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Posts Tagged ‘INQ’

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The INQ 1- Student Perspective Part 2

Wednesday, February 11th, 2009

Last week I covered the basics of the INQ1 now I am going to be looking in depth at the applications in particular the social networking ones.

Facebook
Let’s be honest, this is probably the reason why you bought this phone. When you first start the phone you are asked to pop in your Facebook log in details, it then asks you if you want to sync your contacts with Facebook. It then pretty quickly pulled my 500+ friends from Facebook, including their last status update and Facebook profile picture. What it does not do sadly, (which I think is restricted to the Facebook API) is pull down mobile numbers from their profile. I will be talking about the Social Phonebook in more detail later. Like Jonathan I found it was behind my browser version, and I found the application was constantly updating. This I found to be a constant pain, I really hope they implement options so the user can choose options ie update every 30 minutes. I really did not understand the need for the constant updating and I am sure this had an effect on battery life as well. Will this bring Facebook do your normobs? Yes it will in a big way, no pointing to the mobile Facebook URL etc just there one simply quick from your dock or the menu. The integration for new messages again I found this good something another manufacturer has never done before, any new messages, pokes or requests appear as a new alert in the messaging tab. I again found this to be slow, and behind the web version, which meant on occasions it said I had a new Facebook message when I had already read it. I think the issue is that none of the pokes, messages are stored on the device so if you cannot get online you cannot read your inbox. I think this is again possibly due to Facebook API restrictions.

Windows Live Messenger
Quite possibly the best application on the phone, it allows you to minimise and you can receive IM alerts in the back ground. Three have always had a good relationship in WLM and in the INQ 1 this really shows. Top Marks to the INQ 1 this application brings WLM to your mobile, anyone who has used messenger on their computer will be able to use this application.

Email on 3
Three have done it again with this application, 4 clicks and you have email set up. This has got all the standard email services set up Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail and a whole range of ISP emails. If you have one of the pre defined email services as your provider you are laughing.

Skype
Please read my opinion on Skype here. I do not use Skype; I don’t see the point in it. I never used the application so I could not tell you my thoughts on it.

Last FM
This is a very small add on however it integrates with the music player, on a Nokia you would need to download an add on such as Mobbler to allow your track to be scrobbled, however the INQ chaps have got this in built all you need to do is put your username and password in.

Camera
The phone has a 3.2 mega pixel camera which is acceptable there is no flash, which is a real shame however you can shoot video as well. There are also options to send your pictures by MMS, Bluetooth, email and Facebook. It was a little bit sad to see that Flickr was not an option; however it was nice to see some ShoZu-like elements had been integrated into the handset.

Internet Modem Capability
This was a feature that we saw on the Skype Phone 2, where all you need to is plug in your INQ and it has all the drivers on bored to install a modem. This allows you to browse the web on your laptop in a matter of two minutes; the process is very quick and simple.

The Social Phonebook
If there is one feature in my opinion that the INQ1 will be remembered by it is this feature. All of the social networks allow you to download your contacts to your handset. The handset then allows you to merge all the contacts together, and then when scrolling the phonebook you can see in real time if that person is available on Skype, WLM or Facebook. An example is if Ewan is one of my contacts I have him on my WLM and Facebook. If I went down to his entry, I can choose to send him an Instant Message, Call, SMS, MMS, Email, Facebook Message or Facebook Poke. The other really clever feature is that for example if I did not have his number I can click straight through to his Facebook Profile and call him straight from there (providing he has his number made visible). When Ewan calls me, his current Facebook Profile Picture does pops up; some of you may say well you can do that on any handset which is true. However it is not as simple as putting your Facebook details in when you get the phone.

Summary
So what are my final thoughts on this handset? I feel that INQ have rushed this device, and there are some issues that I have highlighted over the past two weeks that have annoyed me. The main one being the constant refreshing of the Facebook Application, this is extremely frustrating and a battery killer. I am really looking forward to INQ bringing out some new handsets this year, there are rumours of a keyboard (a possible G1 or N97 rival) variant and hopefully a touch screen version as well. If INQ make social networking this easy, I believe we will see a massive increase in the amount of social networking done from a mobile in the future especially as some of the networks (here in the UK at least) have some good value data packages!

INQ is definitely a manufacturer we will be watching here at Mobile Industry Review I have a feeling they have some impressive handsets ahead.

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Posted in Mobile, Operators, Three | Comments

Exclusive: INQ not releasing the ‘INQ2′ at Mobile World Congress

Friday, February 6th, 2009

inq-logo

At that very same ‘small (but select) gathering at INQ HQ last night, we were informed there will be no new INQ phone unveiled in Barcelona in a few weeks time.

INQ’s marketing director Jeff Taylor said in a semi private briefing to MIR there will be no product announcements at MWC. Where many of us traveled the several hundred miles to the event, for such an insider scoop – journalistic instinct FAIL.

We then raised the bar and posed another question in light of the recent news of INQ touting their phone(s) *cough* around to other networks. All with a view to improve the profile of the fledgling ‘3′ venture and expand their market dominance, by bringing INQies to the little people.

