Crapware

First things first. This device has a pretty small amount of on-board storage and no options for adding to that with external cards. After learning what apps I want to use and what apps I don’t need, I’ve started to cull. It turns out that Nokia and T-Mobile have both “customized” the phone by adding some of their exclusive apps.

While most of Nokia’s apps add value, T-Mobile’s apps are largely expendable. T-Mobile TV is a paid subscription mobile video app that looks and works nothing like a Windows Phone app but was instead likely ported from some other platform. Uninstalled. Slacker Radio is a service I don’t use. Uninstalled. TeleNav GPS Nav is a paid subscription navigation service that is redundant to Nokia’s very good (and free) turn-by-turn Nokia Drive app. Uninstalled.

The Weather Channel app is pre-loaded on the phone, but I almost immediately swapped it for the less heavily branded and better designed AccuWeather.com app. And Netflix is pre-loaded, too, but I can’t imagine ever watching a movie or TV show on this size screen now that I own a tablet.

Pictures

The Nokia Lumia 710 has a decent 5 MP camera with a flash. Perhaps more importantly, it has a dedicated camera button that you can use to both wake the device into camera mode and take pictures. The phone also takes 720p HD video.

Like iCloud for iOS and Instant Upload for Android, you can automatically upload photographs to your Microsoft SkyDrive account as you take them. Like iCloud with Apple TV, you can view these photos on Media Center as they’re uploaded. We posted a Media Center quick tip earlier this week with easy instructions on how you can set this up. With Nokia’s beta Play To app, you can also stream pictures and videos from your phone to a compatible Play To target (e.g., an Xbox in extender mode).

Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 Connector software for Mac can sync pictures to your phone from iPhoto or Aperture. You can choose from albums and events in your library. Connector can also optionally sync the pictures and videos you’ve taken from your phone to your Mac. That’s something you still can’t do with iTunes and an iPhone.

Syncing to iPhoto is a bit cumbersome since it launches iPhoto every time it finds new pictures and videos to offload, and even though you specify the name of the event for your pictures, it creates a new one (with that same name) every time.

Skype

Microsoft released its official Skype app for Windows Phone last week, and it seems like a huge missed opportunity. I talked about this—more like ranted about this—quite a bit on the latest episode of Entertainment 2.0, but I’m still scratching my head, trying to understand what Microsoft has been doing with Skype for the last year.

Google has its Google Voice product baked into the core of Android phones, and Microsoft’s failure to do the same for Windows Phone with Skype just baffles me. Skype is a premier brand, and they seem to be wasting it.

With Skype for Windows phone, you can make voice and video calls and send instant messages to other Skype users. It does not work with Bluetooth. You cannot send SMS messages. You cannot receive Skype calls unless you have the app open and active. One more time for effect: You cannot receive Skype calls unless the app is open and active.

Ridiculous. But the biggest missed opportunity here is that Skype contacts don’t integrate with your People hub in any way. Microsoft intentionally designed a phone platform that provides for integration with third party directory services, but it is either not extensible enough to support Skype or Microsoft just decided not to take advantage of this capability for Skype—the leading consumer VoIP platform. That they own.

Ridiculous.

Other Apps

For the most part, the major apps that you’d expect on a phone platform are available in one form or another. As I mentioned in last week’s review, Google’s presence is all but nonexistent, but there are numerous apps that take advantage of Google’s APIs to make Google services available to Windows Phone owners.

There are a couple of great apps I’ve come to like a lot. Foursquare has a very good app. Sports Tracker is a great activity monitor for running, walking, and exercise tracking. Evernote and OneNote give me access to saved snippets, and the rest of the Office suite gives me access—even the ability to edit—Microsoft Office documents. I also like Amazon’s ubiquitous Kindle app, Spotify, and OpenTable.

There’s no official app for GetGlue (and the third party app is crap—it’s just a wrapper to GetGlue’s mobile web site that’s actually harder to use than the site itself). There’s no Google+ app, but their mobile site works fairly well in IE. There’s no app for my bank, no apps for my favorite airlines, and no Pandora.

TripIt has an app that’s compete crap—it’s less capable than TripIt’s own mobile site, and it seems to have been developed by someone who’s never read Microsoft’s Windows Phone user experience guidelines. There are several third-party TripIt apps that are far better than TripIt’s own. I’ve chosen My Trips.

I’ve realized pretty quickly that there are many crap apps out there. Metro introduces a new way of thinking about user experience and UI design, and a lot of developers clearly just don’t get it or haven’t bothered trying. I’ve passed over or already uninstalled numerous apps that have offended my UX sensibilities.

To Unlock or Not

I realized last week that I haven’t been receiving text messages sent to my old number since I can forward calls but not text messages. Between that and the disappointing service that I get in my neighborhood and home from T-Mobile, I decided to try unlocking the phone so I could swap in my old AT&T SIM card.

I quickly learned that while my AT&T SIM gave me a working device with my old number and much better phone service, I couldn’t get any data service. It turns out that T-Mobile and AT&T use different 3G bands, so I had a decision to make: better, more convenient phone service, or data service. I chose data. But hey…now I have an unlocked phone. That’s good, right?

Headset

I’ve been spoiled by the hardware ecosystem that’s grown up around the iPhone and iOS devices. I can go to pretty much any corner store and pick up a cheap set of earphones that work with an iPhone for calls. Nowadays many of them can even control music and trigger voice prompts.

Nokia’s Lumia 710 doesn’t come with earphones. So I tried using some old iPhone headphones I have lying around. I can listen to music, of course, but I can’t use them for phone calls or voice prompts, and the buttons don’t seems to control anything on the Lumia.

I went to Nokia’s web site. Nokia’s documentation for the Lumia says “you can connect a compatible headset or compatible headphones to your phone.” They don’t, in any way, define compatible. Nokia lists two Monster-branded (read: expensive) options on nokia.com, the cheapest of which is about $90. Not gonna happen.

So I contacted Nokia support to find out what headsets might be compatible. They told me that the only headphones they know will work with the Lumia phones are those listed on their web site…for about $90 and $200, respectively. They do not offer a less expensive alternative, and they don’t have any information about any other compatible products.

If for no other reason than to say that they promote safe driving, Nokia should either offer an inexpensive headset for the Lumia or be prepared to recommend some compatible options. Bluetooth? Well that would be an option, but Nokia’s own product manual recommends using Bluetooth sparingly to conserve battery life. And Skype won’t work with Bluetooth, remember?

The Experiment Continues

When I started this experiment, I said I’d use the Windows Phone for two weeks, then I’d decide whether to continue using it for another two before making the big decision: stick with my iPhone or switch.

I’m two weeks in, and at this point I see no reason not to keep going. Sure, this week was bumpier than last, between my frustration over Microsoft’s Skype swing-and-a-miss, a mixed bag of app support for services I use, and my astonishment over Nokia’s failure to either offer or recommend an affordable headset. But there’s still a lot that I like about this phone and this OS.

