I’m so scared to get into this topic because it is huge. But I do want to share some of my thoughts regarding characteristics of an ideal gadget for mobile media.
Here are a variety of potential mobile media gadgets. Which one is right for the job?
From top to bottom we have:
1. A pink Motorola Helomoto
2. A blue Creative Zen Stone
3. A silver Kaser Mambo-Mano
4. A white Nokia 5300 Xpress
5. A black Palm T|X
I’m going to run through the list and give you some advantages and disadvantages of these gadgets and tell you what kinds of applications they might be suited for. Let’s kick it off with…
1. Ugly in Pink
Motorola HeloMoto cell phone
I really have nothing positive to say about this phone. It is the color of pink cake frosting. The sound is awful. You can’t hook it up to your computer without purchasing special software. Java apps are so slow as to be almost worthless. And it’s a locked phone working only with an over-priced North American Cingular contract. I kid you not, I paid $30 last month to download 3Mb of data. Once I go back to Africa in January this phone is going in the garbage. Oh, and in case you wonder how I like flashing around a hot pink phone, I don’t. I dished out for a black cover to at least make it slightly less awful.
Mobile media applications: Glacial web browsing in the US at a premium price.
2. The Blue Singer
2Gb Creative Zen Stone mp3 player
This one is brand new so I haven’t had much time to play with it but already my wife tried to snag it. First thing she asked was, “Does it have a clip so I can wear it on my job bra?” Answer: yes. I bought the Zen Stone because of two reasons. First, it has an internal speaker so this would make a great media player for playing mp3s to an assembled group. In Africa it’s a common sight to see people gathered around a radio playing a scratchy barely intelligible music and news. The Zen Stone is loud enough for an entire family or even a church group to hear recordings of radio dramas for development, Scripture readings, or music. The second reason I bought this is that the interface is dead simple. One big dial for selecting tracks and adjusting volume and another button for turning on the audio speaker. Biggest surprise? This thing has user interfaces in a score of languages making it a great choice for Africa. The USB works great for charging and transferring files between the Zen Stone and your computer. Disadvantages: Your wife might steal it.
Mobile media applications: All purpose audio player with internal speaker, microphone and dead simple interface.
3. The Silver Bullet
Kaser Mambo-Mano
OK, so I bought this one because it’s cheap. $29 at Fry’s Electronics. And the generic brand makes me think that you could contact the manufacturer in China and import a massive number of these into Africa. Although I haven’t had a lot of time to play with this there are a couple of things I like. First, it’s an mp3 player with internal speaker and microphone. Second, it’s a video player although in this case you have to convert every video to the proprietary format for this gadget. Third, it’s an ebook reader, basically allowing you to display text files (although I haven’t confirmed that it displays Unicode.)
Mobile media applications: A true multimedia player that could hold an entire library of development and literacy information in audio, video and text formats.
4. The White Knight
Nokia 5300 Xpress
Dang I love the Xpress. On top of playing and recording just about every type of media, it’s a really hardy cell phone. The one pictured worked great until someone spilled a glass of lemonade on it! Now the backlighting periodically goes out. I mean I love this thing. It has a pretty sizeable memory chip that comes with it and you can add more. If I could wave my magic wand I’d stick one of these in every pocket in Africa and let the mobile media revolution begin! I heard recently that Nokia is developing a special line of phones for Africa and one of them is an Xpress. Groovy!
Mobile media applications: It does it all. A savvy user could post to Flickr (I’ve done it) or WordPress (That too) or record and upload podcasts (Piece of cake) in addition to cruising the web and using the onboard web, email and IM applications (although I prefer Opera Mini).
5. The Black Sheep
Palm T|X
OK, I know that Palm’s are about as hip as an 8-track, but I love this thing. It’s not a phone but it has built in wireless and Bluetooth and is an all around terrific media player. A built in speaker, expandable memory, a touch screen and pretty simple interface. I love it. I’m sorry to see this go the way of the Dodo bird but it continues to be a nice gadget that I use for web surfing, mp3 and ebook reading.
Mobile media applications: A pretty geeky gadget without a lot of options for use in the developing world. It doesn’t even use a standard USB cable. Nice big screen and pretty decent battery life.