We have it on good authority, even from Jeff himself they have been traveling far and wide talking to other networks. We’re guessing by the amount of air miles discussed, INQ’s carbon footprint is so vast they’d have to replant the forest moon of Endor to balance things out.

Back to the most difficult of difficult questions raised – are INQ going to announce the INQ1 on another network, at Mobile World Congress?

Jeff’s reply was along the lines of he could not confirm or deny there will be any news of this nature, only there will be no product announcements in Barcelona.

Companies such as INQ will be there to make deals of this ilk,  for journalists their presence there falls into two camps, product or carrier news.

As there isn’t a new INQies (noun: a word describing any phones by INQ) being taken and shown off to all their splendor at the event, then it’s a network being announced to carry the phone.

We’ll bring you more news at the time, of that exact announcement.

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Posted in Mobile | Comments

The INQ 1- Student Perspective Part 1

Friday, February 6th, 2009

The INQ 1 is available on 3 for free on one of their lower contracts at £15 per month, or for £80 on pay as you go. It has been dubbed the ‘Facebook phone’ due to its tight integration with online social networks, including Skype, last fm, MSN to name just a few. EBay integration is expected to come soon in the form of software update.

The Facebook element of this phone got me very excited, as a student I live on the website it is a one of my primary methods of communication, and my online calendar of events I am attending.

The phone arrived on the 23rd December and it was like Christmas had come early I was that excited!

I opened up all the packaging and my sim, the contents including the phone some cards explaining the basics and headphones. The phone is well-built for the £80 price bracket; in fact I feel it is much better built then my N95. So I was ready to pop my sim in and this is where I strike my first problem.

How the flip do you get the battery cover off?

I have used and reviewed a lot of phones over the last 7 years and I have never had an issue getting the back cover off.I must have spent ten minutes trying to no success, so I swallowed my male pride and read the cards sent in the box to help. Do they help, nope not a mention anywhere. I even resorted totwitterto see if anyone can help, eventually I manage to get it off.

Now at the time the INQ site was appalling, a very basic flash site with no manuals etc. Since checking back for this review it seems like it is fully updated, kudos to INQ to sorting that out. In the end I figured out the button on top of the phone opens to the battery cover, yes that button on every Nokia that is the on/ off button. For those of you who are thinking what sort of people has Ewan got writing on the site, it was not just me that struggled with this.

Normob Chris White purchased the device for his son, and I will quote him from his email to me;

I had loads fun ‘cracking’ the case puzzle for the first time (20 minutes actually, any jobs going?). It doesn’t help that the catch is exactly where Nokia put the on/off switch. It’s little things like this that turn people against products. This is a cleverly conceived little package, very attractively priced, but the guys who were trusted with handing it over to us were having a laugh, or more likely, a self-indulgent snigger.

I agree with him, why put something where your major competitors put something else? Remember this device is supposed to be a Normob friendly device.

Chris also raises some very interesting issues, again I will quote him:

Particularly, take your expert reviewer hat off for a moment and put yourself in the position of a first time user who hasn’t used a Skype phone or similar device before and see how long it takes you to:
- work out how to correctly insert the MicroSD card – is it supposed to stay sticking out and jammed under the battery like that? Why doesn’t it slide in flat? Am I breaking this?

Unfortunately I did not have Micro SD card, I could not see what this is like. It’s worrying that Chris thought he may be breaking the device though.

Let’s move on.

I fired up the phone. The operating system is BREW and the device is capable of running BREW and java applications. The first thing I would recommend anyone to do is to download Opera Mini, it is so much better than the the supplied browser.

The home screen has the ability to have three widgets, ie Google Search, RSS Feed or World Clock. There is a wide range to choose from and the bottom there is essentially a dock. For those of you who are Mac users, you will be familiar with it. From here you can quick launch many of the phones applications. There is a also a switcher button at the side of the phone which lets you cycle through and launch another application or go to the home screen, the phone allows multiple applications to be minimised and run in the background.

Let’s look to the media and music player; it had no issues with playing my mp3’s and some small video clips I chucked at it. My biggest gripe is the headphone socket. INQ has tried to be clever and use the micro USB to connect to your computer, to charge the phone and as a headphone socket. The problem is this means that you have to use the supplied headphones which are cheap and the sound quality is poor.

Sony Ericsson do this as well — their supplied headphones are brilliant. It needs to be clear to Mobile Phone manufactures that they need to put a normal headphone socket on their phones: Stop forcing people to use your cheap and nasty headphones.

Check back on Wednesday when, the next and final part of my review will be published. I will be covering all the social networking applications and the camera. In the mean time check out Jonathan Jensen’s mini review and normob feedback on the INQ 1.

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Posted in Devices, Mobile, Operators, Three | Comments

The INQ1 gets an update

Thursday, February 5th, 2009

3026890335_d35519a864At a small (but select) gathering tonight INQ – the makers of the ’social’ handset the INQ1 – that grew out of the operator Three announced ‘Update 1′, an over-the-air refresh of the INQ1’s application suite which makes a number of improvements and feature-additions.  These improve Windows Live Messenger performance, give better general stability, pre-cache Facebook photos for performance and improve the battery life (the improvement is described as ’significant’ – up to 50% longer depending on use).  Users will be prompted to update the software in 4 to 6 weeks.  INQ’s marketing director Jeff Taylor commented that INQ expected to provide further updates in the future and that, where possible, new features would be distributed to all INQ devices as additional handsets were added to the range.

