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The nice thing about running a little community blog wirelessnorth.ca is that every so often companies, or rather their PR reps, send you some pretty neat new stuff. Unfortunately, this is not so much one of those times. At long last (and sorry Palm), here is our review of the Palm Centro.

Rogers released this little guy with a certain amount of fanfare earlier this fall (coincident with this same device already moving to the year-old bargain bin at any of the US carriers, but we digress).

For the GSM carrier that has to have everything, it makes an (evil sort of) sense to bring out Palm’s latest flagship too.

For anyone trying to keep track, Palm Centro is basically the same “smart” phone Palm has been producing for the last 5 years just in a different plastic package (like imagine if Motorola stubbornly made the exact same flip phone for years and years while the rest of the industry move on and on, but worse). Which is to say this palm is chunky, has stylus, a painfully low resolution screen, and a Palm operating system that draws a lot of design cues from windows 3.11. But if you don’t like the windows 3.11 desktop there’s, bizarrely, a second desktop home screen, carrier branded with redundant buttons on it.

In fact just figuring out which combination of green buttons and phone buttons is required to actually place or answer a call on the Centro can be an entertaining challenge.

When the review unit doesn’t randomly lock up crash on you either (but then that’s another fun game we often play with blackberry software too).

The larger question of why anyone is making a device like this in this day and age is unclear. In form factor it would compete well enough with 2005-era blackberries (e.g. pre-pearl, pre-8800 now more than 2 years old).

In trying to find something nice to say about the device we would say confidently that the camera is better than the crap camera on any Peal or Curve.

Also the battery life is pretty good. But, you know, don’t really be fooled. The Centro’s longevity is inevitably helped by shall-we-say a “reverse iPhone effect”. The iphone, for example, is such a joy to use for so many not-even phone related applications (games, apps, media etc.) that if you’re not careful, you’ll find you’ve drained your battery before you’re even halfway to work in the morning.

The Palm, on the other hand, is such a wretched brick that you’d be so loathe to use it for any non-essential purpose that paradoxically you may find your self pleased that you find it holding on to it’s charge for day after day.

Here are the current smart phone lineup from Rogers (with the usual ghastly 3 year contract). Remember that the centro is also wildly outclassed by any of these devices:

As far as we know, phone/data plans are comparable across all these devices. Now you may say whoa! $299 is a pretty ridiculous price is it not? But hold on, this is where the evil genius comes in.

Rogers would seem to have figured out that there are some people or some organizations still standardized or otherwise dead-set only on buying Palm. God knows what’s wrong with them. But such as it is, is it such a bad idea to splash out $299 what ever the latest is? If you or your company is still standardized on Palm, clearly you must have worse problems than a stray 399 is likely going to fix.

Again, our apologies for the timeliness of this review to the good folks out there working PR or marketing for Palm.

It must be a tough job to keep up the appearances, to keep that brave face, when the sad and obvious reality is that your engineering department slipped for cigarettes sometime around 2004 and just never came back.

We’re nominating the Centro for the worst smart phone in Canada for 2008. There’s a few weeks left in the year however, contrary nominations always welcome.

Coming soon: a more timely review of Nokia’s E71. So far our crack review team says …. it’s definitely not worse.

Small ISPs to offer same internet speeds as Bell, Telus.

Here at the wirelessnorth.ca orbiting headquarters, we’re very much looking forward to upgrading our otherwise excellent teksavvy broadband connection beyond the 5MBit speeds they have been stuck at for some time.

Canadian mobile shop Xtreme Labs Inc. kindly let WirelessNorth.ca know about some 3G speed testing results from their iPhone bandwidth app. It would have been good to know how consistent these speeds were, but on the average, Roger’s network scores high:

We found in the US that average download speeds of 841 Kbit/s compared poorly to Japan with download speeds of 1,213 Kbit/s but compared favorably to the UK where download speeds averaged 663 Kbit/s. Canada stands out at a respectable 1,314 Kbit/s.

Here’s the global averages:

Why we think this is interesting: 3G or 3.5G or whatever you want to call it, is starting to show some impressive bandwidth numbers. Impressive for a lot of media streaming applications. Plenty of data/media bandwidth to fill a small screen. Where 3G is still clearly hurting however is latency. Nearly half a second is not too snappy and maybe why real-time 2-way voice/video/gaming over IP applications are just not quite there yet for mobile.

