I have always been a huge fan of trackballs. In fact, on my first Mac back in the 1980s, I had a Kensington Expert Mouse with an 8-ball as the actual trackball. No, you couldn’t buy them that way, but yes, the trackballs were big enough you could put an actual billiard ball in my trackball. And I loved it.

When Adesso’s PR firm asked me if I wanted to review their new Optical Trackball, I jumped on it. Yes, it has been some time since I’ve owned a trackball. 15 years or so. Not quite sure why I never picked one up in the years since. Mostly inertia, I guess, as I never found one I liked quite as much as my old one.

The trackball I was back in the late 1980s, well before mice and trackballs went digital. They had analog rollers that needed cleaning often. The trackball was also pretty big, meaning it took up a lot of room.

By comparison, Adesso’s Optical Trackball is smaller and lighter in many respects. It’s also digital, which means very tiny rollers that don’t require constant cleaning. The ball itself is much smaller than my old Expert Mouse, and it’s really light and easy to move around. It’s also much more accurate–800dpi to be exact. Never quite sure what impact that actually has on my day to day use, but I did have to lower the mouse tracking speed settings on my MacBook Pro or it’d be too easy to overshoot things.

The challenge with any new trackball is learning where the optimal spot is for your hand. The left and right mouse buttons are a little higher up than I would have liked, at least at first. It didn’t take long for my hand to find the sweet spot where those buttons are easily reachable. The scroll wheel is in a good location for my thumb, allowing me to scroll pages up and down easily.

I am finding this trackball delightful to use. At $30 from Adesso (or less if you shop around), it’s also a pretty fair price! Certainly cheaper than my old Expert Mouse. Compatible with pretty much anything that supports a USB mouse (i.e. Mac, Windows and likely Linux). No drivers to install, either. It just works.

At least on my twitter stream, this Tomi Ahonen piece got a lot of play. So did the CTIA response from CEO Steve Largent. While they both raise excellent points, I think there’s a middle ground between Tomi’s “treating your customers as prisoners, and punishing them all the time” opinion and Steve’s “the U.S. consumer pays less yet uses more of their wireless products and services than any other in the world.” Let me, a better-than-average educated consumer, take a stab at this.

Paying for Incoming Calls

One of the reasons we pay for incoming calls to our mobile phones in the US is because of how our landline service evolved in the US. In most other countries, local calls are metered (i.e. charged per minute). The rate is relatively low, but it’s there. In the US, most everyone has flat rate local service. This means they can call anyone within approximately 12-15 miles as part of their line rental charge.

Because of this, when mobile phones came out in the US, the operators implemented a “mobile party pays” system. This means the person who was the mobile phone would pay to receive the call. For better or worse, this system has persisted ever since, though the FCC did investigate implementing a calling party pays system in the US at least for mobile phones, but ultimately decided against it for a variety of reasons.

Due to that reality, the US mobile operators added more minutes to their pricing plans, and even included some “free” minutes, such as night/weekend minutes and mobile-to-mobile. The end result? Yes, it costs money to receive a call on your mobile in the US, but people generally don’t worry about it.

Mobile Phones and Service Providers

Tomi and Steve are comparing apples to oranges when it comes to the number of handsets available. Tomi lists the number of phones actually in operator stores–43. I know from talking with people at CTIA that their “over 630 handsets” number includes handsets you can purchase outside of the operator channel. They are both right, in a sense, but what matters to consumers is what they can purchase in stores–not what they can order online.

Again, we have a different dynamic in the US. Whereas in most other places, there is the one true GSM standard with a common set of frequencies, we have at least 3 standards (GSM, CDMA, and iDEN) with “unique” frequencies not in use elsewhere in the world. Only one manufacturer makes iDEN phones (Motorola) and the CDMA carriers are generally not open to allowing non-operator devices on their network.

