The question.

First, let’s define “pretty”.

1 a : artful, clever b : pat, apt
2 a : pleasing by delicacy or grace b : having conventionally accepted elements of beauty c : appearing or sounding pleasant or nice but lacking strength, force, manliness, purpose, or intensity

Motorola seems to be implying 2 c. But let’s ignore that for a moment. In the interests of fairness, we shall assume 1 a through 2 b.

Next, we must define “phone”. Does that mean the hardware form-factor? Or are we also including the UI of the operating system? At first glance, it seems Motorola is talking about hardware alone. And who could blame them? This is a company that made truckloads of money selling the RAZR, a phone that looked good for its time but had little to offer in software or user experience. But things have changed, and the level of effort that went into the Droid’s aesthetics suggests that the criteria should include software, itself a condemnation of the question.

Smartphone sales over the last few years are very telling. Palm’s Pre, by way of example, gained a lot of attention for being an elegantly-designed piece of hardware with thoughtful, attractive software and an interesting, consistent user interface mechanism. The interface is designed to be friendly, to be inviting, and perhaps most importantly, to be used. Even RIM, makers of the ultimate suitphone, are exploring touchscreens and cleaner UI (albeit clumsily). This is a dramatic shift for an industry who five years ago was content to shovel flip phones and styluses at us.

The difference is the consumer. We’ve learned that electronics can be more than just cheap plastic and beige boxes. But while most of these shifting platforms are still proprietary, Android stands alone as an open-sourced alternative, made even more interesting by Google’s spearheading of the project.

Software.

Using a flawed-yet-car-free analogy, imagine hiring different contractors to build each room of a house individually. Each has access to the blueprints of the others, and they’re free to collaborate as they wish. But every engineer has their own style and opinions about the right way to do things. What do you expect the end result to look like? Does the house make sense as a whole? Would you want to live in it?

Linux is designed by committee, leading to genetic quirks which have been passed on to Android. In the case of the Droid, Motorola is the interior decorator trying to bring this mess together. They apply branding, they tweak settings, they add some custom applications. Then they try to wrap it all up in an interesting hardware package.

Hardware.

The hardware, like the software, suffers from serving too many masters. We have a touch screen with an on-screen keyboard, but also a slide-out physical keyboard. Every time I’ve held a Droid, I’ve tried to slide the keyboard the wrong direction. I’m sure the engineers at Motorola put a bunch of time and money into studies which led them to their decision on slide-out direction, and this problem would likely go away if I owned a Droid and used it regularly.

Still, why not design a visual or tactile cue which nudges me in the right direction? This is to say nothing of the keyboard itself, unreadable from too many characters per key. There is nothing artful or clever about this design. It is merely acceptable.

Hardware is the gateway to the software. In order to use any of the great features my new device comes with, I have to interact with it physically. If there is a barrier between me and those interactions, however small, my experience is tainted.

Android.

These are some quirks of one Android phone. There are others. The software has to account for these quirks. Touchscreen, multi-touch, no touch, physical keyboard, soft keyboard. Every interface possibility must be considered. And many Android phones get their own custom look-and-feel applied to the UI. When a developer sits down to write an application, they’re presented with all of these options, each requiring its own code, quality assurance testing, and support. For smaller development shops, it’s far too taxing to support every possible option, and we end up with “Android” applications that don’t really work on every android device.

Competition is critical. PC users spent years without compelling alternatives to Windows. A single choice, no matter how interesting for its time, will never benefit users in the long run. The problem with Android is that, like Windows, it competes with itself. Fragmentation on top of fragmentation.

Artful, clever.

Being pretty is about getting the little things right as much as it is about the big things. Good design requires vision. It’s great to have a cool ad campaign with textured graphics and ominous red lights, but how does that vision extend to the user experience? The message I get from the Droid – both marketing and experience – is that it does a lot of things, but none of them particularly well. It doesn’t matter how many apps I can have running at once if none of them are any good.

2 c.