What we need is LTE (2010 – 2012ish) which should even more bandwidth, but even more importantly, sub 100ms latency (depending on how far you are pinging etc.).

Link: What is the REAL speed of your 3G connection?

First up, big thanks to the MEIC for inviting WirelessNorth.ca to take part in their launch party at OCAD last week and share the stage with Anthony Lacavera of Globalive and Dominique Sebastien Forest of Quebecor.

First you have to remember that Quebecor is not just a very disruptive player in the Quebec cable and home phone market, they’re also a significant media company across Canada. They also bought a nice chunk of spectrum (only) in Quebec – much more spectrum than then you’d ever need to just sell talk and text to everyone in la belle province. Bear these facts in mind.

You can be sure Quebecer’s talk to people and consume a reasonable amount of content from around the rest of Canada and the rest of the world. But also be sure that Quebecers, especially the majority francophone Quebecois also are interested in talking to folks, publishing, sharing, and consuming content that originate entirely locally. Think about how much more nicely contained content distribution and network traffic would be in Quebec compared to any other jurisdiction in Canada. Now imagine the nifty economies of scope for a savvy quadruple-threat telco AND major content producer/distributor that really understands the Quebec market with a major presence across every type screen and handset. Bear that in mind too.

Dominique led off with a pretty cool presentation on the transformative effect of mobile technology as a rich media device. He talked about how users were now “at the center” and in control of their mobile and media experience. But he also seemed to be framing mobile as a boon to marketers and for ad-supported content. The theory being that unlike old crude models of marketing to demographics, mobile allows you to really understand and finely segment your audience by “clouds” of commonalities of where you’ve been, what you like, who you’re connected to etc. Pretty cool. Or maybe these prospects freak you out.

Quebecor has a reputation for being disruptive. However, if you were hoping for just big fat dumb pipe, it sure doesn’t sound like that.

Second you should remember that Globalive is Yak. A successful (1M subscribers) discount long distance player for consumers fed up with big telco long distance bill. Next remember that Globalive has spectrum spanning almost all of Canada, but to get that they spread themselves thin in terms of spectrum bandwidth.

Anthony spoke to the rough deals that Canadians have been subjected to. He explicit that globalive will be starting out at the opposite end of the spectrum from Quebecor. Cheap, no-strings, no-contract phone plans targeted at first-time cellular subscribers, existing yak long distance customers and disgruntled customers of the big 3.

Over questions we able to glean a little bit more about the plans of each carrier. Here’s what we know so far:

Quebecor’s launch date uncertain (later in 2009 we’d wager)
Technology uncertain but something GSM-based (HSDPA 7.2 most likely but who knows. 14.4 does exist)
Will be media-centric, will be going after high end and media/data services not just talk and text
But… remember smart phone device availability on AWS spectrum is still thin. (Android G1 being the only AWS smartphone we know of and that’s exclusive to Tmobile so far)
Primary market is going to be Quebec and existing videotron base
What, if any, services they will offer with their (thinner) spectrum licensees Ontario they won’t say

Globalive could be launching as early as this June (but we think it will take a little longer)
Technology will be GSM-based, HSPA
Launching first in a handful of major cities.
Think City-fido type plans
Think fido/solo/koodo killer plans
Think basic feature phones not smart phones
Anthony would like to offer data-only plans, and all kind of innovative stuff, but don’t expect it soon (maybe if they survive to bid in the next spectrum auction?)

WirelessNorth.ca has the golden opportunity this friday to put questions to both of Canada’s largest two new entrants in Canada mobile scene, on stage, at the MEIC launch event in Toronto.

And so… what would be fairer than throughing it out loyal wirelessnorth.ca readers? Post your questions in the comments -or mailto editor[at]wirelessnorth.ca- If there’s some good ones, we’ll stick it to them :)

Hear ye: WirelessNorth.ca is super-proud to be taking part in the first public event of the MEIC this coming Friday. The MEIC, if you haven’t been keeping track, the MEIC is Canada’s new Mobile Experience Innovation Centre run by the multi-talented Michele Perras out of the Ontario College of Art and Design. This event being just the beginning of more cool projects to come.

It will be an action packed afternoon and hope you can make it. Letting you know now, the event is free but, last we checked, only about 30 left. Get yours here and soon as this will sell out.

