Ok, I know this a long and not particularly well-organized rant, but please bear with me and give me your thoughts on it.. 
This phenomenon has been going on a long time, but I think the habit of continuing to associate the label of "business-focused smartphone" with candybar-shaped, small keyboard smartphones with small portrait displays (think Palm Treo/most Blackberry models/etc), traditional hardware controls (i.e. no touch input), and generally mediocre processors and no graphics acceleration of the interface needs to be re-evaluated.
I would argue that despite their association with media playback, gaming, and other consumer activities, devices with large displays, touchscreen interfaces, fast processors with graphics acceleration, and multi-gigabytes of storage (like the iPhone, Palm Pre, Google G1) are well suited to the demands of business. (and depending on your preference, a hardware keyboard like the G1 or Pre).
One of the major misconceptions is the idea that hardware graphics acceleration is only useful for games or a flashy user interface that is just "eye-candy" and doesn't provide any utility. This is completely false. As seen on "consumer-focused" devices like the iPhone/Google G1/Palm Pre, hardware graphics acceleration --- far from being just a 3D gaming requirement --- is directly responsible for the smooth and lightening quick panning and zooming of not only webpages, but office documents, PDF files, large images, etc. Without it, the CPU is forced to do all the work leading to slow, jerky movement and a very frustrating user experience.
Moving on, having access to outlook contacts, calendar, and push email is great, and seems to be the most popular use of smartphones, and righly so. However, they should be far more capable than just providing basic PIM info. Until the advent of newer full-screen smartphones with modern web browser engines, using the internet was mostly limited to WAP or simple HTML sites built specifically for mobile phones. Users would look at news headlines, or check sports scores, stock prices, etc. smartphones were not being used beyond that because it was far too frustrating of an experience. Unfortunately, this still remains true for many users on "business devices" like the Blackberry 8830 I own that is current the standard for Verizon wireless business clients. Although installing Opera Mini certainly helped, and it will do in a pinch to lookup movie times or read news articles, It is still incredibly frustrating to load large websites that were not designed for mobile browsers, and AJAX web applications are unusable.
To my point: basic needs of users of so-called "business focused" smartphone are not being met because of the long stagnation of the most popular devices' capabilities. Besides having the aspect of familiarity -- and in the case of Blackberry having advanced PUSH data support -- user experiences on these devices are far inferior to that of the new consumer-focused platforms. Now I should make the point that the Palm Pre seems to be the first phone to actually bridge the gap, though it is being advertised as a device as much for the iPhone demographic as it is for corporate users. For the point of this commentary, I am going to group it in with the iPhone and G1 and not all the Blackberry models, Palm Treos/Centros, and the mulitiude of business-focused devices running windows mobile from the Asian companies.
Here are two seemingly basic capabilites where the new smartphones vastly outpace the standard PalmOS, Windows mobile or Blackberry OS "business phones".
1) "full" web browsing capabilities -- namely the ability to access complex websites made for a desktop browser and perhaps use of certain web applications (CRM, sales, analytics, etc), any of which could relying on AJAX and javascript for functionality.
what is necessary for a good experience:
I have worked on many different smartphones through the years, including ones from the two dominant corporate suppliers, Palm and RIM. This includes the Treo 650s, Treo 700s, and most recently I have a Blackberry Curve 8330. All of these phones have pathetic web browsers as standard, and even adding aftermarket browsers (like Opera Mini) to my 8820, the experience comes nowhere close to that of the "consumer phones" I listed above. Browsing for basic information like news, etc on mobile-optimized websites is fine, but forget about using AJAX web applications or any complex site built for a desktop web browser. Even if my blackberry had a fast processor and a modern webkit based browser, It would still be difficult because the screen is to small and resolution too low -- especially as panning and zooming is so slow because there is no hardware graphics acceleration.
2) Viewing of different types of office documents, scans, graphs, PDFs, etc.
what is necessary for a good experience:
This phenomenon has been going on a long time, but I think the habit of continuing to associate the label of "business-focused smartphone" with candybar-shaped, small keyboard smartphones with small portrait displays (think Palm Treo/most Blackberry models/etc), traditional hardware controls (i.e. no touch input), and generally mediocre processors and no graphics acceleration of the interface needs to be re-evaluated.
