What kind of abuse can an iPhone take? If a construction company were to invest in iPhones for its workers or technicians, they would want to make sure that a year later, their investment is still intact.
I have owned my iPhone for nearly a year, and most of that time I have either had no protective case or very slim cases that just give the iPhone a little bounce, should it fall. My iPhone has survived countless falls and one total underwater submersion. It took a day for the speakerphone to start working again after my 18 month old threw it in a thankfully empty toilet. The iPhone can definitely take some serious abuse.
The following video demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of iPhone durability.
The device is surprisingly robust. Below is a video of the iPhone being dropped 3 stories from a rooftop and although the case takes some serious scratching, the screen survives.
An impact that does not put a focused pressure point will generally not affect the iPhone. But dropping your phone from waist height can break your screen if it lands wrong or a small object hits the screen directly.
So what can be done to protect a company's investment?
Buy a screen protector.
There are many kinds of screen protectors including ones that will hold up to harsh environments. Below you'll see a demonstration of a product by zagg.
Buy a protective case.
I would recommend the Otterbox Defender for construction use. Below is a review so you can see how it works. It combines a hard plastic case, a silicone outer case, and a built in, hard plastic, transparent screen protector. With this your iPhone can take a beating. I have purposefully dropped my iPhone with this case hundreds of times without a scratch.
Replace the screen if it breaks.
iPhones can have their screens replaced if necessary. They are fairly inexpensive and easy to do in house. The glass digitizer can be replaced for about $40 and if the lcd is damaged beneath that, you can get it replaced for about $80. This is much more cost effective than replacing the device. Our construction company has had about 15 iPhones for about a year and has only had to replace 1 screen so far. The below video demonstrates the procedure and informs you where you can go to buy the parts (http://www.pdaparts.com).
Tell your people to be careful.
These devices are as robust or more so than other devices in their category. Just use common sense and take good care of the device and it will serve your construction company for years.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
iPad: The Right Tool for the Job
First, consider the form factor. The iPad is very light, durable, and portable. Its size, at approximately 9.5 inches by 7.5 inches is a smaller footprint than a piece of paper. Its 1.5lb size is lighter than most netbooks and pretty much all laptops. Its aluminum body and no moving parts, makes it very durable. Apple also sells a bifold case that protects the screen when not in use.
Next, the wifi and cellular 3G connections make this device easier than most to connect to the internet. Also with this device comes unprecedented flexibility with the cellular 3G connection. You are not bound to any kind of contract. AT&T Wireless provides the 3G service, but the service is billed month to month through the iTunes account registered with the device. This means that if wifi suits your needs, you can just run wifi, but when you are away from a wifi network, you can enable 3G service at any time. It is $14.99 for 250MB of data transfer or $29.99 for 1 month of unlimited access. And although Verizon makes a big deal about AT&T's footprint, AT&T has the fastest and highest rated 3G service in the country.
The GPS capabilities of the device is worth consideration as well. With this device, a company has the potential of tracking its technicians' location and using the information to strategically allocate resources in real time. Just sending GPS coordinates on a regular schedule does not require significant bandwidth and makes the device the least expensive device on the market to deliver the GPS coordinates of the technician. Smart Phones and dedicated GPS devices charge much more for the internet connection than the $14.99 iPad plan.
There are also a host of other reasons to consider the iPad as a tool of the trade. It is touch driven and extremely user friendly. Even the seasoned construction workers that fall into the technology impaired category can pick the device up and use their finger to point at what they want to do. Installing industry specific software, and updating the software when needed is effortless. Also email and accessing the web is brought to a whole new level on the device as Apple has spent considerable time optimizing these applications for the iPad. Also, the convenience of having a device that is instantly on, allows you to pick up the device and use it when you otherwise would not want to wait to get your laptop or netbook ready.
But the single biggest reason that the Service and Construction industry should consider the iPad is the price. The iPad is a fraction of the cost of a Tablet PC but with a greater feature set. Granted, there are some things that the iPad doesn't do, such as execute windows software, but for many companies as long as the device has the software the company needs, the advantage of a $630 field replaceable device (for the 16GB 3G device) outweighs the several thousand dollar Tablet PC. Companies not requiring 3G service can get the device for as little as $499, and like the iPhone the screens will be replaceable via low cost kits so if the device is damaged, it can usually be repaired.
The iPad has superior form and function to netbooks but at a similar price tag. Although some netbooks are under $400, these are very skimpy on the storage space, cpu, and memory and wouldn't compare favorably to the iPad. When it comes to the comparison versus laptops, I believe it will come down to whether or not the software is available on the iPad that the worker needs to use. If it is there, the iPad will replace many laptops out in the field as well.