Conclusions
Well, that’s a quick roundup of some gadgets that I’m playing with. I will be returning to the Zen Stone and the Mambo-Mano in the coming days after I’ve had a chance to play with them more. My goal isn’t to settle on one particular product for every need but rather draw up some specifications for the different applications, especially in Africa.
Think about this: for the price of an iPhone I could buy ten Mambo-Manos and put them in the hands of Africans who would share the contents (ebooks, audio resources, instructional videos) with everyone in their village. The question though isn’t how we get ten of them into Africa. It’s how do we get a million of them. And fill them with the right kind of data that is going to make an impact on people’s lives. Stay tuned as I’ll be thinking out loud on those topics more.
my biggest question David, apart from ‘how on earth did you end up with a pink cellphone?!!’ lol do any of them have a flashlight? particularly the Nokia xpress? The Flashlight for me…is the Best.Feature.Ever that Nokia ever came up with. I would like to find the Nokia engineer who included that on the phones to hug him/her
I’m with you on that, Juliana. The flashlight is terrific. Unfortunately I’m not seeing it on many of the Nokias and certainly not the entry level phones. I have used the Xpress for illumination just by shining the backlighting on whatever it is I’m trying to look at. It even works for a walk up a dark path in Africa (I’ve been there!)
How I got the pink cell phone is a sad story saved for another day.
I’ve got another post coming out tomorrow on the inglorious Mambo-Mano (Love the name, though… )
[...] Check out the original post showing all the gadgets I’m considering: Gadgets for development [...]
like the sub-titles
LOL
Thx!
David, just a puzzled question, why are you even thinking of doing an OLPC? Why not ask instead: what gagets are already (or – based on talking to people like mobile phone sellers – soon will be) already in use that you can get your media onto. You say you can add more memory to the Nokia, is the addon memory in a standard format for most phones in use in M (or likely soon to be) if so andif you actually want to get into the hardware business supply memory preloaded with your media…
PS: don’t throw the xoBible (http://www.xobible.com/) dream back at me, in that we’d use the OLPCs as a mediuum not as something we’d supply.
Tim, did I imply that I wanted an OLPC type product? I’ve dissed the OLPC and xo at length (See: http://lingamish.com/tag/olpc/ )
What I think might be helpful is to identify what are some characteristics of devices that would be useful for something that people hope to use in the developing world. For example, an mp3 player is much more useful if it has an internal battery and speaker. Those are simple recommendations that we could make when considering something for use with the PodBible or whatever.
Note: The Creative Zen Stone mysteriously stopped working in my bag yesterday. Although I tried resetting it I’ve yet to get it to do anything. I guess this one doesn’t pass the sturdiness test.
David, what I’m saying is that you don’t need to/should NOT think about the “characteristics of devices that would be useful for something that people hope to use in the developing world” better to ask what are they actually using (whether it is ideal or not) and what are they likely to be using soon (ask the importers/distributors what they are buying
then make media for those gadgets, not the ones you think people OUGHT to want/buy because they are sturdy etc…
If there are a rash of radios with built in MP3 capacity find a way to distribute to them, if it is TVs with VCD players then make engaging VCDs but plan to use what people have/soon will have, not what they OUGHT to have!
Um, duh. You finally got through my thick skull. It’s a very good point and I have criticized OLPC etc for just this type of thing. I guess where I went off track was being here in the US and having people ask for just such gadgets so they can buy them, stuff info on them and send them to the developing world.
Is there a place for both strategies?
Such gifts are potentially great for those who receive them. But they are only a local “sticking plaster” or enrichment for a few people. The real trick will be, I think, to identify the technologies/gadgets that are making their way into the African mainstream,and then provide sharable media (and/or means to share media) appropriate to them. In Asia mobile phones are close to ubiquitous, so the ones that can share media (via bluetooth or memory card etc.) will probably only be a short time behind. If one got ready so early adopters can adopt Bible “products” for their gadgets early then one is half way to catching the main wave on a year or three…
At least that’s how I think you should/could be thinking.
In the light of that, if phones are the next big thing, then ask for phones and use them to experiment and test and to seed the market. But probably better to buy them in Africa than in the USA
PS, I’d ask the people wanting to throw gadgets at you to instead spend the money on employing Mozambiquan student(s) to spend a few hours here and there playing with your equipment and making mashups to see what works! Much more fun, and useful, than giving away mere goodies
I’m with you. I’ve got some thoughts about tomatoes coming up in a future post that will apply to this.