Category Archives: Mobile

Droid X vs. iPhone 3G Follow Up

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To read my original review, click here: Droid X vs. iPhone 3G Review #1

Few follow up thoughts, after some more time with Droid X:

1. I’m still very happy with it.

2. Few issues:

  • Twitter clients: I have not found a Twitter/Facebook client as good as HootSuite for iPhone was. HootSuite for Android is poor in comparison (it only supports Twitter accounts, no posting to Facebook.) The app that comes with the phone supports Twitter + Facebook, but only one account of each. Since I’m trying to manage two Twitter accounts and two Facebook (plus ideally one Linked In and one Yammer) on the Android, it would be great if something actually supported this. I’ll pay you for it! Do a good job of it, and I’ll pay you a lot!
  • Facebook App: Despite a recent update, the Facebook for Android app is still sub-par compared to the iPhone app. For example, if you click a notification on the iPhone app, it takes you to the post itself on the app. Droid X takes you to the mobile site to view the post.
  • Battery Life: Battery life sucks. At best, it’s equivalent to my iPhone 3G, but only on a day when I barely use it. On an equal-use footing, it blows. (Though in the Droid X’s defense, at least you change change out the battery when it does. I don’t own a second battery yet, but I like knowing the option is there.)
  • International Text Messaging: For some reason, Verizon won’t let me send international text messages as easily as AT&T did. (E.g. You can send a message if you enter 011 44… for the UK. The reply comes back with a +44… If you reply to that, the message back doesn’t go through. You have to manually reply to 011 44… HUH?!)
  • Alarm Clock: There are two nice features of the alarm clock on Droid X, and two not-so-good.
    The good: The increasing volume alarm feature is nice, as is the ability to set how long a “snooze” is (2 mins? 9 mins?)
    The bad: The alarm clock sound options aren’t as nice as the bells were on iPhone. (So naturally I downloaded the iPhone Bell Tower MP3 and am now using it!) Also, it’s very depressing that the alarm tells you how long it’s been set for. E.g. if you go to bed at midnight and set your alarm for 5am, it tells you “Alarm set for five hours from now.” I don’t enjoy knowing how little sleep I’m going to get!
  • Camera: It must just be me (or the case I’m using) but you sure seem to have to hold down that camera button for a loooooong time before it takes a picture. That said, the pictures come out nice.
  • Call quality/Network: I’ve had a few issues with calls. They don’t drop, just all of a sudden there is silence and the person never “comes back”. However, I’m not sure if it is the network, Google Voice (some of the calls were made via Google Voice) or Bluetooth (the calls were all on Bluetooth.) So I’m reserving judgment on this. Data is fast. However, it’s a little frustrating not being able to talk on the phone and use data at the same time. (E.g. Recently a friend called me to look up directions for her, and I had to hang up then call back with memorised directions. Would have been nice to have put her on speaker and talked her through it.)

[I’ll add to this list if I have further thoughts.]

In summary however:

Am I keeping it? Yes. I have 30 days to get out of my Verizon contract if for some reason I’m not happy. I am, however, happy enough that I’m staying with Droid X and with Verizon.

If the Verizon iPhone rumours are true, will I change back to iPhone? I don’t know yet. Possibly. Possibly not. I love the customisation available on the Droid X, and I think the app market will get much stronger in time. Therefore, I’m not sure I would switch back, but I guess we’ll wait and see what takes my fancy in 12 months when my contract is up.

If you’re thinking about making the AT&T > Verizon switch, or simply iPhone > Android, ask me questions. What matters to you? I’ll do my best to help you out.

Droid X vs. iPhone 3G: Review #1

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This is preliminary, based on three days with the Droid X.

In short: Droid X is a fantastic phone, very customisable to what the user wants, but the iPhone does still trump for usability and simplicity. I love Droid X, and if/when Verizon gets an iPhone, I wouldn’t automatically jump back to it. It would actually be a very tough choice between the two. But I wouldn’t buy a Droid X for my Dad, as the iPhone’s simplicity would suit him better.

Droid XWhat I like:

Customisation: Incredibly customisable. I can choose what notifies me and how. I can choose not just what apps appear on what pages, but add widgets to pages. (This is an awesome feature that is much cooler, IMHO, than the iPhone “tons and tons of icons”.) The one thing that is a little tricky is getting used to where the settings live. Some live in the main Settings area and some live within the app itself. But no huge deal, really.