GSM operates more or less like it does elsewhere in the world, but it’s a much smaller market (the last number I heard when I was at Nokia was 45% of the US market), and you have the difficulty of both T-Mobile and AT&T using different frequencies for 3G. Until the chipsets used by mobile phones can support both sets of US 3G frequencies, even if you can unlock a phone, you can’t fully use it on the other network, so what’s the point?

Long term, all the major US operators are moving to LTE–and yes, I believe Sprint will ultimately change their WiMax stuff over to LTE. The chipset manufacturers should be able to support all the different US frequencies (including the 700mhz spectrum not being used yet). Whether or not we’ll see unlocked handsets being openly sold like in other countries remains an open question, of course.

In short: the market appears to be–on it’s own–evolving towards a point where we can buy our handsets separate from service and actually be able to move between service plans without a mandatory handset upgrade as is the case today. That’s my prediction and, quite honestly, it can’t happen soon enough.

Roaming

Sorry, Tomi, I’m not sure where you got your info, but most Americans don’t pay roaming inside the US. I haven’t since I had my AT&T Digital One Rate plan back in 1999 (and yes, back then it was a revolutionary plan). You have to work pretty hard these days to find a plan where you are charged for roaming inside the US. Outside the US, of course, it’s a different story.

Text Messaging

This is one area where I agree wholeheartedly with Tomi on. There is absolutely no reason anyone should have to pay to receive an inbound SMS message. EVER. At least with a phone call, I can see who is calling and I can make the choice not to answer. With a text message, I have absolutely no control over who can send me a text message–and affect my bill.

Granted, US operators have provided buckets of text messages, and even provide unlimited text messaging as an option. However, the usurious per-message rates of $0.20–which I’ll point out once one operator decided to do, they all did–simply encourage customers to buy a bundle they may not want. It definitely drives up the bottom line of the operators.

And yes, given the obscene revenues on SMS, I should never EVER have an SMS outage.

Universal Coverage

While Steve did say that 92% of customers are satisfied with their wireless service, most everyone can name a deadspot (or two) in their daily travels–that one spot where no matter what time of day it is, you drop a call. I certainly had my share of those on Interstate 5 when I was driving to and from Northern California to see my dad.

The challenge with fixing that problem is not so simple. I don’t know what the regulations are in other countries, but in the US, every tower that goes up requires (almost) an act of congress to get put up. Local communities can and often do get in the way of bettering the wireless networks because they don’t want to look at ugly towers. Applications for new towers with city or county governments would often take months or even years to get approved.

The FCC, to their credit. finally put in a “shot clock” on these applications at the end of 2009. Even with the shot clock, we’re look at either 90 or 150 days to get a ruling on whether or not an operator is allowed to put a tower up. That doesn’t include actually getting the tower up and online. And no, that’s not the operators “incompetence,” Tomi, that’s just the government bureaucracy for you.

Phone Subsidies

Steve doesn’t even attempt to address this issue in his response to Tomi’s posting, which is that people who take a free/cheaper phone in exchange for a two year service agreement pay the same monthly rate as those who don’t. This is ridiculous.

T-Mobile actually gives you a discount for not taking a phone subsidy: up to $20/mo depending on the plan! They also allow you to finance your phone purchase separately over the course of 4 or 20 months. This way, you know exactly what you’re paying for your phone and you stop paying extra once your phone is paid off in full.

Largest Mobile Data Market

Steve mentions in his posting that “the U.S. also has the largest mobile data market and according to Nielsen Mobile, we have more mobile Internet users than any other country.” We certainly have a lot of users, but the reason for that is the prevalence of Unlimited Data plans–something AT&T has discontinued. Given their history with SMS, I expect the other operators will fall in lockstep within 6 months. Unlimited data will be a thing of the past and consumers will simply be paying more for less, or opting not to use it because now they need to watch and see how much data they use.

Conclusions

Things are not quite as bad at Tomi makes them out, but they certainly aren’t as rosy as the CTIA points out either. There is plenty of room for improvement. More towers, more quickly, and better prepaid data plans. That’s what I want to see different in the US mobile operator market. What about you?

