iPhone6 - Apple Thinks Bigger Is Better

All eyes have been on Apple this week as they unveil the new iPhones as well as welcoming the new Apple Watch to their ranks.

The Apple Watch is Apple’s first new product line since the introduction of the first iPad, and the passing of its co-founder Steve Jobs.

The Apple Watch will run apps, act as a health and fitness tracker and will be able to communicate with the iPhone. Although a number of rival smartwatches are already available on the market, experts have highlighted a number of sectors that Apple have entered late and have subsequently helped to change their direction.

So, even though Apple might be joining the smartwatch battle a bit later than expected, they are no means out of the race. The device, which is expected to launch in early 2015, is simple in its design which has opened up a big debate among tech experts, and 11 different watch faces will be on offer with the ability to change the straps.

That’s not all though as Apple also gave spectators a glimpse of their two new handsets. The Apple Watch may have been the most anticipated product of the day, but their new larger iPhones are likely to be their bigger earners.

The iPhone 6 has a screen that measures 4.7in and the iPhone 6 Plus will be fitted with a 5.5in screen. The main reason for the move towards a ‘bigger is better’ notion is to stop the likes of Samsung prizing away its customers. Since the market for ‘phablets’ has opened up, more companies are moving towards a larger screen.

Steve Jobs was very much behind the smaller screen and was known to say “no-one is going to buy a phone that they could not get a single hand around” but these days seem to be long-gone for Apple.

Another feature, new to the iPhone 6 models, is Apple Pay. This is Apple’s take on contactless paying and depends on an NFC (near field communication) chip and a NFC reader at the shop till. Although Apple has ensured users that this will be ‘secure’ because it worked without having to store credit card details or needing to share any details with the cashier.

The new iPhone 6 models will be available to buy on 19th September, so we won’t have to wait as long to get our hands on these.

Leave your wallet, just use your phone!

Do you remember years ago when a mobile phone was invented so you could phone people on the go, so you could be mobile but still keep in touch? Then you could text people as well, so you didn’t have to call them if you were in a rush. Then you could take photos on your phone, play games on it and surf the internet – now you can make payments for real items on your phone too.

You can now do your banking on the move, check your bank balance on the internet; you can download apps to buy things through your smartphone you can text to donate to your chosen charity, or, most excitingly, you can make contactless payments on your mobile phone.

There are now around nineteen million contactless bank cards in the form of credit cards and debit cards, these allow the phone owner to pay for products in the UK up to the value of £15 by simply holding the card over the reader, no pin or signature is required to authorise the payment.

The technology that has made this possible is called NFC (Near Field Communication) and it is now being incorporated into the latest smartphones.

Having the Near Field Communication in your mobile phone means that you do not need to have your actual credit or debit card, you just hold the phone over the reader in the shop and the payment is automatically taken from your account – as easy as that!

Currently it is just Orange and Barclay Card that are offering this technology and it’s only available on one phone, but experts have predicted that many more companies will be offering it over the next few years meaning that you never have the embarrassment of leaving your bank card at home and having no cash in your wallet.

The contactless security is built on exactly the same secure technology as Chip and Pin was. For the phone owners own security you are only able to make a certain number of contactless transactions before the phone owner is requested to enter their Pin Number at the terminal.

If your phone was to become stolen, as with your bank card, you would have legal protection from your bank. Exactly the same legal protection would be offered on your phone being stolen and payments being made, as to your credit card being stolen and payments being made.

Mobile Technology: From Bricks to Angry Birds!

Bricks


I think we have to look back at the original mobile phones to realise just how far things have come. One of the first mainstream phones was the Motorola 4800x Transportable which as you can see wasn't really what you'd call pocket friendly!


Text Messaging



The next progression was from voice calls to text messaging. This method of communication was an unforeseen success and over time became more popular than voice calls! It even spawned it's own shorthand some of which has amazingly made it into the Oxford English dictionary.


Wap



This was the first stab at trying to deliver a "mobile internet" experience. Unfortunately it didn't quite catch on and the user experience wasn't great. Imagine an really limited text only website with incredibly slow and expensive data transfer and you're not far off.


Smartphones



This is where things started to get interesting... I used to carry about my mobile phone, PDA, SatNav, plus all the associated cables and chargers - as well as a diary and notepad! Although the first smartphones were pretty clunky they still managed to get everything into one device which was a real breakthrough.