There you have it. The iPad is sleek, durable, user-friendly, and inexpensive. Software is being developed to make the iPad the ideal mobile client for many major software applications. hh2 Web Services is happy to announce their hh2 Field Service client to work with the construction and real estate industry. Contact hh2 Web Services for more information.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
The Multitasking iPhone
The iPhone has dominated the smartphone market for quite some time. It has done so many things right that the only way to compete against it is to attempt to turn its strengths into perceived weaknesses. In effect, if you can't make a better device/platform, try using misleading marketing to muddy the water.
The iPhone OS, that runs on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and the upcoming iPad, was engineered to support multiple applications running concurrently. Apple does this with its own built-in software but prevents third party developers from doing so. It does this for performance, security, and usability reasons.
Apple has created a sleek and elegant platform where users can easily jump from one app to to another by returning to the home screen and launching another app. It is two taps on the device folks. Apple encourages developers to save the state of their apps so that users returning to the app can pick up where they left off. This method ensures the app that is currently open has access to the vast majority of the resources the device has to offer. This means better performing apps, the ability to execute much more complex software, and an extended battery life.
If multiple apps were allowed to run in the background, it would be more difficult to prevent malicious software from executing unwanted code or to capture the user's activities. The fact that the device shuts down the execution of software and frees up the memory that the application was using makes the system more secure from outside threats.
On an iPhone you really don't have that much screen real estate to begin with. So you can really only be working in one app at a time anyway. So the need for multitasking can really be divided into two camps: the need to switch apps quickly, and the need to have certain collaborative functions of your apps running constantly. For the first, its only two taps...enough said. Its in the developer's hands to make the app launch quickly and smoothly. The second need is legitimate. Apple has its innovative push notification service that partially solves this problem, but not in all circumstances.
Rumors abound as to what Apple will do in its subsequent iPhone OS releases. I expect Apple to add something akin to a windows service that will not allow full apps to run in the background, but will instead allow a "lite" version without an interface that will allow selected functions of the app to continue. I'm sure Apple will police what goes on in these "lite" services, but this will eliminate the technical hurdles developers face trying to develop collaborative apps that would otherwise require the app to be opened at all times (An app that reports a technicians GPS location perhaps).
What I know is that Apple will do, or not do, whatever it takes to protect the user experience. And Apple's 2.5 billion app downloads in 2009 demonstrates that it's user experience reigns supreme.
The iPhone OS, that runs on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and the upcoming iPad, was engineered to support multiple applications running concurrently. Apple does this with its own built-in software but prevents third party developers from doing so. It does this for performance, security, and usability reasons.
Apple has created a sleek and elegant platform where users can easily jump from one app to to another by returning to the home screen and launching another app. It is two taps on the device folks. Apple encourages developers to save the state of their apps so that users returning to the app can pick up where they left off. This method ensures the app that is currently open has access to the vast majority of the resources the device has to offer. This means better performing apps, the ability to execute much more complex software, and an extended battery life.
If multiple apps were allowed to run in the background, it would be more difficult to prevent malicious software from executing unwanted code or to capture the user's activities. The fact that the device shuts down the execution of software and frees up the memory that the application was using makes the system more secure from outside threats.
On an iPhone you really don't have that much screen real estate to begin with. So you can really only be working in one app at a time anyway. So the need for multitasking can really be divided into two camps: the need to switch apps quickly, and the need to have certain collaborative functions of your apps running constantly. For the first, its only two taps...enough said. Its in the developer's hands to make the app launch quickly and smoothly. The second need is legitimate. Apple has its innovative push notification service that partially solves this problem, but not in all circumstances.
Rumors abound as to what Apple will do in its subsequent iPhone OS releases. I expect Apple to add something akin to a windows service that will not allow full apps to run in the background, but will instead allow a "lite" version without an interface that will allow selected functions of the app to continue. I'm sure Apple will police what goes on in these "lite" services, but this will eliminate the technical hurdles developers face trying to develop collaborative apps that would otherwise require the app to be opened at all times (An app that reports a technicians GPS location perhaps).
What I know is that Apple will do, or not do, whatever it takes to protect the user experience. And Apple's 2.5 billion app downloads in 2009 demonstrates that it's user experience reigns supreme.