Set up: Set up was fairly easy for me. Added all my accounts quickly. The harder part was getting the right balance of notifications. I get a lot of email, especially through my corporate email. I don’t need you to vibrate everything time I receive an email! Or that phone would never be still.

Notifications: I love the pull-down notification window. So much better than the iPhone’s one-notification-overrides-another thing.

Display: Love the screen – it’s huge and looks way better than my 3G screen did. I know that the iPhone 4 screen is supposed to be the greatest screen ever created (blah blah blah) but I’m loving Droid X’s.

Sign in: The pattern sign in is crazy cool! Instead of a numeric code, you can sign in based on a pattern of connecting dots.

Outlook and Exchange sync: The basic integration with corporate email is okay, but not great. E.g. I can view calendar notices, and know that someone invited me to a meeting, but not reply to them. (You could reply on iPhone.) However, I downloaded the TouchDown app which integrates better than iPhone. Not only can you reply to calendar invites, but you can create them, including adding people, and syncs with tasks. This is huge for me, as I’m a big user of Outlook tasks and always found it frustrating that I couldn’t get access to my tasks on the iPhone. (There are third party applications you can use for this, but they crashed my desktop Outlook so it was a no-go.) Without a third party app like TouchDown, I’d say that iPhone’s Exchange is better, but with TouchDown, Android wins. And for the record, I’m willing to buy apps that make my life easier, so that’s not a “lose” for me.

Google Voice: The Google Voice integration is awesome. On iPhone, it would forward SMS to my phone but nothing more than that. Right now Google Voice is controlling my whole phone, transcribing voicemail etc. It’s fantastic.

Typing: Having played around with others’ Droid (the original Droid, not Droid X) I was wondering how the keyboard would go. The iPhone on-screen keyboard just seemed better than Droid’s. However, the Droid X keyboard is great, very good at predicting and correcting. I also like the way that the selection and copy/paste works.

Camera: is amazing. Zoom and flash? Awesome! Only downside is that I don’t have the steadiest hands, and it does seem like sometimes it doesn’t want to take the pic because I can’t hold the camera steady enough.

In-built navigator: I have nav in my car, but still, awesome!

Universal inbox: Pulls all your unread emails, texts, Facebook messages (etc) together from all your accounts so you can read unread mail in one place. Very cool!

Network: So far, Verizon is kicking AT&T’s ass, but to be fair, I’ve had three days on Verizon and only a few phone calls, compared with two years of experience with AT&T, where the bad may stand out more than the good. I will say though that the 3G data (e.g. web browsing) is a lot faster on my Droid X. Not sure how much is the device and browser vs. the network though.

What could be improved:

Battery life: So far, battery life hasn’t been great. I do think it will get better as I get used to a phone that multi-tasks and manage the battery better, and I also hear that Froyo will help in that respect too. I made it about half the day before it was already at 50%, and that wasn’t actually with crazy-heavy usage. My only goal is for it to be the same as my 3G was. (I could make it a day but not with heavy usage.)

HootSuite Android application: Okay so this one isn’t Motorola or Android’s fault, but the HootSuite app for iPhone is way better than the HootSuite app for Android. HootSuite for Android unfortunately only supports multiple Twitter accounts, but no Facebook accounts. This was a huge portion of my iPhone use, so I’m seriously begging for an update to this ASAP. In the meantime though, the social networks feature that comes with the Droid X does let me post to Twitter and Facebook, but only to one account of each.

User-friendly-ness: [I know that’s not a word, but you know what I mean] I love Droid X so far. But I would buy my Dad an iPhone. It’s just more intuitive and easy to use for those who don’t want to put in the time to figure out all the nuances. But for those who want a ton of control over their device, Android seems better in my opinion.

Droid X vs. iPhone 3G: The Back Story

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Recently I made the switch from an iPhone 3G with AT&T to a Motorola Droid X with Verizon. There will likely be a number of posts of the transition, as folks sure do seem curious!

A little background: In the United States (where I’m located) the iPhone is exclusive to the AT&T network. Unlike in other countries where you can get an iPhone on any network, if you want the device you need to be with AT&T. My husband and I were with AT&T prior to the iPhone, using Motorola Razr. We weren’t thrilled with them to begin with, but stayed when the iPhone was released. Our frustration with AT&T (even back then) was the network quality. We frequently raised our eyebrows at the AT&T “network with the fewest dropped calls” tagline. Not in our experience … !

