Asian Invasion Fragmentation

My last posting was a description of our dilemma with the LG Optimus V price increase.  Since that time I have received 3 more phones, 2 of which were low cost Chinese imports and the other two mainstream phones purchased on eBay.  Let's start with the low cost Chinese phones.  The first one from China Vision called Eclipse is an attractive phone with Android 2.2, an attractive 3.2" capacitive screen and a unique (for US market) dual SIM design.  I installed the AT&T SIM in SIM slot 1 and after some modest configuration time was able to send text messages and acquire ATT 3G coverage.  The WIFI radio is a bit shaky, constantly connecting and disconnecting similar to the way the Galaxy Tablet often acts so no reason to put it down for that reason.  I turned off the WIFI and began to test it on our application.  The first problem was the phone does not come standard with the USB drivers required for side loading applications.  After reading the worthless manual and contacting responsive but non helpful technical support I gave up.  We have the ability to load the application via a server link so I went that route.  Once I had the application installed I received an error message that it required an SD memory card.  After installing a 2GB SD card I rebooted the phone and launched the application and it loaded perfectly.  I performed routing testing starting with the thermometer, pulse Oximeter, and blood sugar monitor.  The first two tests were flawless and then the Blood Sugar Monitor failed to connect and began requesting the pairing code which had already been entered.  I went through this process 4 or 5 times and then threw the phone into the trash can!  Just kidding, but I could not determine a method of getting it to work.  I have set it aside with the idea of getting back to it after testing some of the other phones.  The next phone was the Huawei IDEOS phone.  This phone appears to be a very high quality device with a smaller screen at 2.8" with a beautiful and responsive capacitive screen and version 2.1 of Android O/S.  This phone was well equipped with memory and had its USB drivers preinstalled and loaded Gmail, app installer and the Androiter application flawlessly.  Same with pairing the devices and running through the tests and then BAM!  It began rejecting the Nonin Pulse Oximeter and the blood sugar monitor despite repeated successful pairings with the phone.  I set that aside before it went flying out the window, count to 10 and all of that nonsense.  I thought I should shift gears and work with the AT&T Samsung Galaxy S and T-Mobile Motorola Defy phones.   The Motorola Defy was a joy to load the SIM and turn on with the exception of Moto blur.  What a bloated piece or crap that is, but once you are past the early stage of enabling this is a nice phone and very appropriate for the M Health market due to its water proof and dust resistant characteristics.   Samsung had a huge hit with the Galaxy S selling over 10 Million phones in 2010.  It is a beautiful full featured device and I looked forward to getting back to 4" screens and predictable performance from US carrier phones.  Wow did I get kicked in the teeth.  I paired all the devices and upon loading the Androiter application I am given an error message that the phone will not accept non market applications.  I quickly went to settings/applications and found it does not have the selection for Unknown Sources.  I Googled side loading on ATT Galaxy S and found much to my chagrin that ATT's version of the Galaxy S indeed blocked loading of any non market application.  Not to be outdone, I Rooted the damn thing.  Didn't matter, still blocked non market apps.  Android Central to the rescue with their Sideload Wonder Machine.  This wonderful little tool enables side loading on the phone.  Success, I loaded the app and it works great.  Nice phone, but what a pain in the butt.  So, to recap, my wonderful idea of buying low cost phones resulted in wasting a ton of time and getting scared that Android phones and the various Android versions they use are so fragmented that they will cause a nightmare for M Health providers such as LifeSignals to support.  At the end of the day, we have concluded that we need to certify as broad a selection of phones possible from carriers in the US market.  If we are diligent in this process we can proactively identify the problematic devices and Android builds and either solve the problem or identify in advance that we don't support the device.

