Babies and Mobiles – part 3: various

So you might remember I am posting occasionally about Babies and Mobiles – today I have a small selection of thoughts, loosely grouped together…

Thought #1: MWC – I’m off to MWC this week, and it’s the first time I won’t see her for a more than day. That in itself isn’t great, but I was pondering over the ways in which Mobile might keep me ‘connected’ to her:

• calls (with my Wife obviously)
• SMS (likewise as above!)
• MMS (well it will be great to see pix of her)

… and really that’s it – a video call (if it works) would only result in a 5 frames per second grainy image, with a complete lack of detail – not really worth it. I could figure on doing something over WiFi, but that then removes the flexibility at the other end (in that my Baby would need to be near a Webcam)

So, here it is then – when 3G arrived, much-heralded and trumpeted was the ability to make video calls – but they haven’t taken off have they? Whilst working for a certain 3G operator, I made a few “test” calls in the process of work, but I’ve never initiated a video call from my own personal handset – and I wonder what the percentages actually are? Probably lower than those that have used/tried MMS – which brings me nicely on to………..

Thought #2: Sharing pix – when our Baby was born, I sent some pix to a few people that I knew had MMS capability, knew what to do with an MMS message, and whose handset I knew could handle it. But do you notice anything in that last statement? It was ME taking care of whether I thought people could/would get the pix – whereas MMS was always envisaged as a simple messaging service.

It’s funny really the way things worked out, because even now after 5 years , where the MMS clients in handsets are actually usable (yes, it DID take that long), there are really not many people using it. People like me, and probably lots of you, the readership, use it occasionally – because we know to increase the likelihood of the message arriving – but that was never the point was it?

Another key point here is that in the end I decided that just using the email client on my handset, and attaching the full-res pictures (rather than the, at best, VGA pix) was a far better idea – plus it went to peoples’ (typically) PC-based email clients – which I knew for sure (a) they could use, and (b) would display the images. I’ve said before Mobile imaging quality isn’t great, but if the “sharing/sending” part is faulted too, then there’s little point in using it, unless for something quite trivial, and in the moment. Speaking of Mobile imaging quality…..

Thought #3: Imaging + Mobile = not great! – I took a by-chance picture the other day of my Baby, sticking her tongue out. Being so young, it was a partial ‘fluke’ of a shot, but relied totally on a low-latency by the camera. Luckily I was using a Casio Exilim 7.2MP, and it captured the pic brilliantly. However, I can’t think of a single Mobile cameraphone that I’ve had, that would have been up to the challenge – they would have lagged by anything up to a couple of seconds, as I am sure many of you who have tried action pix, will have noticed. I’m incredibly eager for a handset that has a truly good camera, but, for right now, I contend it doesn’t exist!

So that’s it for the moment – I guess at the moment you could say the whole Baby-Mobile interrelation isn’t working that well – but I’m hopeful, and confident, that I’m going to find more/useful ways in which my handset can be of use to me with the little one – IntoMobile readership thoughts gratefully accepted!