We jumped on the iPhone bandwagon with the 3G. Now, let me say very clearly: I really like the iPhone. The switch wasn’t motivated by a hatred of the device itself. My two years with iPhone were mostly enjoyable ones. It synced my work and personal email. It gave me on-the-go access to my calendar. It let me access Twitter and Facebook and mobile banking. It was my first smartphone, and I loved it. But as far as making calls go, well …. it wasn’t actually so great at that …

About a year in to our two-year contract, I’d had enough. I called AT&T and they blamed it on the device. Their argument was that because I got so many dropped calls in all different places, it had to be the device, not their network … even though I was on their network in all of those places. So I followed their advice, had to completely factory restore the phone (massive pain, by the way, since my contacts weren’t synced with anything) and nothing changed. In fact, the Genius Bar tech looked at my phone data and said I’d dropped 20% of my calls in the last week. Sadly, that actually sounded a little lower than usual. I also had a wonderful conversion with an AT&T employee that went like this:

Me: “So what if I restore my iPhone to factory settings, follow all the instructions both you and Apple give me, and nothing changes. You’re telling me that you will do nothing about this?”
(I had asked about them waiving the early termination charge, or anything, really!)

AT&T: “Yes, that’s right.”

Now, at the same time, my 3G had become very buggy. Buttons becoming unresponsive, text taking a long time to type, etc. (I heard, from those who switched to 3GS, that it was much more stable and responsive, but the 3G did seem to be on its last legs.)

A few months shy of our contract expiration date, iPhone 4 came out. I was torn. On the one hand, I wanted off AT&T. On the other hand, it did look good. On the other hand, I actually wasn’t as blown away by as I had expected iPhone 4. (Wow, I have a lot of hands …) Given the anticipation, I expected more. You can read my thoughts on it here. I will, however, confess: I actually pre-ordered one. Okay, another confession: I actually pre-ordered TWO. (One for my husband, one for me.) But I couldn’t stand to go pick it up. It gave me an uncomfortable feeling, like I was a fool who had been duped.

So I left the iPhone 4, and started researching Android. It seemed like it might fit for me. I’m a huge fan of Google Voice, which I heard integrates well. Based on the devices on the market, and upcoming handsets, I chose Droid X.

Which brings us to now. We ordered our Droid Xs on a Sunday, they arrived on Thursday. Verizon had set us up with temporary numbers until we port over our AT&T numbers, so until our contract ends (a week after receiving our Xs) we are using the temporary numbers to get used to the phone. (Naturally, if we port our numbers to Verizon even a day early, AT&T will charge us $60.)

But you want to hear the best part? We signed up for AT&T U-Verse at a time when AT&T were giving you $400 in gift cards to sign up. We paid for our Verizon Droids with AT&T’s $400!

So this brings me to the actual review …

OMMA Metrics #2: The full story

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For those who were not as fortunate to attend OMMA Metrics in San Francisco, here are my key takeaways from each of the sessions. For those who did, I would love to hear yours.

Yes, it’s long. Feel free to skim what is of interest to you. There is no pop quiz!

Note: below are two fun, random facts that I enjoyed learning!

Evolving Analytics: Measuring and Analyzing the Digital Ecosystem at Lightspeed
Judah Phillips, Sr Director Global Site Analytics, Monster Worldwide

  • Everything in analytics is evolving: the skills needed, the size of teams within a company, the importance in an organisation and exposure to executive management, technology and tools and the scope of what we’re analysing (eg social, mobile, video, and tying traditional media back to the site.)
  • To compete on analytics requirements investment in people and technology.

Digital Measurement: A Retrospective and Predictions for the Future
Eric T. Peterson, Web Analytics Demystified

  • 50:50 rule: invest half your analytics budget on technology, half on people.
  • At scale, a centralised analytics group is all that ever works. Analytics should be in the center of marketing, operations, management, etc, but have “superusers” within each of the other departments. Decentralized analytics does not work.
  • We need to develop faith and trust from stakeholders by having more answers than questions.
  • Analysts are a service organisation. We have forgotten this! We need to serve to provide business intelligence: deliver incredible value to drive revenue; this will build trust.
  • We need to move beyond first generation tools and reporting and need to generate insights and recommendations.
  • Commit to create a measurable impact! “If you give me a testing tool, I will delivery a 5% lift in X.” At worst? If you fail, they’ll fire you and you’ll move on to another position (probably with a salary bump!)