Asian Invasion of Low Cost Android Phones

As LifeSignals moves toward its first customer pilots we find ourselves in the position of having to purchase small quantities of Android Phones to provide to our Pilot clients.  Our goal is to identify low cost Android Phones that run our applications efficiently and are GSM phones that will run on AT&T's network.  We have recently formed a relationship with AT&T that has provided us with low cost data only SIM cards that we can integrate into low cost GSM phones.  So, we initially found $150 LG Optimus V phones from Virgin Mobile at Radio Shack.  They were nice phones, a sub 3" screen but the apps run well and they were easy to use and had reasonable battery life.  That phone set the standard for us, but they expensive for 3G data service at $25 per month.  We assumed that our early pilots would all have Wifi so we would use the phones only in Wifi mode and skip the monthly 3G data plan.  Unfortunately, earlier this month Virgin Mobile announced a price increase to $200.  Apparently a lot of people thought that was a good deal and they could not keep enough of them in stock.  We were really blindsided by this change, but you know what they say about the silver lining in every dark cloud.  The price increase forced us to search the market for other phones that we could acquire in the $150 or less category.  I used my time at CTIA to visit a number of Chinese, Korean and South American device companies and made some good contacts.  Over the last 2 weeks I have purchased about 12 phones from 4 different companies overseas.  In my search I found that you could buy the new Dual Core LG 2X from the same low cost suppliers on the web.  I received the new LG phone yesterday, wow!  This is by far the best Android phone we have seen produced.  It is a beautiful sleek design, the screen technology is gorgeous, and the phone is super responsive.  I currently have a data only SIM in the phone which makes me sad as I would like this to be my personal phone.  When you put it side by side with my DroidX it makes the Droid X seem old and tired.  In addition, for M-health this phone has both front and rear facing cameras for video conferencing.  But I digress, so I have ordered a variety of low cost phones and received the first one today.  It is the Blu Tango from Bluproducts in South America.  It is a ZTE product from China that is pictured below. It is an attractive phone with a 2.8" screen and Froyo 2.2.  I generally like the phone but have two complaints that force me to admit that it is not comparable to the LG Optimus V that we are trying to replace.  First, the device does not come standard with the USB drivers that allow you to mount the phone as drive on your PC.  This makes it impossible to side load applications which is how we currently load our application on phones and Tablets.  Secondly, and probably more important is that the touch screen is very poor.  The visual quality of the phone is fine, in fact it is very attractive but navigating between icons and screens is very awkward and frequently results in accidents and mistakes.  Over the course of setting up Gmail and Wifi I got better at understanding how it worked best but that doesn't make me any happier with the performance.  You have to really slow down and be deliberate with every touch and keystroke.  If it was the only phone you had you might become accustomed to the pace but when I was switching back and forth between my DroidX and the new LG 2X it was glaringly obvious that the Blu Tango was more "Skanko"or "Tanko" than Tango.  See a picture of the Blue Skanko below.  So we have a number of new phones coming in over the next week and it will be fun and instructive to understand the qualitative differences between them.  It is clear right now, the high end phones we have come to know well from Samsung, HTC, Motorola and LG are really accomplished phones that are first class.  So far, the next class is defined by the LG Optimus V which are small screen but completely acceptable with only a modest fall off in quality and ease of use from the high end devices.  The current crop of low end devices will probably have one or two good enough to qualify for our pilots...I hope!

Ripped from the headlines: Connecting the dots for Mobile Health

Today and yesterday's Wall Street Journal had some fascinating and relevant M-health articles. 

·         Cisco Flips Consumer Strategy-This article goes into some depth and history about Cisco's failed direct to consumer strategy including the Flip Video Camera which they are shutting down after spending $590 Million to acquire.  They are reevaluating Linksys and their recently launched video conference product named UMI.  We payed a lot of attention to the UMI announcement since we examined the consumer video conferencing product closely in order to choose high quality low cost products for the telemedicine portion of our applications and found the UMI product to be ridiculously expensive given what was available for free from Skype and Logitech.  It was not surprising to see them cut the price from $25 per month to $10 per month and now to pull it entirely and "reposition" it as an enterprise product which means you will rarely ever see this system again.

·         Symbian Holds Fort for Nokia-The alleged news here is that Nokia is defensively announcing two new smart phones based upon the Symbian O/S that they are in the process of abandoning while Microsoft pays them to adopt Windows Phone 7.  This is laughable that if it wasn't so sad to see the world's leading phone company burrow into the ground.  Apart from the drama, the important point for Mobile Health is that the success of the iPhone and subsequent domination by the Android O/S has changed the global market narrowing the platform down to only viable two operating systems.  

·         HTC Phone Adds Video as makers go past apps-This article focuses on HTC and other Smart Phone manufacturers diversifying their proprietary offerings to go beyond app stores and markets.  HTC, Samsung, LG and Motorola were all demonstrating new services and systems at CTIA a few weeks ago.  The relevance and dot connection with Mobile Health is twofold.  The first is that the device companies are beginning to recognize the next phase of application integration and are seriously investing in proprietary and in house capabilities to develop applications and extend existing applications across phones-tablets-TVs and Set Top boxes.  This is an important recognition for Mobile Health to be sustainable in the home.  The other noteworthy nugget from the article was the projection from Gartner Group.  " The dominance of Google's  Android operating system, which market researcher Gartner Inc predicts will run on nearly half of the world's Smartphones by next year..."  So the upshot for Mobile Health is that the device makers are looking for differentiation and outside of Apple they are focusing on Android.  This is all good news for Mobile Health Developers such as LifeSignals. 

Androiter application continues to evolve

This post is intended to provide an update on the current release of the Androiter application.  At this time, the application is still in beta and only available to partners and partner pilot sites.  We expect to have a more advanced release for a large pilot in early May.  The current product is composed of two pieces, the Android application and the back end database and call center management and reporting tools.  Today I will address the current state of the Mobile Application development.  We are currently capturing and reporting the following vital signs:

v  ECG

v  Blood Sugar

v  Blood Pressure

v  Body Temperature

v  Blood Oxygen

v  Pulse

v  Body Weight

v  Respiration

Here is a screen shot of the current user interface

We are also providing SMS Text message alerts directly from the phone/tablet.

Here is a screen shot that show the capability:

We continue to evolve the application to incorporate video conferencing.  At CTIA I saw some impressive demonstrations of video conferencing using mobile devices over 4G and am confident embedded video conferencing will be a useful function within our system.

Attached is a screen shot of the video conferencing screens utilizing our Video partner Vidyo:

We are constantly on the lookout for new Bluetooth medical devices to add to our certified vendor list.  We currently support over a dozen devices from 5 different manufacturers.   In addition, we are working closely with some emerging vendors on new technologies that go beyond the normal vital signs of our first generation application.  Stay tuned as we make progress on these exciting fronts.  We are also making significant progress on our Call Center Alert System Database that I will write about in the near term and provide screenshots and system capabilities.