My personal inbox is getting bigger than my work inbox, so it must be time for an Inbox Liquidation Post.

Truph0ne News: Having made use of Truphone Local Anywhere on my last trip abroad, I’m certainly interested in seeing it expand to other markets. They recently announced planned expansions of their “local markets” to The Netherlands and Spain (i.e. markets where you can get “local” numbers and pay “local” rates). Unfortunately, it’s not immediately, it’s “months.” On a more positive note, their iPhone app now supports iPhone OS 4.0 multitasking, so you can receive Truphone calls on your iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4 while running other apps.

iOS4 (or rather iPhone OS 4): I’ve actually been playing with iPhone OS 4.0 for the past few months. I had the “golden master” release on my phone for nearly two weeks now and I’ve been fairly happy with it. Unfortunately, to take advantage of the multitasking feature, your apps need to be updated to support it. Why Skype did not launch their updated app the day iOS 4 became generally available, I’ll never know. My prediction: we won’t see it until after my kids get back into school in September.

Tomi Ahonen Takes on the US Wireless Industry: I am reminded of what my tour guide in Jerusalem told us: never let the facts get in the way of a good story. Former Nokia executive Tomi Ahonen gets a couple of facts wrong in this epic rant about the state of the US mobile phone industry, but most of what he has to say is spot on.

Unlimited Mobile Data in 25 Countries: I’ve gotten a couple of press releases from XCom Global about their offering where they will rent you either a wireless USB modem or a MiFi like device on a per-day basis. The pricing is pretty good, given what I paid for WiFi in Europe. Unfortunately, it only works if you’re traveling to one country. Wonder how they’d handle that situation?

MAXroam Goes Global: I had a press release in my inbox about MAXroam’s special plan for people going to the World Cup. I figured it might be a bit dated by now, so I went to see if it was still being offered. To my surprise, their website had changed and they have launched their “Global SIM” cards. This was the “Holy Grail” SIM card I used on my last International trip . You can buy reasonably-priced bundles of minutes and/or megabytes of data to use in 41 European countries. These SIMs “just work” without the usual trickery involved with global SIMs.

Positioning Without GPS or WLAN: I like the idea of not having to fire up the GPS or WLAN to get location. The mobile phone is already talking to multiple cell phone towers and it is possible to use the information from those towers to triangulate your location. It may not get as pinpoint as a GPS can, but it can certainly get close enough (does 7-12 meters work–indoors no less?) where a regular GPS can’t easily. I really hope GloPos and the technology they are building around this gets some traction because it sounds like the right idea for a lot of reasons.

I’ve spent the last several days in the Benelux region of Europe and have a week or so in Israel ahead of me. Seems like a perfect time to test the three Global Roaming SIMs I have: from MAXroam, Truphone Local Anywhere, and Roam Mobility.

For the purposes of full disclosure, I was supplied the SIM by the company gratis with some amount of credit. The free credit on my MAXRoam SIM expired (as they sent me the SIM a while ago), so I paid 25 EUR to put some credit on it.

This post will compare the following features: Making and Receiving Calls, Text Messaging, Data, and Voicemail.

Receiving Calls

With all the global SIM cards out there, receiving calls works more or less as you expect. MAXroam provides a Belgium inbound DID, but also provides inbound numbers in other countries for a nominal monthly fee. Roam Mobility provides both a US and a UK DID number. Truphone will provide a either a US or UK number, but you can have both at extra cost. Truphone and MAXroam charge a per-minute fee for inbound calls with MaxRoam having the better rate in the EU and Israel.

Roam Mobility is unique in that it provides inbound calls for free in 65 countries (including Israel, but not Belgium for some reason). However, it requires an annual free of $25 a year to maintain your number. In countries where they do not offer free inbound calls, their inbound call rates are higher than either MAXroam or Truphone. If callers call your US number, the inbound call rate increases by $0.25/min, even in the “Free” countries.

