vufone blog

I’m new around here.  Let me introduce myself.  My name is Jeb Brilliant, and I’m a bit of a mobile nerd.  I also pride myself on being very up-to-date on all the news and goings on in the mobile industry.  I like most anything that’s mobile and wireless.  What I like more is anything that can save me time and effort - that’s where vufone comes in.

Since I’m new here I thought I would start at the beginning by explaining in my own words what vufone does.  Basically it’s a sync application on steroids.  First it will sync your calendar and contacts from Outlook or Google with your handset, but vufone also syncs your text messages (SMS), photos, music, videos, documents, and tasks.  vufone is the only app that can sync so much of your content all in one program.  The vufone website acts as the middle man and does a great job of it. I had a very convoluted system for syncing that I am simplifying with vufone.  I’m going to focus on calendar and contact syncing in this first post.  Please also bare in mind I see things as a Nokia smart phone user so my view on some things may be a bit different then yours.

I started off by signing up for the vufone service at www.vufone.com.  Then I sent out a link to the download via a text message.  It arrived in a few seconds and I clicked it and started the download process.  As I was downloading the app to my phone, a Nokia N79, I clicked on the calendar section of the vufone website and found the Google logo.  By clicking on it I was given the ability to authorize vufone to sync with my Google account.  It couldn’t have been easier.  Calendar and contacts are authenticated separately, so follow the same steps for the contacts section.

Once I had authorized vufone to sync with Google calendar, the download to my phone was complete; then I began the syncing process.  After a few minutes I was set, the calendar on my phone was fully synchronized with my Google calendar.  The best part, and most important to me, is that now my phone can sync with Google automatically and regularly without me doing anything.  I don’t have to try to remember to sync my phone anymore it’s all done for me and, like I said before, anything that can save me time and effort I like.

In the next blog post I will talk more about another great vufone feature.  It’s nice meeting you all and if you have any questions or want to chat you can email me at Jeb@vufone.com (email will be active in another day or two) or on Twitter at @JebBrilliant.  Please also add @vufone on Twitter so you can follow us and keep in the loop.

We just released a new vufone agent that supports sync over wifi. You can upgrade the agent from the server or manually download it to your PC and send it over bluetooth/cable to your phone. Here is the direct download link: vufone_s60_3_0_v_2_03_4_signed.sisx

The vufone Team

In the 3rd quarter of 2008 the global smartphone market reached its weakest year-on-year growth, according to Gartner. Worldwide smartphone sales to end-users reached a total of 36.5 million units in Q3 2008, 11.5% increase from the same period in 2007. 3 years ago, Gartner predicted that more than 200 million smartphones will be sold in 2008. Well, it is not going to happen, but at least they can blame it on the economic climate…

While the size of the smartphone market is growing slower than expected, it is becoming more and more fragmented. A year ago, Symbian-based smartphones dominated the market with 63.1% market share, leaving Windows Mobile far behind with 12.8%. In Q3 2008, Symbian is still the leading smartphone Operating System, but has fallen below 50% market share for the first time. RIM (15.9%) and iPhone (12.9%) are getting stronger and outsell the numerous devices based on the Windows Mobile platform (11.1%). Android is still behind, but it will probably gain momentum in 2009, as more device manufacturers will endorse it.

With so many different mobile phones that claim to be smart, nobody really knows what the definition of a “smartphone” is. Is it the variety of applications that are offered for Symbian? Is it the Microsoft office support of Windows Mobile? Is it the excellent mobile email support of Blackberry? Is it the advanced touch screen and Internet capabilities of iPhone? Or maybe the “old fashioned” QWERTY keyboard is good enough? It seems that for most users, a smartphone is a powerful device with some combination of the above, but actually it is a matter of freedom. It is the freedom to install and use whatever application I like on my smartphone, just like I would do on my PC. Yes, it comes with many pre-installed applications such as browser, PIM, email and others. But I should be able to install my favorite email application for example, and get a user experience which is at least as good as the built-in email application.

The freedom for the end user is an outcome of the openness for the developer. That is, 3rd party application developers must have full access to the same APIs that are used by built-in applications in order to provide real freedom for end users. This is not really the case for all smartphone platforms. When Apple released the first version of the iPhone, there was no official SDK for application developers. It means that the first iPhone was shipped with a limited number of built-in applications, which should have been the ones that the user really needs and likes. “Surprisingly”, since different users have different preferences, hackers quickly provided a jailbreak, which enabled 3rd party applications on iPhone. Apple released the first version of the iPhone SDK in July 2008, but the functionality that it provides is still very limited, compared to applications that are developed by Apple and its affiliates.

Mobile operators and device manufacturers would argue that the primary purpose of any mobile phone, as smart as it may be, is still to make voice calls. The average mobile phone user cannot live with a situation where they cannot receive phone calls because it is stuck. Mobile operators will not only lose revenues because of that, but will also be the immediate target for customer complaints. Therefore the device must protect its core functionality against badly written 3rd party applications, which leads to a tradeoff between openness and reliability. RIM Blackberry devices for example, are known for their reliability and stability. This is achieved by allowing developers to develop only Java ME applications. Since Java applications are running on top of virtual machine, they are much more controllable and manageable than native applications. However, for the developer Java ME is a restricted environment, which does not provide full access to the phone’s resources.
Symbian is probably the most mature operating system for smartphones. Symbian was originally evolved from Psion’s EPOC OS, and is now fully owned by Nokia, which plans to merge it with S60 and UIQ into an open source platform. Developers can choose between the native SDK and Java ME SDK. However, native Symbian applications are much more powerful and provide a superior user experience than Java applications. In order to protect itself against bad and malicious applications, Symbian has introduced the Symbian Signed program in version 9.1, which requires developers to go through a certification and signing process to access certain capabilities. Similarly, Windows Mobile has privileged APIs, which require certification of Microsoft through the Mobile2Market program. However, Windows Mobile devices are more flexible than Symbian, since the user can turn off the security mechanism.

When Google introduced the Android platform, it featured the concept of “Applications are created equal”, which means that any application on the device can be replaced or extended, including core components such as the dialer. While it may seem as the most open platform for mobile phones, Android takes a similar approach to RIM (which is on the other end of the scale in terms of openness) and doesn’t expose any native APIs. Instead it provides a non-standard Java-like SDK, which is much more powerful than Java ME. Applications must be signed, but there is no certification process. Time will tell if this model is sustainable without harming the stability of the device.