Yahoo Go 2.0 WM review
Posted by webjock on 07/26/07 in Mobilitysite Reviews, Smart Phones, Software
Yahoo recently announced the final version of Yahoo Go 2.0. Designed for a variety of phones from Symbian OS to Windows Mobile, Yahoo Go offers a mobile portal experience.
Yahoo provides a variety of widgets and applets designed for the small mobile form factors. They include Yahoo Maps, Yahoo Mail, Flickr and the new Yahoo oneSearch.
I decided to take Yahoo Go 2.0 for a spin. I previously installed version 1.0 last year and wasn’t terribly impressed. This version offers more features, accoutrements and tighter integration to other Yahoo services. Most notably, I like the Flickr integration. My test platform was the Motorola Q running on the Verizon’s EDVO network. The cab installer downloaded and installed without problems on this Windows Mobile device. At first launch, the UI was coherent and pleasant to look at. However, the eye candy wore off pretty fast. The apps were slow and at times a bit clunky. In the following paragraphs, I will comment on some of the widgets.
Mail is the most stable and most responsive widget. I actually like this version of Yahoo over the mobile WAP version. Attachments are not supported in this widget.
Flickr is my favorite widget in the entire suite. You can add comments, upload photos and search. Overall, Flickr works great on Yahoo Go 2.0. It browsed my entire device including the removable miniSD card. I was able to upload a file, tag it, and give a description in one shot.
Besides Flickr and Yahoo Mail, I wasn’t impressed with anything else.
Yahoo Maps was slow and crashed a few times. Compared to Google Maps, it failed to find specific POIs (Points of Interests). The routing was very slow and unintuitive. Google Maps on the iPhone running EDGE was several times more responsive than Yahoo Maps running on Verizon’s EDVO. When I tried to do a search for an intersection “Van Ness and Geary” in San Francisco, Yahoo Maps would return nothing. Google Maps would always find an intersection.
The most important widget is the Yahoo oneSearch engine. It simplifies searches into categories such as Movies, Products, City, Companies/Finance, News, Celebrities (if you’re into Hollywood gossip) and the web.
Like Google mobile on a WAP phone, Yahoo Go attempts to reformat web pages for the small screen. The results are often time disastrous. On a Windows Mobile device, Yahoo Go should use PIE to render the pages. Here is an example of how Ebay Motors and Craigslist appear in Yahoo Go 2.0.
In conclusion, I wanted to like Yahoo Go 2.0 but was a bit disappointed with the slowness and sluggishness. It felt like a really slow Java midlet instead of a native WM application.
At times, I would whip out my iPhone just to get something done while Yahoo Go would process an event. Rumor has it that there will be an iPhone version coming soon. Yahoo should simply make an AJAX web version so it can run on the iPhone, Symbian S60 and newer mobile devices that support rich Web 2.0 capabilities.
You can find out more about Yahoo Go 2.0 at http://mobile.yahoo.com/go/
Use your iPhone as a USB Drive.
Experienced iPod users are bemoaning the fact that Apple left out one important feature on the iPhone - Disk Mode. Disk Mode is the ability to use the iPod as a removable USB/Firewire Storage Device.
For now, Macintosh users may have the opportunity with a new third party solution. Ecamm Network introduced an inexpensive software solution for Macintosh OS X users. Called the iPhoneDrive, this 480 Kilobyte application uses a custom file browser that allows you to copy anyfile into the iPhone.
I had a full day of using in a work environment. Here are is my short review for those on the fence:
The Application works as advertised. However, there are many limitations.
First of all, the application uses its own file browser. Hence, this requires you to install on multiple machines if you plan to share your files.
Copy speeds were painfully slow for large files. I tried copying 400-700 files on multiple machines and each attempt took minutes.
Next, the software requires the latest iTunes software and OS updates. Hence, if you are on a 10.3 machine, you are out of luck.
I reckon most Mobility users are Windows users and this means they’re out of luck if they want to use their iPhone as a USB drive. Currently under Vista, the iPhone shows up as a Camera Twain device. With all the recent iPhone filesystem hacks, a Windows solution may be coming shortly.
Pros: Inexpensive. Works on OS X PowerPC and Intel CPU as a Universal Binary.
Cons: No Windows version. Slow copy speeds. Requires installation of software on any computer to store or retrieve files.
Source: Ecamm Network