Measuring Social Media: From Listening to Engagement to Value Generation
with Jascha Kaykas-Wolff (Involver), Anil Batra (POP), Jonathan Corbin (Wunderman), Taddy Hall (Meteor Solutions), Rand Schulman (Eightfold Logic and Schulman + Thorogood Group)

  • Think about 1) Reach, 2) Engagement, 3) Impact of social
  • To strategically enter into social, need to identify your objective, pick the appropriate channel (e.g. are the users you’re trying to reach on Facebook? Twitter? YouTube? etc), then find the right KPIs that take into account objective and channel.
  • Scalable measurement and monetisation is what is currently missing from social media.
  • Companies need to identify who the influences are, and who they influence.
  • Integrate social with other channels, and understand it in the context of all your marketing.
  • Don’t be afraid to do something different!
  • To measure success, ensure you take a baseline.

Analysing Across Multiple Channels: What Works and What Doesn’t for Multichannel Measurement
Akin Arikan (Unica), Roger Barnette (SearchIgnite), Casey Carey (Webtrends), Kevin Cavanaugh (Allant Group), Terry Cohen (Digitas), Andy Fisher (Starcom MediaVest Group)

  • Some channels are more involved with certain areas of the lifecycle. E.g. Mass media to attract attention, online to engage consumers and persuade, offline to grow and retain.
  • There are forty years of multi channel experience, but digital breaks all those rules. How do you mix it in?
  • Maturity of multiple channel measurement is mixed – some companies are doing a lot, but many are not, for a variety of reasons (e.g. silo nature of the organisation, perhaps using multiple agencies, etc.)
  • Financial services is ahead of the multi channel game, because they have statisticians, data, tools, etc.
  • Traditional media measurement has 30-40 years experience. In comparison, the techniques in digital are laughable. Digital needs to learn from this. However, in the digital space we embrace change, are fearless, and figure out how to benefit from the change. Need to combine these two: increase mathematical rigor in digital, and embrace change in traditional media. [Aka “Andy’s grumpy rant”]

A Measurement Manifesto
Josh Chasin (comScore)

  • Future of digital is not in selling clicks and click throughs.
  • Digital has a seeming ability to measure everything, but in some ways this hurts us. We’ll never be the most simple medium. The landscape is not simple, and it’s not getting simpler. However, we have opportunity for doing great and ground breaking things with metrics.
  • Strengths of digital: portable, affinity (consumers cluster around content of interest, and even create that content!)
  • Targetability makes audiences small. Affinity makes audiences relevant.
  • 20th century was the generation of the shouting brand. 21st century will be the listening brand.
  • Digital order of operations: Ready, aim, fire, measure, aim, fire, measure, aim, fire, measure …
  • We need to measure: audience size, ad effectiveness (across platforms), attribution, engagement, voice of the customer and brand robustness.

Engagement the Mobile Experience: Effective Mobile Measurement Strategies
Raj Aggarwal (Localytics) , June Dershewitz (Semphonic), Joy Liuzzo (InsightExpress), Evan Neufeld (Ground Truth), Virgil Waters (Acceleration), Jamie Wells (Microsoft Mobile Advertising)

  • Mobile often has different methods of data collection, as the common javascript tags may not work.
  • Some mobile metrics are the same as site analytics, but some are different. Mobile web is similar to desktop web, but applications can be unique.
  • Benefits of mobile analytics: you can have a more accurate reach metric, since there is a device ID, and people rarely share devices. Location is more granular and valuable.
  • Mobile is unstable right now – we are trying to figure out mobile analytics in a shifting environment. E.g. What will succeed: mobile web or apps? Will one succeed the other? Will there even remain a distinction between them?
  • Tools for mobile analytics: 1) Traditional web analytics tools and 2) Niche vendors (or a combination of both.) The benefit of traditional tools is the integration with your site analytics. The benefit of niche tools may be higher-value, mobile-specific data.
  • Third party measurement and Apple: feeling from the panel is that Apple will be forced to play by the market, and likely change its policies over time.

Metrics and Measurement at eBay
Bob Page (eBay)

  • eBay has a huge range (and volume!) of data (e.g. marketing, finance, customer service, user behaviour, web analytics, etc.)
  • There is no silver bullet. No one product will solve all your needs.
  • They have a huge datawarehouse that contains virtual data marts for different groups (e.g. marketing vs. finance) rather than silos.
  • They also have an internal web analytics community, building a type of “Facebook for analysts”: an internal social network where analysts can subscribe to each other’s feeds, look at the latest videos, discuss issues in forums, share PPTs etc.
  • Have a centralised technical team under the CTO, who is responsible for infrastructure, support etc.
  • Centralised business analytics team under the CFO, responsible for common, standard “north star” metrics.
  • Distributed product analysts in each business.
  • Note: size of the technical teams to support this is similar to the size of the core analysts.

