The Cricinfo app is an even better example of that phenomenon, as it delivers significantly less content than the website in a significantly less useful manner.

It may be because I'm old, but I find the screen size difference between a tablet and a smartphone to be massively important in terms of the reading experience.

I think it's because most websites are optimised for a minimum screen size of 1024px x 768px. As a result, I personally think you need a minimum of a 9" screen to browse the web normally.

Anything smaller, then you have to pinch-to-zoom or double-tap on bits of the screen to make it readable. Or use a site optimised for mobile. So browsing webpages on a mobile is inevitably a compromise (although the convenience of being able to do it on-the-move makes up for it).

Has anyone seen a Samsung Galaxy Note by the way? They're fricking huge.

I sat next to someone with one of those on the subway last night.

I didn't really see the point of it, especially as she had it in a case that looked for all the world like a 90s Filofax.

Absolutely. I think the touch screen keyboards on smartphones are pretty decent in terms of functionality, but to type anything more than a text is too much like hard work. Tablet sized keyboards are the perfect size for this balanced against general portability.

Samsung are a curious company. Very successful of course, but with little in the way of an original idea in their heads and a general scattershot approach to products ranges which is the anthithesis of what Apple represents.

Those big Galaxy Notes seem little more than a punt at creating a new market niche. They are too big and clumsy to use as a phone, but not really big enough for serious work.

Yeah, it may be because ursus is old, but I can't understand why people read novels or watch movies on their phones. I mean, just because something is technically possible doesn't mean it's advisable. You really have to be watching season two of Lost sitting in a park?

I wouldn't watch TV in a park, but on the Tube or a plane? Absolutely.

I guess. I mean, I see people doing it, so clearly they're getting something out of it.

I just can't see it, for me, being a pleasurable medium for that sort of thing. I've tried reading a book on my phone and I find it frustrating to be constant flicking the page up.

And my perception would be that the TV experience would be squinty at best, although I've not tried it.

I often watch videos on my iPod touch - yes it is a squint ; and for that reason I want an iPad one day .

Like GY, down time in planes and trains - video watching is pretty good and draws you in.

Also, my alternative is to watch it on my laptop , which is a Lenovo Thinkpad - the screen experience isn't all that great, and I enjoy the iPod more for clarity than that - even though the TP is more expansive.
Of course the iMac at home is the biz for viewing - but too big to haul about.
Now reading books on something as small as a phone or an iPod Touch is no fun - again a tablet type device is the one to get.

If we do ever get an iPad , I won't be able to pry out of my good lady's mitts though for me to use it,.

Here's another thing. It might seem screamingly absurd to buy an iPad for your kids. But here's our experience: a Nintendo DS is $129-ish. Each game is $29 to $49 (for the good 'uns). Meanwhile, games on the iPad are $1.99 or $2.99 each, and there's billions of good ones that play much better than a DS ever could. But given all the other stuff you can do with an iPad, the absurdness goes away pretty quickly.

VTTBoscombe wrote:


This. Especially since she can download her knitting/crochet patterns directly to it.

My phone has a 4.3" screen, which isn't much smaller than the screens on planes. The latest generation of Samsung and HTC phones have even bigger screens with 720p displays. Maybe I'm just used to squinting at small screens because I've been playing handheld games since the Gameboy, but modern phones are perfectly fine for casual viewing.



Can't argue with the cost argument, but I'd dispute the quality. I've got a ton of great games on my iPod, but very few stack up against, say, Ocarina of Time on my 3DS, or Dragon Quest IX on the DS. And, regardless of production values, for some types of game, touch screen controls are no substitute for physical controls.

Worn Old Motorbike wrote:


Not sitting in a park for me, no. But as GY indicated: it's massively convenient on the plane. You don't have to bring all those books in paper form, and you can keep reading when they turn off the lights on the plane since the phone provides the light for you. But I of course acknowledge that the convenience wears off when you get older and eyesight becomes an issue.

I'm learning a lot from this thread. Hadn't considered that tablets were great for kids, didn't know about their lengthy battery life, and this tablet/hardware keyboard rig that SP showed upthread made me feel seriously out-gadgeted. Nice one.

iPads never make that repetitive noise that means an idiot somewhere is demanding to talk to you. That's a plus, in my book.

Well, they can, if you really want them to (at least for texts, emails, Twitter mentions, etc.)

I am constantly surprised by how many websites don't do anything for mobile users. I track the mobile stats for 200% and they now make up around 15% of all traffic to the site. You'd think that would be a biggest enough share for web designers to think more carefully about it.

On the subject of apps, I have the Guardian Android on my phone and the most infuriating thing about it - for me, at least - is that I can't pay for it. I buy a copy of The Observer every Sunday out of penance and it usually ends up in the recycling bin.

The gadget situation in our house has got out of control over the last couple of years, primarily because a) We're earning more than we used to, and b) We're both terrible hoarders. Off the top of my head, we have: 2 laptops, 2 netbooks (one with a broken screen after I dropped it, admittedly), 1 desktop machine, 1 media PC, PS3, Wii, Kindle, 2 flatscreen TVs (one in the living room and one in the bedroom), 1 media streamer, a smartphone each, 3 x external HDs (one 320gb, one 1tb and one 2tb).

It's an environmental nightmare, and would be even more so if anything like all of them were plugged in. Plans for this year include a tablet, a NAS system and new mobile phones.

Now that I've written all of that, it makes me heartily depressed.

I'm really glad they don't. The vast majority of "mobile optimised" sites are vastly less usable than "desktop" sites, on a modern phone. Screen size isn't the only factor for a mobile. Slow/inconsistent connections and slow page rendering are also massive factors. Taking a desktop site and hiding its content behind headline links, as many mobile sites do (Wordpress blogs are particularly bad for this), is the worst thing you can do. Now instead of loading one page and having all the content available to peruse at my leisure, I have to go into each story individually.

See, I would tend to say the opposite. Full versions of web pages take considerably longer to render than scaled down versions and, of course, they have to be pinched to be readable. 200% on a mobile phone has all of the functionality of the normal site except for its sidebar, which will be going from the full site in the fullness of time anyay. It's far from perfect but it works. Well, kind of.

But, then, as anybody with any cursory knowledge of how I run the site will be aware, I am perpetually one rebuild away from having it the way I want it.

Edit: Should point out that 200% uses a responsive theme rather than a separate mobile theme that works by OS detection or whatever.

Worn Old Motorbike wrote:


Would you rather I read the Blizzard (a thought-provoking, intelligent journalzine, even if it's only about our dear game) on my phone, or just sit there gormlessly reading nothing?

And I watch hockey games on my iPhone before playing goalie, as watching Ken Dryden or Patrick Roy and picking up any tips is a good use of the dead time of sitting on the train.

So, wait, your two options are squinty-reading on your phone or gormlessly sitting and reading nothing? Fuck me, they're militant about how you spend your train time down your way.

No, I take your point. But I'd rather, you know, read a book or a paper in those situations. But then, I do Sudoku, so don't go by my tastes.

Would you rather I read the Blizzard (a thought-provoking, intelligent journalzine, even if it's only about our dear game) on my phone, or just sit there gormlessly reading nothing?

But reading is never the only option. WOM is in the park. He can watch the birds, make faces out of the clouds, collect leaves and try and figure what trees they're from, all kinds of stuff that doesn't involve staring at a screen. He might even [shock, horror!] attempt to talk to someone else in the park. But I guess that's suspicious activity these days.