Making Calls

Truphone offers the most natural of calling experiences, allowing you (in many countries) to dial as normal (provided your normal dialing patterns includes full international dialing, starting with + country code). In some countries, they have an “economy callback” rate which allows you to place a call and have it call you back instead, making the call somewhat cheaper. If this is an option, you will get an SMS when you land in that country letting you know.

Roam Mobility always requires a unique dialing method (starting the number with a * and ending with a #). You then receive a callback from the system. This makes Roam Mobility the least user-friendly of the services I tried.

MAXroam has the best compromise: you dial normally (again full international number with + sign). The system does not complete the call, but you immediately get a call back.

The rates for making calls vary by provider, but in all cases, it is somewhere between roaming rates on AT&T and a local SIM. Not the cheapest call you can make for sure, but if you absolutely have to make a call, it won’t completely break the bank.

Text Messaging

Thankfully, all of these providers offer SMS that functions the normal way (i.e. you text normally). Where these services differ are rates. Thankfully, in the EU and Israel, all the services offer free inbound SMS. The difference is in outbound rates. Roam Mobility charges a $0.75 a message, which is even more usurious than AT&T’s roaming rate of $0.50. In the EU, Truphone’s rate of $0.16 wins hands down, though their rate jumps to $0.56 a message in Israel. MAXroam charges 0.32 EUR per message in both the EU and Israel, which is still better than AT&T’s roaming rates.

One advantage that MAXroam has over the others is they offer the ability to send texts for 0.05 EUR over their website. The texts originate from your MAXroam SMS number and is handy in places where you have WiFi access to the Internet. This is an extremely handy feature! I only wish that feature had a more mobile-friendly web interface!

Data Service

Roam Mobility currently does not provide data service (even though they told me months ago it was coming). Truphone and MAXroam both provide data service, though the service needs to be manually configured into the device. Both services charge in 100k increments, with Truphone appearing to have an edge pricing-wise.

Both services data offerings are generally much cheaper than roaming service provided by AT&T. I tested the service in a Nokia N95-1 and got 3G service on both Truphone and MAXroam (depending on area). I used the mobile Twitter website to send out a brief tweet, as well as some more extended usage on Gravity and the built-in web browser. It worked exactly as expected.

Local Service

One unique feature that Truphone has that the others do not is “local” rates for the US and UK markets (they are adding other markets soon). This means, while you are in the US or UK (depending on the SIM type you chose) you get similar rates to what you’d get if you had a prepaid GSM plan with a local provider (in my case, AT&T or T-Mobile). The idea is that this could be your only SIM card you use everywhere. At least in the US market, The rates are “in the same ballpark” but I can get cheaper per-minute (and per-text) rates with either provider. You do get less usurious per-MB data costs, though.

Voicemail

All of the services provide voicemail, but you are required to dial from your phone in order to retrieve the voicemail, which can be expensive. Roam Mobility does not offer personalized voicemail (which is a huge fail, IMHO), but both Truphone and MAXroam offer the ability to customize your voicemail greeting.

Conclusions

Honestly, there is no clear winner here. All of the services do what they say on the tin, but none of them have the right mix of usability, features, and pricing for my needs. I ended up using both Truphone and MAXroam for different functions. Look at the services carefully to ensure you understand the pricing for your particular situation and usage patterns.

Meanwhile, the Holy Grail is coming. While I was in Europe, I used a different roaming SIM card that provided a completely natural usage experience (normal dialing, no callbacks) with SMS and full 3G support. The product is still undergoing testing and pricing is not available yet, but I have no doubt that it will be as good or better than current offerings out there.

The folks from MobileFun sent me a rather novel iPhone stand for review: the Desk Genie Non-Slip Charging Desk Stand. It charges a number of different phones, including iPhones. It also includes a two-port USB hub and an 8-in-1 memory card reader.