Next week introduces an added challenge: I’m traveling for business. I’ll undoubtedly turn to my mobile devices for different needs than I might at home and around town. I should also get a much better sense of this thing’s battery life.

Related

• Preparing for the Great Windows Phone Experiment
• The Windows Phone Experiment: Week One

The biggest surprise here is Microsoft, coming in with more free storage than any other service and offering the most economical paid storage plans. Existing SkyDrive users even have a limited opportunity to claim 25GB of free storage. But SkyDrive—even though it’s integrated into many Live products, Windows Phone, and the upcoming Windows 8—just doesn’t have the mindshare or reach of these other products.

Here’s a brief comparison of how the big players in this space stack up against each other:

	Apple iCloud	Dropbox	Google Drive	Microsoft SkyDrive
Free storage	5GB	2GB†	5GB	7GB*
Pricing
20ish GB plan (/year)	$40	-	25GB for $29.88	27GB for $10**
50sh GB plan (/year)	$100	$99	-	57GB for $25**
100sh GB plan (/year)	-	$199	$59.88	107GB for $50**
Typical annual cost/GB‡	$2	$1.99	59¢	50¢**
Desktop Folder Syncing
PC		•	•	•
Mac		•	•	•
Linux		•
Mobile Support
iOS	•	•	•	•
Android		•	•
Windows Phone				•
Blackberry		•

†Dropbox customers can increase their free storage to as much as 18GB through referrals and other offers.

‡Annual cost is based on the cost per gigabyte for the majority of plans from a provider

*Current SkyDrive customers can get 25GB of free storage for a limited time.

**Microsoft’s paid SkyDrive plans are in addition to the free storage allocation.

Bottom line: While Dropbox offers the best desktop and mobile support and compatibility, Microsoft’s SkyDrive offers the most amount of free storage and the most economical paid plans on a pennies-per-gigabyte basis. If you’re a Windows user, SkyDrive may be your best option.

Aside from Media Center, though, I’m largely a Mac guy. I’ve been using iPhones for years, and I’m heavily invested in Apple’s ecosystem, so I hadn’t considered actually using a Windows Phone as my primary mobile device. But when I “lost” Microsoft’s competition and received a Windows Phone of my own, I decided to try an experiment: I’d use the phone exclusively for a few weeks to learn first-hand how it would fit into my Apple-centric life.

And so it begins….

Nokia’s Lumia 710 on T-Mobile

I chose the Nokia Lumia 710 as my Windows Phone, primarily because it was available on T-Mobile’s network, and T-Mobile offers pay-as-you-go voice and data plans that don’t require a contract. I’ve played with the device in stores more times than I can count, and though it’s not one of the hot, new 800 or 900 models, it’s quite attractive and capable.

The phone itself is light and solid, but it feels somewhat plastic-y with a rubberized, removable back panel. That back panel exposes a removable battery—a nice change from the factory-sealed iPhone. And the removable battery may be more necessary I than first thought, too, because so far the battery life on this thing seems pretty terrible (I’ll be able to better test that when I take this phone on the road with me in a few weeks). The 710 is about the same size as the iPhone 4 that now sits neglected on my desk, but the corners and back edges are more rounded, making it more comfortable to hold and pocket.

Despite the nearly identical dimensions, the Lumia’s display is larger than the iPhone’s, sporting a widescreen profile when turned on its side. The 800 x 480 resolution doesn’t live up to Apple’s so-called “retina” display at 960 x 640, but I can’t say that’s worth all the attention the tech press has been giving it. The Lumia’s display is bright and beautiful, and it’s more readable in sunlight than the iPhone’s.

As it turns out, T-Mobile may not have been the best service choice for me. I often have no signal in my house, and my neighborhood overall has pretty lousy coverage. That’s disappointing for a major metropolitan area, but my mobile phone isn’t my primary phone. I’m one of those holdouts who won’t give up my land line, so the percentage of time that I typically use a mobile device as a phone is pretty low.

The Phone

As I mentioned earlier, this is an experiment. I have no idea whether I’ll continue to use the Lumia as my primary mobile device after this review period, so I didn’t port my number to the new device. Instead, I’m forwarding my old number. That handles phone calls, but not text messages. For now, they’re getting lost and ignored.

For my work number, I use Google Voice. There’s no native app for that on Windows Phone yet. In fact, there’s no app support from Google worth talking about, and many of Google’s mobile web offerings look like crap in the phone’s mobile IE browser. Some third parties have released compatible apps for Google Voice, but here’s where my distrust kicks in.

Your Google Voice number is inherently linked to your Google Account—communications, schedules, contacts, financials, browsing history, and a ton of personal information is accessible via your Google password. Why would you trust that password to a third party? You’d think these apps would leverage Google’s native authentication interface, but they do not—they pass it through their own UI, and you just have to trust the developer (or not).

Google’s 2-factor authentication allows you to create an application-specific password that you can revoke at any time, but even that authorizes more access than you may feel comfortable sharing with a third party. In my opinion, this is an area where Google needs to improve its authorization model. Like with Reader, apps for Google Voice have no need to access anything other than the limited scope of information and APIs supporting very specific functions.

The other communication channel I use regularly is Skype. Microsoft’s late-to-the-market beta offering for this wholly-owned service provides adequate access for making Skype calls, but not for receiving them. Microsoft’s beta app has no background or live-tile support, so your only option for receiving inbound calls is to use Skype forwarding to your mobile number.

People

Windows Phone does a surprisingly good job of integrating contact lists in the People hub. Contacts from Microsoft (Windows Live), Exchange, Google, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are listed together, and you can hide specific account’s contacts from your list (e.g., to avoid cluttering your address book with everyone you follow on Twitter or Facebook). Windows Phone also integrates and links contact information between accounts—even those that you’ve hidden from view. So, for example, the real-life friends in your address book will include their Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ account information—even their profile pics if you haven’t assigned one.

The phone does not import groups from these accounts but instead lets you create groups of your own, incorporating contacts from across services. And you can pin any contact or group to the Start screen, which is handy for family, friends, emergency numbers, etc.

There’s no way to directly sync contacts from a Mac’s Address Book to a Windows Phone, so you’re left with two options: transfer or sync through the cloud. Nokia’s phones include a Contacts Transfer app that uses Bluetooth to download contacts from your old phone. I tried this approach literally dozens of times before I gave up on this option with my iPhone 4, even though customers on Nokia’s support forums reported eventual success.

That left me with syncing through the cloud, which is probably a better option anyway, because it’s continual—not just a one-time download. Mac users have three cloud syncing options for contacts: Google, Yahoo, and iCloud, so to Sync with Windows Phone, you have to use Google. Since I’ve never hosted my contacts in the cloud before, it meant doing some cleanup. I quickly learned that merging, deduping, and archiving is easier once your contacts are online. I’m still doing some housekeeping, but using Google to sync contacts brought all my contacts into my phone, including relationships, notes, and contact photos.

