Graphical User Interface Design - Rossul Design » Mobile UI

Apple App Store vs Wholesale Apps Community

admin — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 16:15:51 +0000

The world’s leading telecommunications operators and device manufacturers are launching an open global alliance, that will establish a simple route to market for developers and provide access to the latest and widest range of innovative applications and services to as many customers as possible worldwide.

Current members:

América Móvil
AT&T
Bharti Airtel
China Mobile
China Unicom
Deutsche Telekom
KT
Mobilkom Austria Group
MTN Group
NTT DoCoMo
Orange
Orascom Telecom
Softbank Mobile
Telecom Italia
Telefónica, Telenor Group
Telia Sonera
SingTel
SK Telecom
Sprint
Verizon Wireless
VimpelCom
Vodafone and Wind
Samsung
LG
Sony Ericsson

Purpose of the alliance is “to create a ’wholesale applications community’ that will establish a simple route to market for developers, in turn, providing access to the latest and widest range of innovative applications and services to as many customers as possible worldwide. This alliance will deliver scale unparalleled by any application distribution ecosystem in existence today”.

The terms of the new service is still unclear.

Apple’s iPad Cons and Pros

admin — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 14:01:54 +0000

This is what we make of Apples iPad presentation — a new beautifully and smartly designed new device, which is clearly oriented towards education market and execs on the go.

Pros:

Beautiful design
Vertical and horizontal modes
Long batter life (10 hours)
Amazing stand by time of 1 month
LED screen, which delivery reach colors and wide view angle.
3G connectivity
Wi-Fi N connectivity
PRICE (!)

Cons:

No multitasking. Works pretty much the same way as iPhone. One needs to close one app to open another
No camera and video chat
Quite heavy (1.5 pounds)
iBookstore – US only at launch

* This is initial thoughts and we’ll be probably updating the list.

LG Turns to Android UI

admin — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 01:54:58 +0000

LG has announced it will run Android in more than half of its smartphones in 2010. It is a significant change from the company’s current strategy. In 2009, only one LG smartphone ran Android and the rest were running Windows Mobile. It is a big hit for Microsoft as other companies such as Motorola, Samsung and HTC move away from Windows Mobile as well.

About a year ago Balmer dismissed Google as a player on the mobile market. And in 2007 he dismissed iPhone as a threat to Windows Mobile. Now MS obviously is losing its once-dominating market position and doing it very quickly. Both iPhone and Android will likely to dominate mobile markets for the next decade.

Besides the Google business model, which is definitely more appealing to the mobile service providers than MicroSoft’s, user satisfaction is another very important factor. Both iPhone and Android have very well designed, user-centered User Interfaces.

Apple’s Rumoured Tablet to Have 3D Interface?

admin — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 00:21:06 +0000

Apple has filed a patent that describes an interface for manipulating “three-dimensional virtual objects” on a touch screen. The technology may be used in future releases of iPhone or in the rumoured Apple tablet (iSlate?). I doubt that simply porting existed OS to a 10” touch screen may take “you-know-who’s considerable undivided attention”. Having an entire event dedicated to the mobile market Apple will most probably try to set a new standard. 3D User Interface may become just the thing to mark a new step in evolution of UX. Apple has been working on various 3D systems for quite some time now: 3D Projection System, 3D Desktop, 3D Displays, etc.

Apple to Buy Mobile Advertising Company

admin — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 19:41:42 +0000

Apple is about to announce the acquisition of Quattro Wireless for $275 million. Apple tried to bid on AdMob acquired by Google not so long ago. With Google’s Nexus launch tomorrow both companies become direct competitors in the smartphone market. From a UI prospective, it is interesting to see how Apple’s User Experience dedication and strict App Store approval rules will stand against Google’s users-know-better-what-they-need approach.

Android Market and Apple’s App Store

admin — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:47:35 +0000

As Android Market has grown to about the 20,000 apps mark, it is interesting to compare two different approaches to User Experience. While Apple sets up very strict approval rules in effort to assure only well done and polished apps get through to an end-user, Google doesn’t set any approval process at all. Aesthetics have never been Google’s concern although it’s nothing-gets-in-the-users-way approach has became a signature style on its own. And it does work very well on the web, but for mobile apps it may not.

In many cases visual aspects of apps and UI become the very corners that are being cut in order to minimize product-to-market time and expenses. As a result, we see less-than-inspiring graphics, confusing User Interfaces and an overall lack of consistency. One of iPhones’s strong points is the well-designed default UI elements that help to assure some level of consistency across various applications. After all, apps are just tools running on a mobile device and shared layout principals help a great deal in minimizing learning curve for users.

Below is a screenshot of Apple Store’s Movies App that uses default iPhone library elements as well as a very similar app from Android Market.

Movies by Flixster (Android)

Movies (Apple App Store)

Smartphone sales per OS vendor

admin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:33:27 +0000

Stats from June 09 shows Symbian being the clear leader on Mobile OS market, thanks to Nokia and a few Sony Erricson and Samsung devices.

(data does not include Palm WebOS, which was introduced in June, 2009)

Market share of Smartphone operating systems as of Q2/2009 by Canalys.

It will be interesting to see what the chart will be for Q2 2010 with new Android phones introduced every week or so, Windows UX-focused Mobile 7 and Samsung’s Linux-based Bada.