Mobile Websites



Now smartphones have become more powerful, data is quick, and charges are low then users obviously want to use the internet just as they do on a PC or Mac. This is all well and good and most mobile browsers actually render pages pretty well. The problem is that a website optimised for a large 17" monitor isn't quite so readable on a 3.5"screen! We are now seeing a shift to mobile optimised websites that display content in a more readable way. At Appware we use technology that auto-detects the device you're browsing on and serves the appropriate content.


Apps



As there is now so much power in a smartphone with all it's integrated technology (3G, wireless, GPS, compass, camera, etc) then users didn't just want to use the inbuilt software. The operating systems now have dedicated software development systems so that independant developers can create their own Apps and publish/distribute these to the phones. This has given rise to a whole marketplace that simply didn't exist even a couple of years ago. I think the numbers above show just how huge this has become!

M-Commerce



Users are no longer interested in just using their phones for browsing product catalogues but they actually want to purchase. This is now becoming possible and at Appware we've already got PayPal integration working within Apps to allow this.


Near Field Communication (NFC)



The next step for mobile commerce is physically using your phone to pay for things in the same way as you currently use a credit card. The first systems are already planned to hit the UK this summer (A collaboration between Samsung, Orange, and Barclaycard) and in a couple of years are set to become as standard as chip and pin machines. Also keep an eye on Google with their Google Wallet system.


Mobile Vouchers



Currently a few forward thinking organisations have realised that by using location based services and special offers they can build customer loyalty. Some are doing this with quite manual, clunky systems using services like Foursquare but are already seeing the benefits. Watch this space for dedicated Apps...


QR Codes



You may have seen these strange looking 3D barcodes and wondered what they are - they're called QR (Quick Response) Codes. All you do is use your phone's camera to scan these and they'll either redirect you to a website or add a contact to your phone's address book, amongst other things. Alot of modern smartphones are now building QR readers in (if not then search for the "Red Laser" App) and the technology is especially popular in the USA and Japan. For example; in Bestbuy retail stores products have a QR code on their label which when scanned shows you technical specs as well as reviews and stores them off for later!


Smart Notifications



Push notifications is where data is pushed to your phone rather than you requesting it manually. This is already used in Apps like Facebook to let you know when you've received message or on the Ebay App to warn you that an auction is about to end. Currently these messages are like simple text messages but they are about to get much smarter and become location aware and the like.


Augmented Reality



This is another really cool technology that will only improve with time as smartphones get even more powerful. The basic idea is that content is layered over the real world using your phone's camera as a viewfinder. Appware have already developed an App using this technology which can be seen at www.festfind.co.uk In this instance you can use the App at music festivals to not only find out who is playing on what stage and when, but guide you back to your tent or the nearest bar, toilet, exit etc. Simply fire up the App and use your phone to "look around" and it shows you which direction to walk and for how long!


Tablets



The last year or so has seen the rise of the tablet initially driven by Apple's iPad. There are more and more of these devices appearing (Shortly to be joined the HP Touchpad and Blackberry Playbook) which are aimed mainly at the consumer market to replace a home laptop. The big advantages over laptops are typically battery life, they're simple to use, and you just pick them up and they're on and working rather than waiting 5 minutes for a laptop to boot up! This is another interesting space to watch over the coming year.


Platform Wars!



As more and more smartphones appear on the market so do more and more different operating systems. Apple have iOS, Google have Android, and there are many many more around and emerging. As these are all totally different with different development tools, languages, and skillsets then developers tend to have to specialise in one platform. This isn't great if you'd like an App creating as you effectively have to build it from scratch for all the various platforms. Expect some consolidation across devices as the lesser known operating systems become obselete.


HTML5



One way to address the operating system platform is to try and reuse your code across the various platforms/devices. At Appware we use a system that allows us to reuse around 80-90% of an App's original development by using HTML5 which is standard across the different platforms. In real terms this means that rather than each development taking 6 weeks to develop (so 18 across just 3 platforms!) we would typically create all 3 versions in 7 weeks. As you can imagine this has considerable timescale and cost savings for our clients!


Angry Birds



So finally we get to Angry Birds which is an App that everyone must have heard of by now. It is one of the biggest Apps to date with over 200 million downloads. It has also turned some traditional channels on their head. It used to be that a film came out and then there was associated merchandising afterwards which is where companies really made their money. With Angry Birds it started life as a smarphone game and now there's a feature film based on the game. The film cost $90 million to make and so far grossed over half a billion dollars!