One annoying thing I’ve noticed is that profile pictures imported from Twitter appear crisp and clear, while those assigned in my Address Book or synchronized from Google look terrible in comparison, especially when enlarged to identify an incoming call. So here’s a tip: If you have real-life contacts with Twitter profiles, edit their information on your phone and choose the photo from their linked Twitter profile.

The Social

The People hub gives you limited access to updates from your Twitter, Facebook, and Windows Live accounts, but you can only register one of each one of these accounts on Windows Phone. This probably isn’t a limitation for most people, but it can be a problem for people who have multiple accounts—either for themselves or because they maintain a page, a blog, or an account for work or another organization.

One great feature is that you can limit this so-called What’s New stream to only show updates from people you’ve chosen to include in your contacts list. So if you’ve filtered your contacts to only show your friends in real life, you can similarly limit these updates to that same list. I love this!

Posting messages and checking in via Twitter, Facebook, and Windows Live [does anyone do that?] is done through the Me tile—not the People hub. This separation of incoming and outgoing messages seems like an odd juxtaposition. I just can’t get the hang of it, but I haven’t worried about it too much, since the phone’s own Twitter support is too limited for my needs.

Instead, I’ve spent a fair amount of time looking for a decent Twitter client. My requirements: support for multiple accounts, live tiles, and notifications. Twitter’s own app is pretty clumsy and useless and has no integrated notifications. Seesmic and Rowi both offer live tiles, but only at the lowest account/feed level (in other words, you’d have to pin separate tiles for mentions and direct messages for each account). My pick: Carbon. For $1.99, it does everything I wanted plus some. The UI is a bit sloppy and cluttered, and their insistence on overusing a ridiculous and dated dot-notation on every feature and heading is tiresome, but it notifies me and integrates all my feeds, making it easy to switch between my different .accounts to read my .timeline, .mentions, .messages, and .retweets. [See what I mean about .tiresome?]

Lock screen wallpaper courtesy of Zach Davis

Mail

Windows Phone handles mail beautifully, offering push delivery from IMAP and Exchange services and variable periodic polling for all others. Accounts can be merged together to create a Linked Inbox, but unlike the iPhone, it’s not an all-or-nothing deal. For example, you can combine your personal Windows Live, Google, and Yahoo accounts into one inbox, while keeping your work email separate. Each linked and unliked inbox automatically appears on the start screen as a live tile and on your lock screen, showing the number of new messages since you last checked your mail.

I had some initial difficulties configuring my Google accounts, but after the first day that problem went away, so it may just have been a glitch on Google’s side.

Audio and Video

The Zune media experience has always been a great one all the way back to its roots in Microsoft’s now-retired Zune device line. That DNA is obvious throughout the Windows Phone UI, and the Music + Video app is no exception. It brings together your music, video, podcasts, with radio, the Zune Marketplace, and other media apps. I’ll run through my experience so far with each of these.

Music. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t sync a Windows Phone with your Mac. It frustrates me to no end when I hear even the tech press concluding that these two platforms are incompatible. Even as recently as last weekend, they mis-stated this on This Week in Tech.

You can sync Windows Phone with Mac, and Microsoft created the Windows Phone 7 Connector program for this very purpose. It’s not as full-featured as the Zune software for Windows, but it’s not designed to be. It’s designed to synchronize content from the media libraries you already maintain on your Mac—iTunes and iPhoto.

Connector lets you sync playlists, genres, artists, and even specific albums from your iTunes library. Copy-protected music isn’t transferred, of course, but not many of us have copy-protected iTunes music anymore.

Video. Connector also syncs your videos, movies, and TV shows—sort of. Videos are synchronized from your iPhoto library, which is perfect for home videos. Movies and TV shows can be synchronized from your iTunes library, but you’re not going to see any content you purchased from the iTunes Store on your Windows Phone since it’s copy protected.

But if you’ve archived content from a DVR or video library to iTunes as H.264-encoded MPEG-4 video files with a tool like Handbrake, you can sync those to your Windows Phone. You can also sync videos you’ve downloaded from iTunes U. Unfortunately, Microsoft’s interface for selecting videos to sync is a disaster. Files from your Movies, TV Shows, and iTunes U libraries are all mixed together. They’re sorted alphabetically by episode name, without differentiation and without being grouped by show name or any similarly useful attribute.

Podcasts. Windows Phone offers mixed support for podcasts. It’s often praised for its ability to natively subscribe to podcasts from the Zune Marketplace directly on the device. I’ve yet to figure out how this works.

It’s likely that if you subscribe to podcasts in iTunes, though, you don’t just watch or listen to them on your phone but also on a computer, on an Apple TV, or on other iOS devices. So you need iTunes to keep your subscriptions and play positions in sync. Connector does a decent job of incorporating your Windows Phone into this ecosystem.

There are several ways to sync podcasts with Connector. You can sync all podcasts or a number of the most recent podcasts. This may work fine for most people, but I have a number of podcast subscriptions for which I’m a number of episodes behind. While iTunes has options to sync the oldest or newest available episodes, Connector only syncs the newest. If you’re conserving space on your device, this means you may be catching up on your favorite shows in reverse order.

An unpublicized feature also lets you synchronize podcasts from a playlist. You can select the playlist while selecting your music playlists, and Connector will sync all of the podcasts in that playlist. This is great if you use iTunes’ Smart Playlist feature for quick access to your favorite daily shows.

While Connector will sync the podcasts in a playlist, it won’t also sync the playlist itself since the Zune software doesn’t support playlists for podcasts. This seems like a huge oversight, and I can’t imagine why this isn’t supported. Podcast playlists can not only be used to organize your podcast content, but they can make your drive or commute safer by simply queuing up a series of shows. Microsoft: Fix this!

Radio. My Windows Phone comes with built-in FM radio support. It gets pretty decent reception, but it only works when you have earphones plugged in since it uses those as an antenna. I have to wonder: is that good for you to have the tips of an antenna stuck in your ears?

Zune Marketplace. Among other things, you can purchase music and download or subscribe to podcasts in the marketplace. Purchases are billed to a credit card or to your mobile provider’s account. As a Mac user, you don’t need to worry about Zune software to access the marketplace or to take advantage of the Zune Music Pass for $10-a-month access to the entire Zune music library. It’s all accessible right on the phone. Having just started my free trial, I’ll probably have more to say on the Zune Music Pass later.

Apps. Microsoft does a nice job of integrating playback and access to third-party media apps into the Zune software, so you can get to all your services from one place. Of course you can still pin Slacker, Spotify, and other media apps right to your Start screen if you’d like, but access to these apps from within the Zune environment is incredibly convenient.

