Opinions: Mini Expectations

What feels like a lifetime ago, I was given the INQ1 and immediately fell in love with its converged thinking and simplicity. It won some awards, people loved it. I too nicknamed it the Facebook phone because of the awesome nature of the Address Book - it was possible to merge the data stored on your SIM and contact details available via Facebook. Following the release of Facebook for iPhone, people started to view Facebook as the new way to keep an address book updated and synced between devices. INQ got there first.

So anyway, a second and third INQ device have been available for a couple of months - the 3 INQ Mini and the INQ Chat. I happened upon an INQ Mini, courtesy of some blogger/consumer-focused social media ninjas who run @3mobilebuzz from 1000 heads.

Now let's be honest - we're all seeing the INQ "make phones for the masses" pitch and interpreting that as "cheap backup phone". Actually, I'd like to suggest a slightly different view - the INQ Mini is a superb 3G USB dongle because you can also make phone calls to your Facebook friends.

Overall this dongle handset gets a thumbs up from me. Just to look at it and hold it in your hands, it feels like a more polished product than the INQ1. However, the INQ1 was the most amazing first product it was possible to release, and now I feel slightly disappointed that the INQ Mini is as far as INQ has progressed since that first ground-breaking device. It's still running Brew and it still has several stability issues: I managed to crash the Mini twice. I'm delighted to hear INQ is looking to work with Android soon.

It seems I got hugely over-excited about the addition of Twitter. The INQ Mini's Twitter application might as well have not been developed. It offers less than Dabr, which runs perfectly in this handset's browser. Based on the integration with the address book that Facebook is allowed, I wrongly assumed I was going to be able to browse my Twitter Friends/Followers from within my address book, merge their details with those from Facebook and/or my SIM, and perhaps even DM them instead of sending a text message.

Fire up the Twitter application, sign in, and you can post an update. That's it. It's so basic! How do I check for new @ replies and direct messages? How do I reply to tweets? There's not even the ability to post photos to Twitpic.

I wonder if there would have been any harm in just releasing the INQ Chat? With a full QWERTY keyboard, it is exactly what I'd been hoping for. If you need me, I'll be scouring the blogosphere for thoughts and reviews on the INQ Mini, just because I'm scared that I might have missed some important new features that take this handset far beyond the INQ1.