If we see a solidifying of features post IPO, FaceBook will have provided a line in the sand, a before and after period,  much like the moment the Telephone or Radio made enough of an impact to change everything going forward. 

Last night I synced my iPad and allowed iTunes to update the software by accident, wanting only to sync mp3's with my PC. The device had not been updated for months, to avoid one of the early updates that repurposed the rotation lock switch into a volume control. Apparently no one at Apple thought people read lying on their side, or they enjoyed reading text that is always perpendicular to the floor.

I was pleasantly surprised to find the rotation lock switch restored, how many updates ago, I couldn't say. Interestingly enough, one of the most cool little user experience features I've ever seen has been removed. I called it the "Virtual Bezel", a thin black frame displaying nothing but time and status indicators atop the display. When you rotated the iPad, this Virtual Bezel would quickly follow that motion with a smoothly rotating animation. About another half second later, the rest of the iPad display would appear in the new orientation. I thought this was a brilliant trick, giving the user immediate feedback, which on a sub-display maybe a mere 10-15 pixels across, was really fast. Reconfiguring the other 95% of the display, and associated rendering hardware and software pipeline and its memory buffers can take a perceptible amount of time, as seen on Android devices. The latest software update features the entire display smoothly rotating as you turn the iPad, albeit ever so slightly slower than the Virtual Bezel did. I suspect there has always been hardware acceleration available to pull this off, but maybe the code was not ready for iPad launch.

Other rotation accelerometer enabled devices, like Android phones, do not have this Virtual Bezel, so when the user rotates the screen, the wait for action seems to take forever before the screen pops into place.

As Android devices get faster processors, the brute force display system tear down and reconfiguration for rotation orientation will become less noticeable, but device builders will still suffer in terms of perceived user experience. Even with a faster processor, users may consider a given device to be less responsive than another running a slower processor if it's got a smart user experience trick up it's sleeve. This kind of thing takes planning and dedication of resources, something that follow on device makers would have been hard pressed to fit in to their first build schedules, given Cupertino's first mover advantage.

Many believe that Apple has Buzz, some aura of the wonderful acquired through brilliant marketing campaigns. Sure, marketing helps to get a product noticed, but when users pick up a device and play with it, it's these little intuitive, almost subconscious connections heavily weight purchase decisions. Do this year over year, and yes, there is a magical quality that has people hanging on their every word and deed. To tip the scales in their direction, Android device makers will have to reach beyond a few customizations of the Google template and forge their own unique Virtual Bezel like UX innovations.

TechCrunch has a post on Peep Wireless and their CES announcement of a new P2P wireless voice call system. I think going for a voice network using wifi is an admirable goal, but will no doubt have challenges. That said, there is no way to get things like this going without giving it a try.

You can not account for human behavior when it comes to stuff like this. I remember in the early 90's when people thought that multi-player internet gaming would never work because of the latency of the net. Well, what they did not count on was that folks would simply stay away from game servers that were to laggy. Same thing here, if you have queues from the UI that let you know when you can/cant use the P2P voice, you'll adjust your behavior if there is a significant payoff to using the system. There have to be enough goodies locked up in a system like this to hang in with it when its performance degrades.

I would like to see a small step before going full voice, moving short messages, images between phones in a store & forward mode, where each client/server device accepts files and forwards some of their own. Reminds me of Epizoochory(really? yep, really), or the dispersal of seeds by animals. Imagine all the interesting stuff that would drift around the planet(just encrypt what you want private) when passed by proximity as phones make and break connections in freeway traffic, at the mall, etc. What if your local venue could not only check-in to you, but could tag you with a file that spreads to your friends just by being near them? 

NFC could also allow our phones to interact in new ways with old objects, like say, a door lock. You would hold your phone close to the lock while turning the knob. An electromechanical power circuit converts that turning force into enough energy for about about 300 miliseconds, or about 1/3 of a second processing time. A low power microcontroller within the lock accesses a connected NFC chip containing the locked/unlocked status of the lock. This NFC chip would receive it's power over the air through the short range RF interface with the phone's corresponding NFC device, relaying the unlock code to the lock's microcontroller. The balance of the doorknob turning force would then be used to mechanically move the bolt, opening the door. 

MSFT will have to get the balance between new features and filling in missing pieces by pulling actionable signal from all the market noise, not easy to do when you are not actually building devices yourself. The timing for something like cut/paste has to be balanced with a differentiating new feature. Android does this with many eyes and many ears, a cross manufacturer, continuous snap to OS tip revision grind that aint pretty. The end result being consumers find at their semi-annual refresh window, the top couple Android fragments that are actually competitive with iOS.

MSFT has deep pockets and can spend time building up the OS feature set, but really has to break new ground to thrust forward and catch up in ways not yet seen from them in mobile.