In the end, we have to stop kidding ourselves; what Motorola is really suggesting is that a pretty phone is a girly phone. This is a terrible, terrible mistake, and one that may eventually prove to be the move that killed the Droid. While women aren’t typically the gadget-happy, tech-forward gender, they do drive fashion, and as every nightclub owner knows, men go where the women are.

Like it or not, a cell phone is a fashion accessory. Just as a designer suit or baggy jeans can broadcast volumes about you, so can your phone. The marketing campaign for the Droid has thus far been as much about a competing product as it has been about the Droid. If you want to compete with advertising, I advise against ads which point out how attractive your competition is.

Nintendo’s Wii is a home video game console with a special type of controller that senses motion. Any kind of game can be written for the hardware, but Nintendo made an early decision to build their marketing around the casual gamer. The ads featured families and older people engaged in games like Wii Sports. They were sending a clear message that anyone could pick up a controller and play a game on the Wii. The Wii is for everyone. Nintendo made a lot of money and went from being the number three console manufacturer to number one in a single generation. A large part of their success is due to the quality of the games and the novelty of the experience, naturally, but would they have found such a responsive audience if they had targeted hardcore gamers? If the ads had shown teenagers in a dimly-lit basement surrounded by empty pizza boxes, would the Wii still be a hit across all generations?

Who really buys into this faux-machismo, me-too-but-better attitude? Motorola is targeting men. The kind of men who want to have the manliest phone. The kind of men who want an easily-bragged-about bulleted list of features. And they’re targeting them at the expense of every other demographic.

Should a Phone be Pretty?

The question itself is silly. Of course a phone should be well-designed. Of course a phone should have attractive, easy-to-use software. Of course it should have a natural charisma that appeals to everyone.

Should. But, obviously, these features are not compulsory.

You must indicate to your users, either in the app itself or in your terms of service, that you reserve the right to anonymously track and report a user’s activity inside of your app.

I bet the Pinch Media folks are freaking out right now.

So Google was working “closely” with Apple, built a native iPhone application for Latitude, and then Apple essentially rejected it and told them to build a web application.

For Google to think that they were somehow above the rules and could release an app that competes directly the with maps application is naive at best and outright stupid at worst.  This is functionality that belongs in Maps.app, not as an add-on.  Anyone working “closely” with Apple would have targeted that route.

Trying to make an OS out of Chrome is like saying you’re going to turn a Pontiac Aztek into a stretch limousine. I suppose it could be done, but why?

Apple isn’t in the netbook market, so there’s no reason to even consider Chrome OS a competitor.  The more likely scenario is that it steals market share from Linux or Windows.  Which I’m fine with, by the way.

And I would love to say that Google is smart enough to use XMPP as an OS-wide delivery mechanism to allow web applications and services to communicate (not to mention push notifications), but Android has taught us that even if they do, all traffic will still have to pass through Google’s servers.

Schmidt praised Twitter as another way to communicate online, but he also called the service “a poor man’s e-mail” and wondered whether it will remain a standalone service or become a feature of e-mail systems.

Spoken like someone who has no idea what Twitter is or why it’s successful.

What about Android will make Java desktops succeed where they’ve failed so often before?

Simple answer, Steve: nothing.  Mobile handset applications are at their best when they’re small, simple, and complement their desktop counterparts.  But you already know this:

[W]ho’s going to be building for Android on netbooks, at least initially? My guess is that the bulk of Android development will be focused on the handset market, not netbooks. And while I admire some of the iPhone application implementations, I certainly wouldn’t use them over a version designed for my Mac Mini.

- Amazon mobile music store (press release) preloaded on the G1.
- Built in keyboard. Google Maps. Android Market, YouTube
- Launch on October 22nd
- No tethering option
- SIM-locked to T-Mobile
- Read Word, PDF, Excel files. No exchange compatibility, but 3rd parties could bring it.
- GMail is push, IMAP is pull
- No desktop application to sync
- Interface video
- Specs: 480×320 screen, 3.1MP camera, 5hrs talk time, 1GB MicroSD card preinstalled, GPS, accelerometer. Wi-Fi. 3G. Bluetooth.
- $179 with 2 year contract

Consider me whelmed.