Cristiano on Tech/Life

Yesterday saw the introduction of yet another “revolutionary phone”, the INQ-1. Where the iPhone and GooglePhone seem to be clearly targeted at those with some serious money to spend on a phone, this new phone is clearly targeting those on a budget.

The new phone I’m talking about is the first phone by new company INQ, backed by company Hutchison Whampoa who are also behind mobile provider 3. The phone gets its nickname – The Facebook Phone – due to its heavy integration with Facebook. The phone is a clear cut implementation of what Tim O’Reilly has been calling the “Web2.0 Address Book”.

The Good

The idea behind the Web 2.0 Address Book is that with the rise of social networks we have been organising and maintaining more and more of our social interaction with others online. Most phones on the other hand (including the iPhone) still require us to maintain the contacts on our phone manually or through laborious sync services.

This is where the INQ-1 comes in. The phone ships with an application for Facebook, MSN, LastFM, MySpace, Skype and many more. The first thing you do when you get the phone is log in to those networks and import your contacts into your phone. And this process is not a one time procedure: your contacts will stay synced continuously! So if your contact changes his Facebook avatar, the avatar in your phone changes along.

The integration of the phone with Facebook and the other services is quite extensive, and most of the features are able to run in the background. In short: the INQ-1 does everything right what the iPhone did wrong. It even has a fairly easy copy-and-paste function.

The most important thing though is the price point. The phone is available for £79 with a Pay As You Go plan, or for free with a £15 a month plan that gives the owner unlimited data on the applications, unlimited text, and unlimited 3 to 3 calls. All and all this makes the cost of ownership considerably lower than an iPhone, GPhone, or similar internet enable device.

The Bad

Even though the INQ-1 does so much right that the iPhone does wrong, it totally ignores some of the details that make the iPhone such a success. Admittedly the phone has a totally different price point so the lack of a touch screen, full keyboard, location services (GPS) and other hardware features are understandable. When we asked the people INQ about these lacking features we were told to wait for different INQ models in 2009.

There are more problems though. The Facebook demonstration we got was very impressive and we could all see the potential of the OS behind the phone to develop some applications for our own personal favorite social networks. I was missing the Flickr application, Melinda was missing a Twitter application, and Dan was missing Tumblr integration. The phone’s OS allows developers to write Brew or Java applications, but to get access to the APIs that allow the full integration like the Facebook application would require any dev to go through INQ to get permission. 

Conclusion

I think I can talk for hours about this phone (which probably means INQ did a good job) so let me quickly made a list of the pros and cons of the phone including some I haven’t mentioned yet.

Pros:

• Very nice integration with Facebook, MySpace, MSN, LastFM, Skype phone wide. 
• Applications can run in the background
• Most applications can work without being online, and then sync up when internet is established
• Both the Pay As You Go and the Pay Monthly plans have a way lower cost of ownership than many other properly internet enabled phones. 
• Phone is a proof of concept that will probably sprout innovation in other phone makers

Cons:

• No touch screen, GPS, QWERTY keyboard, or other cool hardware
• Not the most pretty phone (or: is the phone shinny enough to get the attention of the average ADD teenager?)
• OS look and feel very Android-ish and natural
• No app store or proper SDK that allows developers to write similar apps for other networks
• The Facebook application does not show the mobile enable Facebook applications
• Phone will only be available at one provider per country
• International social integration success will rely on INQ’s understanding of all the local popular social networks as there is no app store
• Data plans provide “unlimited data for the phone applications”, but it’s not clear how other sites will be measured
• Although the phone has a music player, it has it’s own proprietary headset 

It is clear that the INQ-1 could offer a real revolution in Web2.0 Address Book implementations. Still the success might fall under the lack of shiny features, gadgetiness, and a developer community. I am looking forward though to the phones that INQ will come up with in the next year as it seems that (like the GPhone) this is only a starting point.