The non-stick surface is a kind of rubbery pad that your mobile device can rest on. It seems to support my iPhone with case quite nicely as well as a number of Nokia phones I tried. The pad does occasionally lose it’s “stickiness” but it can easily be restored with a towel dampened with water to clean off any dirt or debris.

The most confusing this about the device is the instructions, which were clearly written by someone whose first language was not English. The device plugs into your computer with a USB cable. There is also a port on the back of the device where you plug in a different cable that has an end where you can plug in a number of different ends (which are included). The upshot of this is that you can charge a number of different devices.

For phones like the iPhone where you might also want to sync your phone to your machine while charging, you should use your regular USB cable instead of the supplied charging cable. The upshot of this arrangement is that I can also use this device to charge my Nokia E71. Unfortunately, the Nokia 2mm tip included in my set did not reliably charge my Nokia E71. Unfortunately, this is a rather common issue I have ran into with chargers not made by Nokia. Fortunately for me, I had a similar tip provided with a different charger that seemed to work ok.

All in all, a worthwhile item to purchase as it combines a number of different items in a small space. With the current USD to GBP exchange rates, it’s not a bad deal, though it might take a while to arrive.

Crossbeam has issued a press release about their expanded strategic partnership with my employer, Check Point Software Technologies. The key paragraph in that press release:

Customers can now purchase integrated solutions from Check Point, complete with maintenance and support delivered by Check Point’s award-winning global service organization. Check Point will provide support for both its software products and Crossbeam’s X-Series platform. This simplifies the ordering process and promotes closer product, sales and technical collaboration between Crossbeam and Check Point to support customer needs.

The kind of customers that will buy Crossbeam X-Series platforms are the kinds of customers who want what we used to call “first call, final resolution” back at Nokia. This is exactly what this provides: a single point of contact for purchasing and support of Check Point software on Crossbeam hardware. What’s not to like?

I find it funny that the CTIA folks invoke the famous John Adams quote about facts being “stubborn things” in their latest post, which is a response to a FreePress posting about how the CTIA doesn’t get it in regards to reclassifying broadband as a Title II service (thus giving the FCC regulatory authority over it). While I will not discuss the implications of that particular desire, some of the comments that went back and forth talked about what we pay for wireless service here in the US versus what they pay elsewhere.

Facts are funny because, while facts are facts (or as Ayn Rand wrote in Atlas Shrugged, A is A), how those facts are portrayed are debatable. And while I don’t have any unique facts to contribute to this discussion, I can certainly look at the facts differently:

Heavy Users Pay Less In The US: With the adoption of unlimited voice minute plans by all the major carriers as well as unlimited texting plans, I think it’s safe to say this segment of user is much better served by US carrier plans.

Total Cost of “Ownership”: The various reports that look at what everyone pays for wireless service do not take into account one very important fact: what the phone needed to use that service costs. Unlike a lot of other places, the US operators subsidize phones. A two year contract is part of the deal. What are the upfront costs for establishing service? What are the ongoing costs, and how much does the subsidy factor into those costs?

Cost Of Changing Providers: Related to the above: what happens when you’re unhappy with your current provider? What will it cost you to change? In other countries, the cost is effectively zero. They all use the same technology and getting your existing handset unlocked is generally a trivial exercise. In the US, even if you can unlock your phone, because of the different wireless frequencies and standards, changing providers often means buying a new phone–and agreeing to a new contract.

Voice-Only Customers Well Served: If all you care about is making voice calls, the current providers and plans do a reasonable job, whether you want to go prepaid or on a monthly plan. I’d like to see some monthly plans lower than $40 (which seems to be the floor for these plans), but I spend roughly $100 a year for my wife’s mobile phone usage thanks to prepaid T-Mobile. She is not a heavy talker.