Managing Analytics: An Executive’s Perspective on What Works, What Doesn’t, Best Practices and Lessons Learned
Judah Phillips (Monster Worldwide), Matt Booher (Bridge Worldwide), Yaakov Kimfeld (MediaVest), Dylan Lewis (Intuit), Jodi McDermott (comScore), David L. Smith (Mediasmith)

  • Executive sponsorship of analytics is changing: “We used to have a megaphone, now we have a seat at the table.”
  • Centralisation enables standardisation, and helps with the evolution of analytics.
  • Where Analytics lives in the organisation: sometimes with the CFO, sometimes within marketing – differs within different companies. Analytics needs to own the technology and the data, though technical teams may actually implement.
  • Challenge: Lack of standards, lack of an organisational body.
  • Challenge: Executive distrust in the data or its validity. Jodi at comScore spoke of 4-6 months of having to explain data capture and constantly evangelizing before executives would place faith in data over gut.
  • Challenge: Hiring/recruiting. Companies want to find everything in one person: a technologist, a marketer, a statistician. Region can make hiring even more difficult. General sense is to find the right individuals/hire for instinct. You can always teach people the finer points of being an analyst (e.g. how to use a particular tool.)
  • Project management: Ticket-type system, scrum process. But no matter the project management used, requires ruthless prioritisation

Online Measurement: The Good, the Bad and the Complicated
Joe Laszlo (IAB)

  • The good: Online measurement is competitive, we have many vendors options. Vendors have integrity and are continually innovating. We can measure nearly anything.
  • The bad: Contradictory metrics from vendor to vendor, and changes in methodology can render dramatic fluctuations in measurement.
  • Online is managing to capture direct-response dollars, but not branding dollars. This is because brand marketers want to understand what their spend did for brand awareness, purchase intent, etc. What they get is “engagement”: view throughs, time spent, etc. There is a disconnect between what measures of success digital offers them and what they want.
  • Traditional media measurement allows calculation of reach and frequency. Also has years of experience of what matters, and has well-accepted metrics.
  • Lack of online measurement standards makes accurate data comparisons impossible. This can not be solved by any individual company, therefore the IAB is tackling through a cross-industry task force.

Modeling Attribution: Practitioner Perspectives on the Media Mix
Cesar Brea (Force Five Partners), Gary Angel (Semphonic), Jason Harper (Organic), Drew Lipner (InsightExpress), Manu Mathew (VisualIQ), Kelly Olson (Red Bricks Media.)

  • Attribution: What campaign/medium is responsible for the sale?
  • But there are more questions now: Is it better for someone to touch campaign a and b? What about b first then a? It’s not just the attribution, but do the two campaigns contribute together, in what order, or are two overkill, etc? E.g. Evidence that display with search adds value to search: someone searches after seeing a banner ad.
  • Can get a lot of benefit from evaluating click attribution, but even more from impressions optimisation.

Understanding the Multi-Screen Consumer: What’s on their Screens, What’s on their Minds
Alison Lange-Engel (Microsoft Advertising)

  • We now access online content via a variety of screens: computer, mobile device, TV, gaming consoles. We are always on and always connected.
  • Microsoft Advertising conducted survey to answer these questions.
  • The most active segment is 24-35 year olds.
  • Consumers are rapidly adopting technology and want control of the experiences.
  • Online gamers are the “game changers”. They do more of everything, all the time, social influencers. They spend the most time blogging, viewing, texting links. They view their game console as a communication device.
  • A linear funnel is not relevant anymore, as all screens impact purchase and allow an impactful story to be told.
  • Computers and smartphones are the key points of purchase.
  • The younger segments are accepting of advertising across multiple screens, actually want information and entertainment. They find ads helpful when they are targeted to their preferences and interests. They want a consistent experience across screens, and like the ability to access content across multiple screens – it actually improves their opinion of the content provider.
  • The key to success is: Consistent messaging + connected to other mediums + relevant = engagement and results.
  • Full report at advertising.microsoft.com/multiscreen.

And fun facts for the day:

  • The birthplace of web analytics is Hawaii!
  • Web Analytics is still small. All the web analytics companies sold for less than DoubleClick!

For those who did not get to attend this event, I highly recommend checking it out next year. It was interesting, informative, with great choice of speakers and a nice mix of presentation vs. panel discussions. Learning has never been so fun!