The iPad and the Flashless Web
One complaint that I have heard from iPad critics is that the iPad will lack Flash support. They make the claim that without Flash, the 80% of websites out there that use flash in one way or another will be useless. Critics who obviously do not understand the mass appeal of the iPad, try to categorize it as a tablet and then criticize it for not conforming.
The iPad is a mobile device that runs the iPhone OS but lacks the phone. It is essentially a oversized iPod Touch with an optional 3G data connection. As a result, the iPad is not a Tablet computer, nor is it a Netbook or Ultra Mobile PC.. It is not subject to boot up times, sleep, hibernate and does not run a full sized operating system such as Windows 7 or Mac OSX. It is the first of what is sure to be a new category of devices that is instantly on when you need it, runs games and multimedia like a champ, can access the web, email, social networking and all the software on Apple's App Store.
At the time of writing this post, there are no mobile phones out there that run Flash. Why? All the nice animations, sound effects and video have a cost. And that cost is the Central Processing Unit of the computer or mobile phone running it. For mobile phones, taxing the CPU means wasting battery life that you can literally feel as the waste product of the CPU, heat, turns your phone into a personal hand-warmer.
Although 80% of the websites out there have Flash on it, most of those sites utilize flash to do banner ads, or smaller home page animations meant to capture attention but only serves as "eye candy", and is not critical to the site content or navigation. Is this "eye candy" worth the price of a dramatically reduced battery life? Apple thinks it isn't. And the lack of Flash hasn't stopped all the millions of iPhone and iPod Touch users from spending several hours per week browsing the "Flashless" web.
Apple has publicly criticized Adobe, who makes Flash, for not making the software more efficient on both the full sized computer and on mobile devices. Apple has also made comments endorsing the emergence of HTML5, a new standard which would allow multimedia to be played in a browser without a plug-in. The emergence of this technology would allow Apple to render multimedia in its own Safari browser without Flash or Quicktime, Apples current multimedia plug-in.
With the popularity of Apples mobile devices, it has considerable clout. Many sites out there are beginning to rethink using Flash and are designing their sites to be more mobile device friendly so that they can provide a similar user experience as those tethered to their PC or Laptop. Apple has already proved its users can operate just fine in a "Flashless" web, the ball is now in Adobe's court to keep that from happening.
The iPad is a mobile device that runs the iPhone OS but lacks the phone. It is essentially a oversized iPod Touch with an optional 3G data connection. As a result, the iPad is not a Tablet computer, nor is it a Netbook or Ultra Mobile PC.. It is not subject to boot up times, sleep, hibernate and does not run a full sized operating system such as Windows 7 or Mac OSX. It is the first of what is sure to be a new category of devices that is instantly on when you need it, runs games and multimedia like a champ, can access the web, email, social networking and all the software on Apple's App Store.At the time of writing this post, there are no mobile phones out there that run Flash. Why? All the nice animations, sound effects and video have a cost. And that cost is the Central Processing Unit of the computer or mobile phone running it. For mobile phones, taxing the CPU means wasting battery life that you can literally feel as the waste product of the CPU, heat, turns your phone into a personal hand-warmer.
Although 80% of the websites out there have Flash on it, most of those sites utilize flash to do banner ads, or smaller home page animations meant to capture attention but only serves as "eye candy", and is not critical to the site content or navigation. Is this "eye candy" worth the price of a dramatically reduced battery life? Apple thinks it isn't. And the lack of Flash hasn't stopped all the millions of iPhone and iPod Touch users from spending several hours per week browsing the "Flashless" web.
Apple has publicly criticized Adobe, who makes Flash, for not making the software more efficient on both the full sized computer and on mobile devices. Apple has also made comments endorsing the emergence of HTML5, a new standard which would allow multimedia to be played in a browser without a plug-in. The emergence of this technology would allow Apple to render multimedia in its own Safari browser without Flash or Quicktime, Apples current multimedia plug-in.
With the popularity of Apples mobile devices, it has considerable clout. Many sites out there are beginning to rethink using Flash and are designing their sites to be more mobile device friendly so that they can provide a similar user experience as those tethered to their PC or Laptop. Apple has already proved its users can operate just fine in a "Flashless" web, the ball is now in Adobe's court to keep that from happening.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
The iPhone gets a Hardhat
In an earlier post, I spoke about how the iPhone can be used in business. But what about the construction industry? The people there know that they face unique challenges and chief among them is the environment thier phones are subjected to.