Data-Only Customers Not Well Served: If you are a talker and on a monthly plan, you can typically add a $30 (or less) a month data plan to your service. One could argue with those prices, but at least it’s fairly consistent industry-wide. Data-only is a different story. On a monthly plan, at least $50/mo (if not more). Prepaid? Depending on the operator, it either doesn’t exist or is just as expensive as a monthly plan, and it’s tied to a specific device (e.g. a USB broadband device). In Europe? Prepaid data for short periods of time is easy to get and isn’t terribly expensive.

Texting: Like with voice, higher volume users are better served by US plans, which provide a relatively low cost per-text or are flat-rate unlimited. Low-volume text users in the US are charged an ever-increasing amount per message–sent or received. I remember when it used to be $0.10 to send a text and free to receive. Now its $0.20 a message–sent or received. Picture messages are much more. Europeans have much better pay-per-text rates than Americans do (and don’t have to pay to receive texts to boot).

Conclusion: Voice customers are better served by US operators. However, that is by no means the entire picture. Texting and data prices, as well as device acquisition costs also play a role in the overall total cost of our wireless service. These are facts the CTIA conveniently leaves out of their analysis.

The new Nokia N8 was announced today. I have to say, it looks like a really nice phone. Hopefully the 12 megapixels camera will be less noisy than the typical mobile phone camera and the new Symbian^3 OS will be a step-up from the previous Symbian releases. People are already complaining about the lack of a replaceable battery. The fact the phone seems to support both European and US 3G bands (both T-Mobile and AT&T) can’t be overlooked.

While I don’t know for sure, I’m guessing the fact that a pre-production unit fell into the hands of Eldar from Mobile-Review.com who posted a review of the Nokia N8 had something to do with the fact they officially announced it today. But it does bring to mind something that I believe is worth pointing out.

It’s actually not all that uncommon for Nokia to lose a prototype device. Regular readers of the mobile phone gadget blogs will attest to that. When I worked at Nokia, we got fairly regular reminders about letting information out about our pre-release handsets. They often came out shortly after a “flagship” device got prematurely exposed to the outside world.

When an Apple engineer accidentally left an unreleased iPhone device in a Redwood City bar, that was all anyone could talk about for days. Hell, it’s still in the news. Meanwhile, Nokia won’t get a whole lot of press out it. Sure, they’ll get some from a few hardcore Nokia bloggers and it might get a perfunctory mention on the gadget blogs and podcasts, but that’s it. It will cease to be a story in 24 hours.

I realize Nokia sells more phones in a week than Apple sells in a year. I realize Nokia is bigger outside the North American markets. I know many more ways that Nokia is better than Apple. But it goes to show you how the technology press cares more about anything coming out of that secretive little company in Cupertino, CA than they do for the things that come from that company in Finland. Just saying.

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This is the third Adesso Wireless Keyboard I’ve reviewed. So far, I’ve had mixed results with their keyboards, and I find the latest unit they sent me (the WKB-4200UB) a mixed bag as well.

Like the WKB-4000UB that I reviewed previously, it has a reasonable-sized dongle that snaps underneath the keyboard when not in use. It uses that crowded 2.4 Ghz spectrum for sending and receiving, but it doesn’t appear to cause any issues with my WiFi or Bluetooth.

The keyboard itself is also very similar to the WKB-4000UB in terms of size of the keys and the keyboard layout, which I find relatively easy to use and type on. The main differences are the size of the keyboard itself, the location of the trackpad, and these special media buttons.

I had difficult getting used to the touchpad mouse on this device. Perhaps because I am now completely won over to how Apple does their touchpad with multitouch, but I also found that, even after adjusting the tracking, I couldn’t make the mouse cursor move with enough precision and speed.

The dealbreaker for me was that unlike most keyboards where the “media keys” more or less work properly on a Mac, on this keyboard, they either don’t work entirely or map completely differently to how they are pictured on the keys. I could not figure out/remember the mapping between the key and what it actually did.

The retail on this keyboard is $119, but a quick Google search shows you can get it for around $84.

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