Overall, the media experience on Windows Phone is very good. The album art is beautiful, playback is straightforward, and the integration of third-party media services is fairly seamless. Frankly, this integration is a refreshing departure from Apple’s latest trend to segregate its audio and video experiences on iOS devices.

The biggest drawback for Windows Phone as a media device is the lack of third party product support. As best I can tell, there’s no way to connect the phone to a hotel TV, for example, to watch Netflix or YouTube videos like you can with an iPhone. There’s no onboard DLNA support, though Nokia’s released a beta application that promises to bridge that gap for Lumia customers (I’ll address this more in a later post). Perhaps most significantly, there’s no connectivity beyond basic A2DP Bluetooth streaming for automobile integration. This is a huge issue for me, and I imagine it would be for anyone who does any significant driving or commuting.

Enough For Now

I’ve spent an enormous amount of time acclimating myself to my new Windows Phone, the ecosystem supporting it, and methods of integrating it into my current digital lifestyle. Over the next few weeks, I’ll chronicle other aspects of my experience, using the device for reading, working, exercising, and a variety of other activities.

If you have specific questions or would like to see me cover a particular aspect of my experience with the phone, please leave a comment below, and I’ll do my best to answer or include your request in an upcoming post.

Listeners to Entertainment 2.0 may know that I recently “lost” Microsoft’s Windows Phone Challenge—which means I’ll be getting a new Windows Phone soon. For well over a year I’ve talked about just how impressive (and important) Microsoft’s reboot of Windows Phone has been, but I’ve also been concerned that they’re late to the game.

I’ve been using an iPhone for nearly five years now, and that platform has served me (and a few million more) quite well. It’s my phone, it’s my instant camera, it’s my calendar, notepad, and address book. It’s my media (and, perhaps more importantly, podcast subscription) player, it’s my social tether, it’s my bank. It’s more things to me than I ever imagined one device could be.

At home, I use Mac desktop and laptop computers (I switched about five years ago), and I have an iPad that I use every day. I use Airport Express and AirPlay to channel audio and video to different speakers or TVs around the house, and my iPhone integrates tightly with both cars. I’m clearly deeply invested in Apple’s hardware, software, and media ecosystems.

At the same time, I’m not a complete Apple geek. I have a Windows Media Center home theater PC in the den and other PCs around the house. A Windows Home Server backs everything up and hosts my complete music and photo libraries.

Nonetheless, integrating a new phone/camera/calendar/… into my daily life is going to be tricky at best, so I’ve been doing a little up-front research, and here’s what I’ve learned:

• Microsoft released a Windows Phone 7 Connector app for the Mac to sync media from iPhoto, iTunes, and other sources.
• I’ll need to rely on cloud services to sync calendars and contacts.
• I’ll have limited connectivity options in the cars—an auxiliary input cable at worst, Bluetooth at best. Neither is ideal.
• None of the financial or travel institutions with which I do business have apps for the Windows Phone platform.

So here’s how this is going to work: I plan to use my new Windows Phone for two weeks after completing the initial configuration and data transfer. If I’m satisfied, I’ll go for another two weeks, after which I’m going to ask myself the big question: should I switch?

This is not going to be about divorcing the Apple ecosystem but instead an experiment in blending ecosystems. Can a Windows Phone exist in symbiosis with the rest of my digital life? I expect I’ll rely more heavily on my computers, my iPad and other devices around the house for media consumption and distribution…and that’s OK. What’s more important is whether the Windows Phone can live up to what I need and expect to carry around in my pocket.

The benefit and convenience of digital content is undeniable. We carry dozens of photos of loved ones in our pocket and a library of reading in our bag. We can catch up on movies and TV while traveling. The limits of 24 or 36 images imposed by chemically-processed film are a thing of the past—we now take hundreds of pictures on vacation and view them on our televisions.

This is all incredibly convenient, right? Absolutely. But digital technology also introduces new problems. Problems with persistence, curation, transfer, and legacy. Remember that shoebox of photos you found in your grandparents’ attic or the collection of vinyl records your older brother gave you? Too young for that? OK, how about the university textbook you occasionally still use as a reference or the DVDs on your shelf?

Physical items often have a life of decades—even centuries. Hundred-year-old photographs help us better understand the lives of our ancestors. Libraries of books and music get passed down in families. Digital items? Not so much. Files get lost or corrupted, file formats become obsolete, digital licenses are often non-transferable, and all of this is exacerbated by the abundance of content resulting from our lack of curation. We always figure we’ll identify our favorite pics from that trip sometime later. But before you know it, we’re just taking more pictures.

This is a problem that many people have been thinking about, but there isn’t a good solution yet. Online services help, but what’s to guarantee that they’ll stick around? History would show that most don’t. File formats change or go away over time, and conversion isn’t easy. Think about how many different digital photo formats, including model-specific RAW formats, have come and gone in the past decade or so.

The fleeting convenience of digital content presents problems not only at the personal level, but perhaps also at a sociological level. In addition to preserving memories for our own and our family’s future enjoyment, how will we enable our descendants to learn about life in the early years of digital content?

At SXSW (South by Southwest) this year, data issues were front and center, and a discussion facilitated by musician and photographer Jesse Chan-Norris addressed this issue of legacy head-on. Jesse suggests that there’s no easy answer yet, but that this is something we should be talking about and aware of. This doesn’t mean we become luddites; it just means that we should be thinking about content preservation as we enjoy the conveniences of digital.

Jesse was kind enough to speak with me after his talk at SXSW, and the audio of that interview is included in this post.

Firmware upgrade for existing iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch devices. iOS 5.1 adds improved (read: changed) camera access from the lock screen, face recognition in the Camera app, Japanese support for Siri, podcast playback improvements (that had been previously removed), call quality improvements, and fixes for more bugs that were causing battery drain. It also adds the ability to remove individual photos from your photo stream. The update is available immediately.

Movies in the iCloud. Your iCloud account now lets you access movies you’ve purchased from the iTunes Store, rounding out Apple’s cloud services to give you access to nearly all of your media purchases from connected Apple devices.

1080p HD. Select movies and TV shows are now available in 1080p HD quality in the iTunes Store.

Updated Apple TV hardware and UI. The Apple TV streaming device has been updated with a faster processor—now capable of playing 1080p HD content—and a freshened UI that feels more app-centric. Online services like YouTube and Netflix are no longer buried in the Internet menu, but exposed as tiles on the screen. The UI update is now available to owners of current-generation Apple TV, and the new-generation device ships next week. It’s still just $99.