I would argue that despite their association with media playback, gaming, and other consumer activities, devices with large displays, touchscreen interfaces, fast processors with graphics acceleration, and multi-gigabytes of storage (like the iPhone, Palm Pre, Google G1) are well suited to the demands of business. (and depending on your preference, a hardware keyboard like the G1 or Pre).
One of the major misconceptions is the idea that hardware graphics acceleration is only useful for games or a flashy user interface that is just "eye-candy" and doesn't provide any utility. This is completely false. As seen on "consumer-focused" devices like the iPhone/Google G1/Palm Pre, hardware graphics acceleration --- far from being just a 3D gaming requirement --- is directly responsible for the smooth and lightening quick panning and zooming of not only webpages, but office documents, PDF files, large images, etc. Without it, the CPU is forced to do all the work leading to slow, jerky movement and a very frustrating user experience.
Moving on, having access to outlook contacts, calendar, and push email is great, and seems to be the most popular use of smartphones, and righly so. However, they should be far more capable than just providing basic PIM info. Until the advent of newer full-screen smartphones with modern web browser engines, using the internet was mostly limited to WAP or simple HTML sites built specifically for mobile phones. Users would look at news headlines, or check sports scores, stock prices, etc. smartphones were not being used beyond that because it was far too frustrating of an experience. Unfortunately, this still remains true for many users on "business devices" like the Blackberry 8830 I own that is current the standard for Verizon wireless business clients. Although installing Opera Mini certainly helped, and it will do in a pinch to lookup movie times or read news articles, It is still incredibly frustrating to load large websites that were not designed for mobile browsers, and AJAX web applications are unusable.
To my point: basic needs of users of so-called "business focused" smartphone are not being met because of the long stagnation of the most popular devices' capabilities. Besides having the aspect of familiarity -- and in the case of Blackberry having advanced PUSH data support -- user experiences on these devices are far inferior to that of the new consumer-focused platforms. Now I should make the point that the Palm Pre seems to be the first phone to actually bridge the gap, though it is being advertised as a device as much for the iPhone demographic as it is for corporate users. For the point of this commentary, I am going to group it in with the iPhone and G1 and not all the Blackberry models, Palm Treos/Centros, and the mulitiude of business-focused devices running windows mobile from the Asian companies.
Here are two seemingly basic capabilites where the new smartphones vastly outpace the standard PalmOS, Windows mobile or Blackberry OS "business phones".
1) "full" web browsing capabilities -- namely the ability to access complex websites made for a desktop browser and perhaps use of certain web applications (CRM, sales, analytics, etc), any of which could relying on AJAX and javascript for functionality.
what is necessary for a good experience:
- A large (3"+) high-resolution (HVGA+) display to facilitate viewing
- A graphics accelerated interface in order to be capable of smoothly and quickly panning and zooming a webpage.
- Most importantly, advanced web browser software that is able to render complex webpages correctly, including full javascript and AJAX support. If the web browser can't access a vital business-related web application, then it's worthless
I have worked on many different smartphones through the years, including ones from the two dominant corporate suppliers, Palm and RIM. This includes the Treo 650s, Treo 700s, and most recently I have a Blackberry Curve 8330. All of these phones have pathetic web browsers as standard, and even adding aftermarket browsers (like Opera Mini) to my 8820, the experience comes nowhere close to that of the "consumer phones" I listed above. Browsing for basic information like news, etc on mobile-optimized websites is fine, but forget about using AJAX web applications or any complex site built for a desktop web browser. Even if my blackberry had a fast processor and a modern webkit based browser, It would still be difficult because the screen is to small and resolution too low -- especially as panning and zooming is so slow because there is no hardware graphics acceleration.
2) Viewing of different types of office documents, scans, graphs, PDFs, etc.
what is necessary for a good experience:
- Software that natively supports the display (and possibly editng, though less imporant) of different formats, most prominently Word, Excel, and PDF.
- A large (3"+) high-resolution (HVGA+) display to actually be able to see as much of the document as possible, as clearly as possible.
- Most important, a fast CPU and graphics accelerated interface to enable the ability to pan around and zoom into the document quickly and smoothly to digest the relevant information. This is particularly true when engaged in a discussion about the document with another party and you need to be able to view differnt sections of the document quickly.