After managing the use of phones of many makes and manufacturers for a large commercial contractor, I can tell you that not only are they up to the task, but many characteristics make them uniquely qualified to do it.
iPhones have a very nice touch screen. It has crip colors and multitouch sensors and serves as the primary method of human interaction. It also serves as the number one way to ruin your iPhone. Even if the device is still functional after you crack your screen, its beauty is past and your enthusiasm for using a device with parts of the screen malfunctioning will wane.
For critics of the iPhone, it all stops there. There is no mention of what to do when this happens or how to prevent it from happening in the first place. They just want you to think that your investment is wasted and you must now purchase a new device without a contract...ouch, thats expensive.
Fortunately, the iPhone is more resilient than that.
For starters, you can get some very nice cases for the iPhone that can add a little protection and style on one end, or go all the way to military style ruggedized cases. Many of these cases are minimalistic in design and yet will provide considerable protection during an impact. Otterbox makes cases that are stylish but effective, and they even make a model that will make your iPhone survive running over it with a truck.
Now lets say you drop your naked iPhone. For starters, the screen isn't that fragile and the rest of the unit has no moving parts so the most likely thing to happen is that you might scratch the corner of the outer shell. But lets say it comes to the worst case scenario and you crack your screen.
Fortunately, the iPhone allows you to replace the screen. There are low cost kits you can buy that have a few small tools that enable you to revive your fallen iPhone. You simply use a suction cup to pull of whats left of your screen, disconnect three cables connecting the electronics, plug in the new screen and push it into place. There are videos on YouTube demonstrating the procedure.
For the quality of the device, ease of use, and availability of business software, the iPhone stands well ahead of the competition. With protective cases suited to the environment and the ease at which to can replace the screen in case of an impact, it is capable of holding up on job sites as well or better than other cell phones with far inferior feature sets. As more software pops up targeting the construction industry on the iPhone, there really isn't a compelling reason to not suit the iPhone up for work. Just make sure you (and your iPhone) don't forget your hardhat!
After managing the use of phones of many makes and manufacturers for a large commercial contractor, I can tell you that not only are they up to the task, but many characteristics make them uniquely qualified to do it.
iPhones have a very nice touch screen. It has crip colors and multitouch sensors and serves as the primary method of human interaction. It also serves as the number one way to ruin your iPhone. Even if the device is still functional after you crack your screen, its beauty is past and your enthusiasm for using a device with parts of the screen malfunctioning will wane.
For critics of the iPhone, it all stops there. There is no mention of what to do when this happens or how to prevent it from happening in the first place. They just want you to think that your investment is wasted and you must now purchase a new device without a contract...ouch, thats expensive.
Fortunately, the iPhone is more resilient than that.
For starters, you can get some very nice cases for the iPhone that can add a little protection and style on one end, or go all the way to military style ruggedized cases. Many of these cases are minimalistic in design and yet will provide considerable protection during an impact. Otterbox makes cases that are stylish but effective, and they even make a model that will make your iPhone survive running over it with a truck.
Now lets say you drop your naked iPhone. For starters, the screen isn't that fragile and the rest of the unit has no moving parts so the most likely thing to happen is that you might scratch the corner of the outer shell. But lets say it comes to the worst case scenario and you crack your screen.
Fortunately, the iPhone allows you to replace the screen. There are low cost kits you can buy that have a few small tools that enable you to revive your fallen iPhone. You simply use a suction cup to pull of whats left of your screen, disconnect three cables connecting the electronics, plug in the new screen and push it into place. There are videos on YouTube demonstrating the procedure.
For the quality of the device, ease of use, and availability of business software, the iPhone stands well ahead of the competition. With protective cases suited to the environment and the ease at which to can replace the screen in case of an impact, it is capable of holding up on job sites as well or better than other cell phones with far inferior feature sets. As more software pops up targeting the construction industry on the iPhone, there really isn't a compelling reason to not suit the iPhone up for work. Just make sure you (and your iPhone) don't forget your hardhat!
The iPhone Goes Corporate
I have heard iPhone critics say that although it is an outstanding consumer device, the iPhone is just not ready for business. They have implied that corporate email and software are best used on a Blackberry.
There are many aspects of the iPhone that not only make it suitable for corporate use, but superior.
First, it brings all the advantages of a well designed, user friendly, smartphone, including mobile access to email, web, IM, calendar and business applications. You might say that all the smartphones offer this, but some simple statistics show that the iPhone does it better. According to AdMob, the iPhone accounts for over 50% of mobile traffic, despite only having about 2% market share on mobile phones. This shows that iPhone users are much more likely to use their phones for use on the web.