The new iPad.While Apple appears a bit flaky on the name of the new iPad, they were very clear about all of its new features. For the exact same price structure ($499 to $829, depending on capacity and connectivity), the new iPad has twice the resolution of the previous generation devices. At 2048 x 1536, that’s a higher resolution than most monitors, HDTVs, and projectors—all packed into a screen under 10″. A quad-core graphics processor drives the new display. The device also has a 5 megapixel rear camera with image stabilization and 1080p video recording capability, a new voice dictation feature, and 4G LTE support (including a personal hotspot feature, where supported by providers). Apple claims the new device still gets between 9 and 10 hours of battery life, depending on connectivity. All this capability comes with a little additional heft, as the new device is half a millimeter thicker and 50 grams heavier then the iPad 2. The new iPad ships on March 16.

The old iPad. The iPad 2 is now available in 16GB models only at $399 for WiFi only or $529 with 3G.

iWork and iLife for iOS. Apple has updated the current iWork and iLife (Garage Band and iMovie) apps for iOS, adding iPhoto to the suite to round out a complete iWork and iLife offering for their mobile platform. These apps are all available now in the iTunes Store.

As a result, unlike Apple with iTunes and Amazon with their music and video services, Microsoft is simply not thought of as being a media company. Of course, that’s not for a lack of trying. MSNBC, after all, was a partnership between Microsoft and NBC (which has since dissolved on the cable news side).

Which leads us to Microsoft’s Zune service. Zune is a solid and proprietary media distribution and e-retail service that evolved from a failed portal media device strategy. The service was fairly innovative when it was initially designed and launched, but so much has changed in the past few years, it is questionable if Zune can practically compete in the rapidly evolving digital media landscape. Which begs the question: should it compete? Should Microsoft maintain a closed content distribution and e-retail system based primarily on the similarly-closed iTunes model?

Today’s Zune service shares features with a few of the major competing service out there—including music streaming (Zune Pass) and music/video content purchasing (Zune Marketplace). Despite this unique combination of content streaming and purchasing, Zune still does not provide a transparently compelling value proposition that itself would drive the adoption of Zune-enabled clients. For instance, what percent of consumers do you think buy a Windows Phone or an Xbox 360 due to Zune service integration? By comparison, Amazon (and, increasingly, Google) provide client applications across multiple platforms to encourage as many people as possible to access their content, while also selling devices themselves that provide seamless consumption of their content. This approach is “open” as compared to Zune and iTunes. And it’s working.

Due to the lack of market success of Zune portable media players, combined with the lackluster sales and market penetration of Zune-enabled devices like Windows Phone, the Zune service itself feels a bit out of sync with the current media distribution landscape. It might be a different story if Windows Phone devices had huge market share, which drove the mass adoption of Zune, which would therein drive demand and new innovation. But that’s just not the case as things stand today.

When discussing media distribution systems, it’s hard to avoid talking about digital rights management (DRM). There was a time not long ago when Microsoft felt that they had an obligation (to their position as industry standard-bearers and to the industry at large) to roll out the universal standard for DRM. Remember PlayForSure? Zune represented a full-fledged retreat from this “solution for all” position to a walled garden, safe-house model—mimicking Apple’s iTunes model. There’s an argument to make that Microsoft serves itself best when going with their unique strengths vs. emulating Apple’s approach, but it is also understandable that Microsoft felt they had to respond to a failing model of PlayForSure and the roaring success of iTunes. However, with emerging players like UltraViolet looking to make headway in video DRM, while audio DRM has all but disappeared from the scene, it truly puts Zune’s walled garden approach into question.

When considering the evolving dynamics of DRM, the newer, more socially-aware audio streaming services like Spotify and Rdio, and combine this with the continued growth of video services like Amazon, Hulu and even YouTube—it is becoming increasingly challenging to see where Zune fits. And, strategically, it makes one wonder if Microsoft would better serve itself if it were a software innovator that focused on media aggregation and delivery vs. being a media distributor and e-retailer.

Sure, Zune is Microsoft’s proprietary walled garden that ensures a simple content acquisition experience for compatible devices, including Windows PCs, XBoxes, and Windows Phones (and, disappointingly, not Windows Media Center). But is that going to be satisfying enough if the options outside the walled garden start looking more appealing than what’s going on inside the safe-house?

Meanwhile, Fox, a member of the consortium behind UltraViolet, revealed at CES that they do not expect to release titles with UltraViolet until late 2012. According to a report by the Las Angeles Times, Fox executives want to see more retail outlets, more compatible devices, and a common downloadable format.

Accounts of UltraViolet’s success are varied, with representatives from the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE), the consortium of vendors behind UltraViolet, lauding it’s success to date and downplaying consumers’ initial frustrations. The president of Warner Home Video, Ron Sanders, states that “consumers are excited about the prospects for streaming and mobile device use with [UltraViolet]” while the press continues to report consumers’ complaints. Meanwhile, Warner’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2—the most successful movie of the year—continues to receive nearly as many one-star ratings as five at Amazon.com…largely in response to UltraViolet.

Actual product announcements were few and far between. Really there were only three things announced. First they discussed Fox apps coming to the Xbox. They are mostly on-demand video streaming from the various Fox brands including regular Fox (Glee, Simpsons, etc.), WSJ Live, Fox News Channel, and IGN. The second announcement was also for the Xbox: Sesame Street TV. It offers interactive episodes of Sesame Street. Now your kids can play along with Elmo and the gang. Release dates weren’t given for either of these products had. The third, and final, announcement of the night was that Kinect on Windows will be launching on Feb 1st. It can be pre-ordered from Amazon for $250.

We decided to chronicle the keynote in images. Peruse through the gallery  to see how the pictures tell the story of this year’s keynote.

Be sure to check all of our CES coverage at The Digital Media Zone.

Create a New Account…Again

Like Warner and Sony, Universal requires you to create an online account and link it to your UltraViolet account. That’s four accounts you need now for UltraViolet. Unlike the other UltraViolet sites, you can’t use an email address for your username, so if you were trying to coordinate your account information to make things easier on yourself, you’re out of luck. Also, your Universal account password must be 6-8 characters, which seems oddly insecure considering everything the studios are going through to lock down and protect this content.

Universal’s site is wisely badged with a “beta” flag, and it features a prominent “Let us know what you think!” button to provide feedback. The intent is good, but they appear to lack the support necessary to handle the feedback: we received an irrelevant, generic troubleshooting message in reply to general comments we left about the site.

Plenty of Options

Unlike Warner and Sony, Universal isn’t eliminating its other Digital Copy formats in favor of UltraViolet. Instead, UltraViolet is an available option in addition to a Digital Copy through either iTunes, VUDU, or Amazon Instant Video. That’s right: you have a choice. How customer-friendly! Warner and Sony should take notice; Paramount may already have, since they recently announced the January release of a new Dark of the Moon combo pack with UltraViolet and Digital Copy. This not only gives consumers options, it gives the studios metrics they can use to determine which format(s) their customers prefer. Now we just have to hope that the studios are watching.

Universal lets you redeem an UltraViolet copy and one of three other Digital Copy formats

Universal throws in a second UltraViolet title for free when you redeem your Cowboys & Aliens code. In our test, the selection was limited to picking between Dazed and Confused and Being John Malkovich.