Deets:

Please join us on December 5, 2008, as the Mobile Experience Innovation Centre will be hosting an event at the Ontario College of Art & Design in downtown Toronto.

A half-day forum to discuss recent research findings into the current state of Ontario’s wireless and mobile industry, there will also be sessions discussing future strategies for the new and exciting changes in the Canadian Wireless Context. Join us for an afternoon of engaging discussion with industry leaders as we look towards creating a new wireless future.

The MEIC is a public-private consortium led by the Ontario College of Art & Design, and funded through the Entertainment and Creative Clusters Partnership Fund, Ontario Media Development Corporation). For more information, please contact Michele Perras at mperras [at] ocad.ca.

* Date: Friday, December 5, 2008
* Time: 3pm-7pm
* The Auditorium, Ontario College of Art & Design, 100 McCaul St, Toronto.
* Admission: Free

• 3pm: Opening remarks, Karen Thorne-Stone, CEO and President of the OMDC
• 3:05pm: Opening Keynote by Gary Schwartz, President, Impact Mobile
• 3:50pm: MEIC Research Discussion: Michele Perras, MEIC Coordinator; MEIC Working Group Chairs Avi Pollock, Head, RBC Applied Innovation and Gabe Sawhney, Co-Founder, 33 Magnetic and Echo Mobile, with MEIC Research Consultant Ray Newal, Co-Founder, Jigsee, Inc.
• 4:30pm: Break
• 5pm: Panel Discussion: The AWS Spectrum Auction – New Strategies for the Canadian Context, with Dominique Sebastien Forest, Director of Digital Content and e-Commerce, Quebecor/Canoe.ca, and Anthony Lacavera, CEO, Globalive. Moderated by WirelessNorth.ca
• 5:45pm: Strategy Round Table: Next Steps for a Wireless Canada, with President Sara Diamond, OCAD; Dr Mark Green, UOIT; Diane Williamson, VP Interactive, marblemedia; Karl Vrendenburg, Director of User Centred Design, IBM; and moderated by Sebastien Chorney, Chair, Interactive Ontario’s Mobile Committee and Founder, mypetbrainstorm.
• 6:15pm: Closing remarks, Networking reception
• 7pm: Reception Wraps

So stop me if you’ve heard this one: A dog, a lizard and a yak walk into a bar….

As the CEO of Globalive, the winner of the largest geographical amount of the wireless spectrum auction, Anthony Lacavera started off by encouraging the audience at this month’s Mobile Monday meeting to ask him the controversial questions. He is the first CEO of a wireless company to speak to a MoMoTO crowd, and it appeared that he didn’t want to hide behind the messaging in a glossy marketing package.

Many may not know Globalive, but will likely be aware of their home phone and long distance services that operate under the name of Yak. Yak will soon be offering wireless service to it’s 1 million customers, as well as trying to get some of the unsatisfied customers from the other companies to come over to their side of the fence.

So what is Yak going to do with their $442 million share of the wireless spectrum? Yak will be launching their service in late 2009 to five Canadian cities: Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, and Ottawa. They are going to be targeting their existing customer base, providing them with the same customer service they have become accustomed to in their home and long distance services. They’ll scoop up some dissatisfied customers from the existing cell phone companies, and they’ll try really, really, really hard to make them happy. They’re also going to be targeting the almost 40% of Canadians that don’t already have cell phones, which is perhaps a market that Rogers, Bell, and Telus have long forgotten about.

When the auctions were first announced, many people were hoping that new wireless service providers would break the big players, shaking them to the ground. With Yak coming into the picture, it doesn’t seem that we’ll be saying good-bye to Rogers, Bell or Telus anytime soon.

Yak intends to start off by competing with the smaller wireless companies of Fido, Solo and Koodoo. Even though we won’t see them square off with the Big 3 right away, Tony says that the consumers are already seeing the effects of having a new competitor in the market. New plans have already been announced that remove the system access fees, and allow customers to carry over their minutes to the next month. Tony also said that Yak will be exploring options that have worked in other countries to help stimulate a more competitive wireless market in Canada, a country whose wireless service ranks as the most expensive worldwide.

