spoken to my friends at 3mobilebuzz and they are sending me out a trial Three MiFi unit.  While MiFi is intended for mobile connectivity, it is a very cheap solution all round and doesn't need to be plugged into a bit of wire owned by BT.  If this works well enough, it will become my home broadband solution at a mere £15.00 per month.

You do the math... £40+ per month for something that doesn't work or £15 per month for something that works well enough for what I need.

Businesses STILL don't seem to get it, do they?  More often than not, the corporate world leave the management of their social media up to the marketing department or simply outsource to to an external marketing agency.  Nothing wrong with this but if a company has a social media presence, they really need to be social.  It's not about broadcast, broadcast, broadcast.  That's just spamming.  There are also many cases where an external agent is used to manage a community for a brand.  Again, nothing wrong with that either but when that brand is a product that requires genuine end user support, it would be nice if the "social" arm of these companies were actually able to do this.

Once again the world has gone crazy about another Apple product but is it really that useful?  To the average geek it probably isn't because it's not really very practical for hardcore computing, we have better devices.  Portability wise, everything we need to do on the move is taken care of by our smartphones and it's just too damn big to cart about.

Twitterfone is something to really get excited about.  To cut a long story short and save you from reading the rest of this most likely very boring blog post, Twitterphone allows you to send tweets by recording a voice message with your phone.  This service is currently in closed beta but invites are slowly being made available.  You can request one by going to http://twitterfone.com.