Streaming and Downloading

Universal’s UltraViolet titles can be streamed on all UltraViolet streaming devices, including Macs and PCs through a browser with the Flash plug-in and supported mobile devices and Google TV through Flixster. Video quality in the browser is good (nearly a 2 Mbps bit rate), but we experienced jerks and tears, even on a powerful, Gb Ethernet-connected computer. Universal’s site shows titles from other providers, but they’re presented in a way that seems unnecessarily disjointed.

UltraViolet Titles from other providers appear disabled, with a buried link to Flixster

Universal’s UltraViolet titles can also be downloaded, but here’s where it gets confusing. From Universal’s site, you can download the purchased title, Cowboys & Aliens, to a PC, but you cannot download the free title. You cannot download titles to a Mac from Universal’s site, but you can download both titles to a Mac from Flixster.com to play offline in the Flixster Collections desktop software. You can also download either title to your mobile device through Flixster.

Downloading the UltraViolet copy of Cowboys & Aliens to a PC requires that you install yet another desktop application, and it’s an arduous process requiring the following steps:

• On Universal’s site, click Download.
• Download and run the installer file CowboysAndAliens_UV_3.exe.
• Click Install once the installer runs.
• Sign in to your Universal account.
• When the installer completes, the Download Manager will run; wait for the download to complete.

What's with the big red button?

The Cowboys & Aliens installer leaves a mess of stuff in the Start menu

By default, Universal’s UltraViolet titles download to the Public Videos folder on your Windows computer. Unlike the downloadable content from all of the other studios offering UltraViolet, these are in Windows Media (.WMV) format, and the video quality is surprisingly good. Cowboys & Aliens is a 720 x 320 widescreen video with a bit rate of over 6 Mbps. The digital rights on the file include the ability to sync to a device capable of playing subscription files, so presumably you could play this on your Windows Phone and legacy Zune devices. And unlike the titles from any of the other UltraViolet partners, it will appear and play in Windows Media Center.

Conclusions

Universal’s first UltraViolet offering seems like a cautious test, complete with a low-budget toolset and plenty of digital alternatives. And while the differentiated online and download experience might further confuse the market, this may well be a studio’s best UltraViolet adoption to date solely because Universal is not abandoning previously-offered Digital Copy options. If anything, they’re giving you more options than ever before. With just one combo pack purchase, we received unlimited UltraViolet streaming, a downloadable UltraViolet copy (that plays in Flixster’s clunky software), a downloadable Windows Media file, and a downloadable iTunes movie with iTunes Extras (similar to DVD bonus features). Plus Universal threw in an additional movie for free.

Clearly Universal just raised the bar. Now can someone please work on making it all usable? This is all still way too complicated for mere mortals.

Sony Enters the Market…

Sony released its first two movies with UltraViolet digital copies, making them the second studio to support the UltraViolet ecosystem. Like Warner Brothers, Sony’s first titles, Friends with Benefits and The Smurfs, seem strategically chosen to gently test the company’s UltraViolet infrastructure. (Remember, each studio or retailer is responsible for delivering its own content from the cloud.) Unlike Warner Brothers, Sony has included UltraViolet digital copies in their Blu-ray and combo packs only. The DVD-only versions of these titles do not include UltraViolet copies.

Sony’s UltraViolet experience is similar in some ways to Warner Brothers’ and different in others. Similar in that you need to create an account with Sony Pictures. If you purchased any of Warner’s UltraViolet titles and you’re keeping a tally, this is your third account—one for UltraViolet, one on Flixster, and now one for Sony Pictures. It’s similar in that, when registering, you have to link your Sony account to your UltraViolet account. It’s similar in that you can stream the movies online but different in that Sony offers HD streaming from its site (but only for PCs; not for Macs). It’s different in that you can stream to your iPad or iPhone, over WiFi and 3G, right from Safari.

Like Warner Brothers, Sony lets you download your UltraViolet content to your mobile devices using Flixster’s apps. This is good news, because it was unclear if you’d need a different mobile app to watch each studio’s offerings. Like Warner Brothers, you also need to download a desktop program to then download (standard definition only) copies of your purchased titles to a computer. Unlike Warner, Sony’s software uses Silverlight, not AIR—so it’s a different desktop program.

Sony’s site shows and gives you access to all of your UltraViolet titles, regardless of the provider. Based on Sony’s FAQs, it sounds like all of the providers’ sites will do the same. The idea is that you can see and access all of your titles from one place, regardless of where the content resides and where you’re logged in—at uvvu.com or at one of the studio’s sites.  It’s a good idea, and it should help to make the experience less fragmented, but Sony’s language choice when selecting a non-Sony title adds some confusion back into the mix.

Click to watch offsite. What does that even mean?

All in all, if you’re buying into the UltraViolet world, Sony’s offering seems pretty good. The differences between the studios’ products and services add confusion to the market, but in all fairness you can’t blame that on Sony—that’s how UltraViolet works. And Universal joins into the mix this week with Cowboys & Aliens. Another soft hit to test the waters? It should be interesting to see how they’re implementing UltraViolet.

…While Warner Brothers Appeases an Angry Mob

While the start of December marked Sony’s UltraViolet debut, earlier in the week November’s end had Warner Brothers scrambling to ease consumers’ frustration and confusion with [you guessed it!] UltraViolet Digital Copy.

Accounts of consumers spending 30 to 45 minutes getting started with UltraViolet, angrily contacting Flixster and Warner Brothers, or just giving up altogether were quickly spreading on the web. So Warner Brothers released a how-to video to walk customers through the registration and download process.

Then a bug in Flixster caused downloaded videos to disappear, and reports started surfacing of Flixster giving customers who experienced registration, streaming, or download difficulties redemption codes to download their purchased titles on iTunes.

Since we experienced the disappearing videos issue firsthand, we decided to test out this customer service experience. Within an hour of reporting the issue, an email from Flixster included an iTunes redemption code for one or the two reported titles and a note that more information would follow for the other. Three days later, an email message requested a mailing address so they can send a disc that will provide iTunes and Windows Media digital copies of the second title.

So things are so bad in Warner Brothers’ camp that they’re resorting to iTunes—the incumbent (and still dominant) Digital Copy marketplace—to allay customers’ concerns and sending discs to customers in the mail? Sounds like things don’t look so rosy for UltraViolet.

iOS

Apple’s mobile OS, whether used on an iPhone or the iPad is safe and comfortable.  The app store is huge, even on the tablet side.  The size of the app store is the biggest advantage that Apple has going for them.  That and marketing.  And really, that’s where Apple has succeeded.  They didn’t invent the category of product.  They simply made it easy and marketed it properly.  That’s not to say the iPad wasn’t a revolutionary product when it released.  The combination of ease of use along with massive developer support helped make tablets a real possibility, not an also ran.

iOS is easy to navigate.  You have app icons and well, you have app icons.  Folders are nice but not really necessary.  Customization is limited without jailbreaking.  In fact, doing anything outside of Apple’s prescribed system is frowned upon.  They control the experience and while it’s not for me, it made tablets accessible to millions who don’t want to deal with complicated setup and maintenance.  Install approved apps, use said apps, done.  It really is that simple.  Yes, Apple decides what apps you can use but let’s face it, with the support they have, the average user can do pretty much anything they choose.

