Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Wednesday, 08 July 2009 11:49
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
Another new “Blue Tick” handset designed for better reception in rural
and regional areas has been unveiled by Telstra, and it’s the musically
capable Sony Ericsson W508 sporting Telstra’s custom designed
“TelstraOne Experience”.
When you’ve got the iPhone delivering an incredibly simple user experience, it’s no surprise to see telcos trying to emulate that ease of use – but on a much larger range of handsets those available from Apple.
Telstra’s effort in this arena is somewhat unimaginatively called the “TelstraOne Experience”, but it does do a good job of bringing Telstra’s content and capabilities to the fore so you’ll be more inclined to actually use them – and Telstra wants this interface on more of the phones it sells.
Use of Telstra’s online products and services, from Mobile Foxtel live TV channels through to Telstra’s own “BigPond” content services which sell music and more, brings more revenue to Telstra beyond people simply making phone calls and sending text messages.
It’s also the reason telcos work so hard at customising the interface of different phones, although the TelstraOne Experience is designed to go to “the next level” as a “primary” interface instead of that the phone normally offers.
I remember Optus tried doing this when Nokia launched its N70 model, but Telstra has a lot more content to offer its mobile customers and looks to have done a much better job, while also taking advantage of phones that are more capable than the N70 at the time of its launch.
One of the first phones to get the TelstraOne Experience was the Motorola A3100 running Windows Mobile 6.1, a successor phone to the A1000 Symbian UIQ phone from a few years ago.
The TelstraOne Experience works quite nicely on this model as a shell over the standard Windows Mobile 6.1 environment, giving you very easy access to all of Telstra’s services, which is exactly what Telstra wants.
The A3100 can, like the iPhone, download apps, help you organise your life, offer you games to play, let you read emails and more, and will definitely appeal to Windows Mobile fans who want access to the Next G network at a cheaper price than HTC Touch devices.
The iPhone still offers the smoothest (and now with OS 3.0) arguably the most complete smartphone experience – with the exception (for now) of true background multitasking.
But the A3100 and the iPhone aren’t what is being announced, but the Sony Ericsson W508 instead.
More details on page 2!