Second, the iPhone has a well designed Software Development Kit or SDK. This refers to the the development environment and coding frameworks that allow a programmer to develop software for the iPhone. Although detractors quickly state that is done in Objective C, and its syntax is quite different from most modern programming languages, its primary strength is that once you learn it, you can develop highly interactive software with very few lines of code. This means businesses can build extremely intuitive and interactive mobile software that interacts with its corporate networks, for a fraction of the cost.
Next, the iPhone has an App Store that few rivals can dream of. More and more business oriented software crops up there every day. According to Forrester Research, Apples App Store had over 2.5 billion app downloads in 2009. The rest of the industry combined only did 16 million. This shows that iPhones users are much more likely to install and use mobile software on their phones. Thanks to the app store, mobile software is effortless to download, and the iPhone alerts you with a small red badge when apps you have installed have been updated. This means businesses have a way of deploying software accross their enterprise in record time.
Finally, lets talk email. I know many Blackberry users rave about their email, but I have failed to see someone not give Apple the win when seeing their features side by side. For one thing, the iPhone does not require a subscription or a special dedicated server for integrating with Microsoft Exchange. Like other smartphones, the iPhone ties into the web interface built in to Exchange and it takes seconds to set up. I have seen seasoned IT professionals take weeks setting up the link between Exchange and the Blackberry server.
The iPhone is affordable, user friendly, and opens up new avenues of software creation and deployment. If there is a downside, it is simply that they are too much fun to use. From an IT professional's point of view, if you tell your employees that they must use a complicated piece of software, but only provide them with a sub-par computer to do it on, you are not likely to have a successful adoption of the software. However, if you tell them they must use the software on a platform and device that is a pleasure to use, your chances of adopting the new technology and making a positive impact on the bottom line just went up.
Better dress your iPhone in a suit, because it about to take over your office.
Disclosure: Our construction company is rapidly deploying iPhones accross our Management Team and Jobsite Supervision because the devices are just so effective. We have started building software for the iPhone simply because it is easy to use, deploy, and it is always at our employee's side.
There are many aspects of the iPhone that not only make it suitable for corporate use, but superior.
First, it brings all the advantages of a well designed, user friendly, smartphone, including mobile access to email, web, IM, calendar and business applications. You might say that all the smartphones offer this, but some simple statistics show that the iPhone does it better. According to AdMob, the iPhone accounts for over 50% of mobile traffic, despite only having about 2% market share on mobile phones. This shows that iPhone users are much more likely to use their phones for use on the web.
Second, the iPhone has a well designed Software Development Kit or SDK. This refers to the the development environment and coding frameworks that allow a programmer to develop software for the iPhone. Although detractors quickly state that is done in Objective C, and its syntax is quite different from most modern programming languages, its primary strength is that once you learn it, you can develop highly interactive software with very few lines of code. This means businesses can build extremely intuitive and interactive mobile software that interacts with its corporate networks, for a fraction of the cost.
Next, the iPhone has an App Store that few rivals can dream of. More and more business oriented software crops up there every day. According to Forrester Research, Apples App Store had over 2.5 billion app downloads in 2009. The rest of the industry combined only did 16 million. This shows that iPhones users are much more likely to install and use mobile software on their phones. Thanks to the app store, mobile software is effortless to download, and the iPhone alerts you with a small red badge when apps you have installed have been updated. This means businesses have a way of deploying software accross their enterprise in record time.
Finally, lets talk email. I know many Blackberry users rave about their email, but I have failed to see someone not give Apple the win when seeing their features side by side. For one thing, the iPhone does not require a subscription or a special dedicated server for integrating with Microsoft Exchange. Like other smartphones, the iPhone ties into the web interface built in to Exchange and it takes seconds to set up. I have seen seasoned IT professionals take weeks setting up the link between Exchange and the Blackberry server.
The iPhone is affordable, user friendly, and opens up new avenues of software creation and deployment. If there is a downside, it is simply that they are too much fun to use. From an IT professional's point of view, if you tell your employees that they must use a complicated piece of software, but only provide them with a sub-par computer to do it on, you are not likely to have a successful adoption of the software. However, if you tell them they must use the software on a platform and device that is a pleasure to use, your chances of adopting the new technology and making a positive impact on the bottom line just went up.
Better dress your iPhone in a suit, because it about to take over your office.
Disclosure: Our construction company is rapidly deploying iPhones accross our Management Team and Jobsite Supervision because the devices are just so effective. We have started building software for the iPhone simply because it is easy to use, deploy, and it is always at our employee's side.
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