i-mate spl smartphone - first impressions

My i-Mate SPL smartphone arrived last week (after 5 weeks on order) and I thought I'd post my initial thoughts on it based on a week or so's usage. I'm not doing a full review as this is covered elsewhere, for example, see Paul's excellent review on MoDaCo.

I've been looking for a windows mobile 5 smartphone for quite sometime but I've always struggled to find one that is truly portable and is 'phone like' rather than based on IPAQ/Palm sized devices. I already have an IPAQ but I needed something I could always keep with me, thus meaning something no bigger than a 'normal-sized mobile phone', weighing no more than say 110g but with a high res screen suitable for the odd email and web browsing.

The Orange SPV was probably the closest match but somehow it felt dated.

The i-mate SPL took my eye after speaking to a couple of delegates at the last VBUG conference, as they had i-mate phones (albeit different models).

After reading Paul's spl review, I took the plunge and ordered it. 5 weeks later (no one had them in stock), it arrived.

First impressions - a sleek, quality phone with a superb screen (240x320 2.2" QVGA 65K). Sharing a scary likeness to the Motorola SLVR, it 'feels' a good quality handset and so far battery life has been excellent. Call quality is also very good.

The mobile UI has a classic 'windows feel' and is very usable. There is a noticeable pause when loading an app for the very first though, which I believe is common to most mobile 5 based phones.

OK so far so good... so are there any gripes? The keypad took me a couple of days to get used to as ALL the keys lie flush and although the feel of the keys when pressed is good, because the keys are not raised it is easy (initially) to press the wrong key - you find keys by either 'looking' at the phone or by learning where they are by rehearsal ('by feel' is not really an option although there is a very very slight beveled line separating them). After two days I found my brain had mentally built up a model of the keypad structure and now I am fine with it. I can't help feeling though 'why was this not picked in usability testing'? The joypad is also very small and requires even more accuracy, but with practice you overcome its rather fiddly design. Just slightly raising the joypad would drastically reduce the odd error you often make initially because the keys around the joypad are very close to it. Again, lack of feel/feedback in the keypad design causes these mistakes. A shame. I found I had to adapt to its design, rather than the keypad itself being a good starting point. Surely the keypad is a key factor in any phone design?

Anyway, that aside, my overall impression? A great phone. Once I got used to the keypad I found I could happily text, browse the web (Pocket IE combined with the great screen resolution makes browsing the 'mobile web' a breeze) and reply to the odd email (I've started off with gmail mobile rather than the built in outlook). Yes the processor could be quicker and GPRS for data transfer is still not the quickest but for getting at your email when you are out and about, it does the job nicely.

Camera is 2MP, which is fine for my uses. Snaps I have taken so far appear to be very good in decent light.

The device also has .Net CF in ROM... cool but I've not had chance to make use of it yet.

If you are looking for a highly portable smartphone that looks and feels like a normal mobile phone, rather than a PDA, then this is worth a viewing.

Lynx browser and web accessibility testing

I've been doing some web accessibility testing recently on an existing site for a client. There are many aspects to this, but I find one useful technique, that provides a quick and practical test, is to try the site through the Lynx browser. It's text only, is very fast (yeh I know, it should be, it runs like a telnet session!) and gives you a good 'feel' for how certain assistive technologies such as screen readers 'see' web pages.

Here's my homepage on Visualize:



Try it on your own site... you may be surprised at the results.

Of course, using Lynx is just one tool in your bag for accessibility testing - see my Web Accessibility page for more details.

Download Lynx

.Net 3 is released

Yes it came out last week, see .Net 3 Framework. No mention of ODP.Net "official" support yet from Oracle... will dig deep see if I can find out more.

SPA 2007 Case Study on ASP.Net and Oracle

I'll be presenting at SPA 2007 at Homerton College, Cambridge, March 25-28 next year. It's entitled "ASP.Net and Oracle: Friend or Foe? Experiences from Implementing an Enterprise Web Application" (title is too long I know, I may change it yet...)

Here's the overview:

Describes the presenter’s experiences of using ASP.Net, C# and Oracle to deliver Unilever’s SHE (Safety, Health and Environment) web-based global Intranet system (1100 sites in 120 countries)

Abstract: ASP.Net, C# and Oracle are well established as reliable technologies on which to build web-based systems and, although widely adopted, detailed case studies on their usage on major projects are not well publicised. So what is it like to take real business requirements for a world-wide Intranet application and deliver a suitable system in these technologies? Did these environments assist or ‘hinder’ development?

Should be an interesting session. I'm hoping for a lot of discussion too, maybe via an additional "birds of feather" informal evening slot.

See also: SPA 2007 Full Programme

Latest ODAC/ODP.Net from Oracle

I've been using ODP.Net (part of ODAC) for some time now since it was first released as a beta. After a buggy start, it is now my preferred Oracle data provider for .Net 1.1 and .Net 2. I've still got apps using the MS Oracle provider (for historical reasons), but the richness of ODP.Net feature set ensures it's my choice for all new applications (see ODP.Net samples). Top tip: first write a factory or wrapper class library... we did this for the original MS Oracle provider and it greatly aided the port to ODP.Net.

I recently downloaded ODAC 10.2 (I was on ODAC 9.2 before), as 1) there are useful bug fixes in 10.2 and 2) I needed it for .Net 2 applications.

First impressions look good... although I'm already coming across issues regarding servers hosting both ASP.Net 1.1 (running against ODP.Net/Oracle 9.2 client) and new ones on ASP.Net 2 (needing ODP.Net 10.2 and thus 10g client). So although .Net 1.1 and 2 run happily side-by-side, third party supporting class libs and drivers are another matter. Oracle do support side by side Oracle clients, but it all looks rather messy and not something I would wish to promote.

With .Net 3 less than a couple of weeks away too, I would hope to see mention of support for this on the Oracle site. Just checked, and only support for .Net 2 is mentioned.

Will report back in a few weeks...