It is, however, the lack of customization that made me walk away from iOS and the iPad.  Great device, don’t get me wrong.  It’s simply not for me.  The rigidity of the system means that even though the app store is packed with a ton of options, it didn’t do everything I wanted it to do.

Android

After using an iPad I moved on to the Acer Iconia A500.  Loved it!  Loved it so much that after having to return it (wanted a tablet, needed a laptop), I’ve recently purchased a new one and won’t be giving it up.  A lot of the experience with Android does come down to the hardware.  I won’t review the Iconia here but suffice to say that it provided the hardware needed to let the OS come through.

Android is interesting as a tablet OS since it wasn’t really a tablet OS until recently.  Google took a bit of time to get to 3.0 and manufacturers simply weren’t going to wait.  They began using the phone OS on tablets and it was a bit wonky due to this fact.  Now that most tablets are moving to 3.0 via updates, the OS is shining on the platform.  One issue is a lack of apps however.  Oh, the Android app store has thousands upon thousands of apps, but not a ton that will run well on a tablet.  The bigger form factor makes phone apps look simply horrible if they don’t scale correctly.

What Android does correctly however is add some benefits such as more freedom to do what you want with your screens and the ability to allow developers to make certain changes.  This translates into widgets and other screen enhancements that allow you to see certain information without actually opening an app.  A small thing but something I loved when compared to iOS.  As well, the Android notification system is tops among the tablets I’ve used.  Notifications stay in the notification bar until you clear them.  This feature requires jailbreak and a third party app on the iPad.  The notifications don’t get in the way while at the same time sticking around so you don’t forget that you got an email in the time it took you to finish reading that article you were on.

Overall, Android has been my favorite tablet OS so far.  Enough functionality to make the platform shine and (without root) easy enough to use that most people shouldn’t have an issue.  It still has some issues but those are being ironed out and hopefully the OS will continue to grow and develop into something awesome.

WebOS

Poor HP.  WebOS is awesome.  Such a lightweight and simple to use backbone to the HP Touchpad.  So why is it my least favorite tablet OS?  Simple.  I couldn’t do half the stuff I could do on an iPad or Android tablet.  This isn’t really WebOS’s fault as again, as a backbone to a platform it’s great.  It’s the fact that apps don’t exist for WebOS that do for the others.  Even the ones that are there are either slower or crippled in some way.

Example:  I love reading on a tablet.  The Kindle app for WebOS doesn’t allow sideloading of mobi (or any kind) of files.  Since many of the books I read are either in my Calibre library or borrowed from the New York Library, I’m kinda hosed.  The only other ereader app I found for the platform was so slow and hard to use that I gave up on it.

The lack of apps is what killed the Touchpad.  What good is an awesome OS if nothing runs on it.  Yes, there are a good number of apps in the WebOS market but most of them aren’t from the major players.  I found one decent twitter app (Spaz HD), a single version of Angry Birds, and again, the ereader front is almost completely dead.

As far as usability of the tablet itself?  A mostly enjoyable experience.  I loved the home screen.  Having the ability to have running apps right at your fingertips is great.  Of course, this comes at the expense of not being able to put app icons or widgets on the home screen.  The bar at the bottom would only allow me to place five icons.  Great if you only ever use five apps but after that you’re heading into the full list to find things.

All that said, hopefully HP won’t fully kill off WebOS.  Given the right amount of attention, it could be a fantastic option for people in search of a tablet device.

Conclusion

In the end, a tablet OS’s job is the same as a PC’s OS.  Give the user a smooth experience and then get out of the way of the applications.  All three of these OSes do a decent job at that.  The one you choose for your tablet experience should really come down to what you want to do with your new toy.  If you don’t mind being a bit locked down then the iPad is a great experience.  Excellent hardware and the OS is snappy and responsive.  If you want more freedom in what you do and want (to me) a more robust experience, find the Android tablet that’s right for you.  I can even recommend WebOS if you can still find a Touchpad at the $99 price point.  Totally worth it but understand that you won’t have the same options that iPad and Android owners do.

For me, Android is where it’s at now.  While not as smooth as iOS, the added ability of widgets, the notification system and the fact that you have a choice of hardware are all features that add to the experience.  Once you root, you have an even more powerful device.

The tablet landscape is continuing to develop and where it goes from there is anyone’s guess.  iOS will become more Android-like and Android will continue to add features.  Microsoft is working on Windows 8 which will more than likely run on tablets as well as PCs.  This is the OS battleground of the 2010s and it’s just getting started.  Options will only expand so enjoy it!

Setup

If you have setup Netflix on any other device before then this will not be new to you. Simply boot up the Netflix app on the 3DS, go to netflix.com/activate, enter your code, and boom you are good to go. It is like magic basically and it works just as you would expect.

User Interface

When I heard Netflix was coming to the 3DS I thought that they would simply implement instant queue mode and be done with it. However, I was extremely surprised to find out that they implemented the entire Netflix UI (similar to Roku) with Instant Queue, Recommendations, Recently Watched and more. Surprisingly having 2 screens allows the Netflix app to show a log of data at one time on the small screens. The bottom screen is dedicated to navigation through the different titles, while the top screen displays information and rating for the selected title. I will say that it does take a bit of time to load the main UI, but once it is loaded it is relatively snappy. It loads all cover art on demand so the box art will pop in as you scroll through. I honestly think they are displaying too much at one time and it can slow down and get a bit laggy in my opinion, but overall it’s pretty impressive.

You are even able to search inside of the app if you cannot find anything to watch on the main screen. It will start searching for content as soon as you start typing which is a nice feature, but it does take some time to search through the directory. You can navigate through the menu by using the d-pad or by busting out the stylus (no chance of using your fingers here). Navigating through just about all the panes left me wanting it to be faster. It is all going to depend on your internet speed, but I feel as though it all could have been a bit snappier.

One of the things I really liked is that when you select a title you are able to rate, play, add to instant queue, and even enable or disable subtitles for it.

