Opinions: 3 Mobile's INQ1 "Social Mobile"

I see Chris managed to beat me to the punch slightly here, but hopefully I can add a little more than specifications as this is largely irrelevant to what the INQ1 is trying to achieve. I was at the INQ1 launch and even managed to Qik a talk from Blake Chandlee of Facebook, who sounded either very tired or very bored. The main bulk of the presentation was from Frank Meehan, who did a great job of introducing us to the INQ1 handset and concept.

So, let me start by saying that this is a very cool phone that is not to be judged by its specifications alone. Too many manufacturers are concentrating on ticking boxes and not enough on the underlying software. The INQ1 has done the exact opposite, with a user-centric operating system that has an obvious focus on usability and convergence. The device itself is light-weight, solid feeling and has a minimal feature set - no Wi-Fi, no GPS, no touch screen, no internal memory to speak of and a fairly minimal 2.2" 320x240 screen.

So you have probably caught on to the fact that this is a "Social Mobile", they have attempted to bring Flickr, Facebook, BeBo, eBay, Gmail, Skype, Twitter, YouTube, MSN etc. integrated into a single, high value handset. By high value, I mean costing around £80, with their cheapest PAYG deal being a £10 top-up with unlimited access to these services. Let me start by saying what this is not - this is not simply a lot icons in menus that link off to websites via the built-in browser. It is closer in comparison to taking the iPhone and bundling it with all the relevant applications for social media.

Almost a defining feature of a Web2.0 site, is that there is a public API for utilising its features elsewhere. What the people behind the INQ1 phone have done, is write applications to work with these APIs and integrate them into the phone as much as possible for a seamless experience.

There is very much an "always on" attitude with this phone. When you turn the phone on for the first time, the Skype, MSN, Facebook clients all start up and sit in the background. Being memory resident means they can poll their respective services for updates on a regular basis - checking for things like Facebook messages or Twitter updates. As much as I see this as necessary, we all know how much battery power 3G uses and trickle feeding data on a regular basis must chew battery life. So I was impressed to find a 1150MaH battery on a phone of this size.

Multitasking is high on the priority list with this phone and they have a nicely placed button on the right hand side, that takes you straight to a Mac-esque dock on the front page, where clicking it skips across each icon until you find the application you desire. You can click this button at any stage and it will bring you back to this menu instantly. The OS as a whole is really responsive and I didn't see any slow downs in the limited time I had with it. There is also a widgets system for displaying feeds and other such things on the home screen - much like many of the modern smart phones.

What this phone provides is convergence. Looking at your contact list, no longer pulls in just your phone contacts, it amalgamates your Facebook contacts, Gmail contacts, MSN contacts, all into one place. This could be a little messy, but you can very quickly group contacts from the same person into one individual contact. Once you find the contact you want, you then want to send them a message - at which point it asks you how you would want to do this. You could SMS, E-Mail, send them a Facebook message, or start an MSN conversation. The barrier of how is broken down. Browsing the web had a similar experience, making it very easy to select a block of text and send this on to someone, in one of the various methods. This "HyperWords" technology in itself puts it way ahead of Apple, with the cut and paste-less iPhone.

What this phone offers is what most social media addicts want - a device that is light weight, affordable and easier to use than simply have a web browser. The units we looked at were technically pre-production, and I must admit the black model looked really quite sleek, but we're not going to see them this side of Christmas - which is a big pity. As a first attempt, this is great start and it's going to be interesting to see how it develops.

Underneath all of this, we have a typical message from 3, which is a challenge to the rest of the industry to stop standing still and to stand up and make some noise. This is a bold launch, but one that I have a lot of faith in.

When talking to CEO Kevin Russell, I questioned him a little on the importance of social media in customer support and if they would consider using these methods in providing support to customers. He felt that the traditional technical support methods needed challenging and they would embrace future opportunities. It'll be interesting to see what happens there.

Some really great points there Mr Stylist.

Alas, my fear for the INQ1 is that great usability and innovative social media convergence will not be easy to sell into the fickle mobile phone market. Its exclusive to the smallest of the big 5 operators requiring an operator switch for most potential customers - iPhone and O2 this is not.

And this is the very reason people are still concentrating on tick boxes to sell products. There are a hell of a lot of people out there that want to judge how good something is by "which has the biggest number". I am convinced that if you gave this phone to anyone who uses these social sites, they would fall in love with the phone instantly. The difficulty is going to be getting it into their hands in the first place, which means a hell of a lot of marketing. As you rightly say - we had 90 minutes of briefing. I caught on within the first few minutes mind you - but then I understand APIs and development and could get their angle very quickly..

Those comments on the Guardian website are unfortunately quite indicative of the mind set we have to deal with - they both tick the Facebook tick box, and that's as far as it goes.

Ignoring all the other social media aspects, as useful as they are, Facebook is still by far the most commonly used and people seem obsessed with it. Knowing they could be permanently attached to it, is a big selling point that they need to leverage on. Instead of a global marketing strategy, 3 could simply pump the money, at a subsidised rate, straight into advertising on Facebook itself - this is targeted market after all!

Not just Facebook. It's all over London buses, shops, newspapers, magazines. I think they realise more than anything that it needs marketing. I'm just impressed they got it ready for Christmas. £80 is cheap enough that I think it will get bought as a present.

My INQ1 handset broke after 6 weeks. Three wouldn't replace it. My recommendation is to avoid this handset - not robust enough.