Tony spoke about the challenges that face them, most of which will come from getting Bell, Rogers and Telus to co-operate with them. Yak would like to be able to share some space on the physical towers that are currently owned by the other companies, but has been given a slew of excuses as to why that won’t work. One example he gave was that he was told the towers couldn’t support the weight of new equipment. He also mentioned some concern about getting roaming to work across the country when Yak’s customers are outside their service areas. Eventually he said, the co-operation from the other companies may only come in the form of government regulated rules since there is no incentive for them to play nice.

It’ll be a GSM network [ed- is that HSPA or just "GSM"?] . They have the AWS part of the spectrum, which means that only phones with AWS capability will work on their network. They are anticipating for 1.5 million users within the first 3 years. (Notice that I didn’t call them subscribers, since Yak won’t have any contracts.)

One thing that struck me about Tony was that he seemed to truly recognize that the customers are the real strength behind any wireless company. He related to us stories about how he continues to call Yak’s customers as a customer service rep, just to make sure he stays in touch with his customers. When he started talking to people about wireless service, and he realized just how much people wanted to express their opinion, he had the idea of creating a website where people can talk about wireless service in an unmoderated forum. That was when the Wireless Soapbox (http://www.wirelesssoapbox.ca) was created, and it’s pretty apparent that he genuinely would like to hear what Canadians have to say about their wireless service.

While there was no shortage of questions for Tony, in the end, the tough and controversial questions didn’t come; on member commented that there weren’t any tough questions to ask. I suppose we’ll have to wait and see what happens with their service when they launch Yak Mobile in late 2009 – you’ll be seeing their phones appear in retail stores nationwide.

My remaining question: how can I get out of my 3 year contract with Rogers so I can switch to Yak if I decide I’d like to do that?

- Big thanks to James Eberhardt of Echo Mobile for this report from momotoronto

We’ve once wondered if this whole white-hot field of mobile experience design only got itself invented originally by frustrated Europeans simply trying work-around to the UI limitations of nokia smart phones.

You see, back in the olden days (like 24 months ago), it was the mighty nokia that ruled the global smartphone market. Nokia n-series phones had by far the most features (wifi, 3g, storage) and the best cameras and video cameras etc. But still, hobbled as they were by 9 digit keypads and a notionally open, but still crufty, symbian OS, of that good stuff was sometimes hard to make the best of.

And then RIM came along and took their classic “well-duh” usefulness of a querty keyboard and threw in a cute and handy little trackball. Was that so hard? Apple meanwhile showed how intuitive mobile experience could be with just a big-ass touch screen and a handful of brilliantly simple multi-touch gestures.

Interaction design, problem pretty much solved right?

You would have though the smart n-series engineers would have seen this coming.

Well maybe they did.

There’s big news out from those whacky finns today. The “real” nokia iphone-killer has stepped forward. And unlike the early, lackluster, reviews of RIMs stormy foray into ipodicide, the nokia looks to press all the right buttons. At least… on paper.

- big touchscreen
- AND slide out querty keyboard (kinda like android)
- A real camera
- Lots of storage
- A real webrowser build on webkit (RIM are you listening?)
- And… drumroll… flash support in the browser

A few caveats of course. No doubt the n97 will still be hilariously expensive once it reaches our shores. Flash support has been the main gripe, if not holy grail of iphone developers. But we at WirelessNorth.ca are still skeptical. We’re convinced there’s more than likely there’s a good reason flash doesn’t work on mobiles. You have to remember that flash was always designed to rely heavily on host cpu to render it’s fairly math-intensive vector-based animation instructions. So “runs flash” vs “runs flash at all usefully faster than a slide show without demolishing your battery life” remains to be seen.

Nonethess thanks to our long time friend Moore’s Law, the full convergence of mobile and desktop web experiences will happen eventually. Today at least is another step towards that reality.

One other thing is for certain. We ain’t seen nothing yet when it comes to smartphones. The iphone/smartphone avalanche is just beginning, and this snow storm going to be driving some tremendous change and growth in the industry in the next few years.

Pssst someone better go tell the network engineers…

You may have seen the news today.

Say what you want about the competitiveness of wireless and connectivity in Canada. It may often be the case that we lag what’s possible elsewhere in the world, or the high rents extracted by Big Telco in Canada. But our situation is, if anything, the result of too few business or government leaders with the future vision, appetite for risk and tenacity of Ted Rogers, than too many.

In just the wireless industry in Canada, I shudder to think where we’d be today had not Ted made a grand bet on converting GSM less than a decade ago.