Streaming

Once you have selected a title you can simply press play and it will buffer and start playing. Since the Nintendo 3DS screen is relatively small, 400x240px, it doesn’t really need to stream the highest quality video to make it look half-way decent. I was actually pretty surprised by the quality that was displayed on the 3DS. It was 100% very watchable. Not very pixelated at all and I could honestly say that I wouldn’t mind watching it on the tiny little screen if it was my only option. One bigger issue though is that the Nintendo 3DS speakers are actually pretty quiet. I never really realized it until now, but on some game titles and especially Netflix the audio is very quiet. If you are not in a silent room you will absolutely have to plug in headphones. I actually recommend that you do no matter what. If they happen to be Beats By Dr. Dre then so be it .

While you are streaming a video you are also able to pause, stop, rewind, and fast forward just like you would expect. You even get the cool frame by frame rewind/fast forward. You can simply press on the touch screens timeline to skip ahead or back. It will buffer the movie again and start streaming.

Battery Life

The big question really is how long will the battery last when streaming video? The 3DS battery isn’t a powerhouse and only last up to 5-6 hours when playing games if you are lucky. So let’s just say I was pretty worried that I wouldn’t even make it through a full length movie. I decided to fully charge up my 3DS and start a stream of the 2 Hour long Halo Legends movie. After it was all said and done to my surprise Netflix only drained 25% of the battery. Of course there is no way to tell if it was closer to draining 50% of the movie, but after watching Halo Legends again I still had 25% battery, which means you should be good to watch around 5-6 hours of content on a full charge. I think this is pretty impressive.

Issues

I will say that I have had some issues with Netflix on the 3DS. Sometimes the UI will freeze up or refuse to start buffering a video. I have found a simple work around which is to perform a full shutdown of the system, turn it on, and then boot up Netflix. My feeling is that I always keep it in sleep mode and perhaps something is hogging up the internal memory. So before I start up Netflix I simply perform this reset.

Conclusion

Alright so it might not be perfect, but it totally works and that is surprising. I wouldn’t say that it offers the best Netflix experience, but if it is your only option for the time being it is a pretty decent alternative to nothing. The real incentive will come in when they start to offer 3D movies and television through Netflix which I am sure they will do at some point. For now it is nice to have just incase you want to watch some Netflix on the go (and WiFi is around.) Oh it is also a free app, so you can’t go wrong there.

And now for some awesome Videos!!!
Netflix running on Android and Nintendo 3DS:

Here is Netflix running on my Windows Phone 7:

Hello my name is James and I enjoy purchasing over priced headphones. I know that that is the first thing you thought of when you read the title of the post. However if you have have read my review of the Beats By Dr. Dre Pro then you will know that they are simply amazing headphones with mind blowing bass. My main issue after months of use was that they were not exactly portable headphones which is something that I was lacking. I had cheap buds that I could toss in my bag or use for riding my bike, but I didn’t have a pair that were light weight that I could throw into a bag and get amazing sound out of. I was extremely happy with my Pros and I will use them all the time, but right before I left for Romania once more I accidently packed them up. I was too lazy to go through all my boxes so at the last minute I ran up to Best Buy and bought my second pair of BBDs. So after 14 hours in the air and several weeks of watching movies and listening to movies I have finally decided if my purchase was worth it. Read on..

Features

The BBD Solo HDs have a lot of features built right into them, but also lack a lot of features like their big brother the BBDs Pro. The Solo HDs were built for portability and you can tell because they are able to fold in completely and reduce their size by half. Additionally they come with a nice pouch which you can completely zip. The pouch also has a few pockets to store cables in and even a nice little handle to carry it around with you. These headphones also come with Monster’s ControlTalk attachment which is simply another cable which plugs in and allows you to control playback & volume on your iPod, and it can also allow you to make hands-free calling on your iPhone. Unfortunately for me I do not use any of these devices at all so I could not make use of them, but from what I understand they work great. The big HD addition here as far as features go is their new design/material which basically makes them unbreakable, and also a great improvement in bass over the standard Solos. Unfortunately these do NOT feature the swivel design of the Pros or the Y-Splitting capabilities.

Design

I am honestly blown away by the design of these headphones. They are extremely light weight and I would say almost too light weight, but I can not complain. The tri-fold collapsible design is great for storage and the storage pouch is really nice. They do have a shiny design to them however which is extremely finger print prone, but I haven’t had too many issues with that so far and I am using them non stop. They are marketed as “Over-Ear” head phones, but do not be fooled they are definitely “On-Ear”. At your local Best Buy you should be able to try these out. One thing that you will not be able to judge is the comfort. Since they are on your ear Monster has provided a lot of cushion to comfort your ears. The main cushions on the ear almost have a suction feel to them which is odd at first, but after a few listens you will really start to enjoy them on your ears. After 14 hours in the air I can honestly say that they did not hurt my ears at all. I did move them around from time to time, but this is expected with any pair of headphones. I also feel like they are extremely sturdy even though they are plastic. The Pros are all metal and crazy and I was fearful of buying plastic headphones, but I was able to completely bend them out with no issues at all just like the videos on the official Beats website.

Sound Quality

Just like the BBD Pros these things hit HARD with the bass. I listen to a lot of hip-hop and rap music and they sound absolutely astonishing. I did not honestly think that a pair of on ear headphones could handle so much bass. This is the first pair of headphones that I can honestly say will blow your mind when you put a bass heavy track on. Obviously the BBD Pros hit harder, but if you are looking for bass then you have found the right pair of headphones with the BBD Solo HDs. Additionally I listened to a lot of rock albums and also watched a good deal of movies for The Movie Podcast and they sounded absolutely great. Highs, lows, sound effects, and even that great surround sound effect are all here. These things will make you want to listen to more music hands down.

Value

Headphones are an investment and these will set you back around $200. Even on Amazon they come in around $180, but they are about $180 cheaper than the Pros which is nice. I spent a lot of time at best buy and any decent pair of headphones were anywhere from $150 to $200 so even though these were at the high end I honestly feel as though they are great value. They will last you a long time, look stylish, and have the best bass you can get out of any pair of headphones in this price range.

Conclusion

Even though I hate Monster as a company for their over priced cables that they pushed on just about everyone I have to give it up to them for hooking up with Dr. Dre and creating some of the most amazing headphones that you can buy. I will be rocking them Beats all over Munich this weekend, that is for sure, and I can honestly recommend them to each and everyone of you.

BBDs Solo HDs are available on Amazon right now!

Bonus photos (cause you love me so much):

Good news is I can now simplify that phrase (well not yet, but in the future). Much like when Microsoft hired a 22 year old marketing intern and realized that Windows Phone 7 Series wasn’t the best name, Qualcomm has decided to ditch the random string of numbers in favor of a more Bavarian style system.

However, the big news is hidden in the picture that might end up in a lawsuit, unless it was intentional. They appear to be marketing their “S3″ line towards cameras, gaming consoles, and HDTVs. The real question here is, are they going to make a push for next generation consoles? Playstation 4 and Xbox 720? They seem to think that their graphics have the potential to compete. Only time will tell. Check out the wonderfully outspoken nerd in the promo video below.

Source: TechCrunch via Engadget