At the event, the team also announced the INQ1 had been short-listed as one of five devices in the GSMA Global Mobile Awards ‘Best Handset / Device‘ category to be announced at Mobile World Congress in a fortnight and the launch of a media and blogger-relations programme ‘INQ+’ intended to provide a forum for feedback and beta testing of forthcoming software / devices.

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Posted in Ben Smith, Devices, Mobile Applications | Comments

MIR Show – Week 47 – The INQ interview – Part One

Tuesday, November 25th, 2008

I sat down with the INQ chaps just after they launched their first handset, the INQ1, to ask them all about the company. This is part one of their interview featuring Jeff Taylor (who heads up marketing) and Ken Johnstone (who is the product genius).

In the interview I asked nearly all of the questions sent in so hopefully you’ll spot your answers.

Part Two tomorrow!

You can, by the way, pick up an INQ1 here.

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Posted in Feature, mirshow | Comments

INQ1Watch: Misc musings, 3’s new mobile broadband with T-Mobile

Sunday, November 16th, 2008

Also at the 3 event they drew a line under their mobile broadband offerings, as in how it’s been so far, what’s coming up next and the overall story.

It doesn’t really fall under the remit of the INQ handsets. Although it does ever so tentatively fall into the data services category which backs nicely into their new phone, so we let them have their 5 minutes.

They went on to show a slide which highlighted the amount of data that’s traveled over their mobile broadband network.

As you might not be able to see the figures all that well, it’s risen from 25,000 GB in November 2007 to just under 800,000 GB throughput from last month.

Not a bad overall feat we believe to date. To truly call it splendiferous you really have to factor in their coverage region and balance it up against other networks, so the jury is still out.

They did go on to state they do have the largest mobile broadband network in the UK, with 98% of it being on HSDPA at 3.6Mbps.

Where 3 see themselves next is more of an interesting topic we believe, and it’s here we pricked our ears up and paid thorough attention. Not that we weren’t beforehand.

They’ve combined their efforts with T-Mobile to produce the world’s largest HSDPA and HSUPA network. It’s hoped by Q3 2010, they’ll jointly have 98% of the possible broadband coverage of the UK. It’s also aimed they’ll have speeds of 14.5Mbps downstream and 5.7Mbps upstream, a nice throughput you’ll agree.

It must have slipped this hacks mind about T-Mobile and 3 jointly establishing this project, as notes over this were feverishly scribbled down only to find out this was all made public a while ago.

Oh well, you learn something new every day only to find out it wasn’t so new after all and you wish what you know should have been known before hand.

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Posted in Mobile | Comments

INQ1Watch: Reasons behind the phone – 1,2,3

Sunday, November 16th, 2008

In wrapping up the coverage from the launch event, we thought we‘d bring you some of the thinking and reasoning passed along to us as to why the development of the phone’s series by Hutchinson began. These were outlaid to us on the day by 3’s CEO Kevin Russell and the INQ’s CEO Frank Meehan.

These facts came along to us in the form of stats around the rise of data services over the 3 network, charted as an example from Nov 2007 until last month.

To be honest, we were a tad surprised over the figures knowing their frontend portal presented to their customers. Also we recalled some distant knowledge of 3 services being heavily firewalled to a severe degree, where not a great deal of access to outside websites was allowed.

So when we saw the number of users mentioned which started at 250,000 from last year and hitting the high of 950,000 of late, it took us back a bit. After digesting all and sundry plus getting hold of a three SIM card, all of these are actually supported and all works rather well too. It looks like their portal doesn’t scream and shout about it too much.

Just to back up their slide and doubly endorsing how 3 is used in today’s world of social networking, they went on to throw some more numbers at us.

On 3 handsets just over the October period, 2 million searches were performed, 3.5million emails were received by users on the network, 20 million minutes of Skype calls were made, 36 million chats were made on Skype, 200 million instant messages took place, 44 million pages on Facebook were viewed where there were only half that number six months ago. And a partridge in a pear tree.

Whilst you’re digesting all of that, it makes sense that a phone like the INQ should have come along right now. Even more so when you take into account news has reached us this week that mobile Facebook users have tripled this year, to the mighty sum of 15 million and counting.

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Posted in Mobile | Comments

Meeting with the INQ chaps

Friday, November 14th, 2008

I just sat down and did an interview with the INQ chaps. I pointed the camera at them and left it, this time, rather than sticking it in their faces all the time. They made some smart points especially regarding the total lack of decent support from other handset vendors – requiring INQ to take the development into their own hands. I will have the interview and unboxing online shortly. The INQ1 is looking pretty smart. I can definitely imagine using it on a regular basis – you’re so connected with it. Put me down as the first UK customer please!
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Posted by email from MIR Live (posterous)

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Posted in Mobile | Comments

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