Despite this small exciting improvement, in general I actually think mobile devices and their applications– even the newest (excluding the iphone)– are desperately in need of innovation in the following areas:

1. Navigability: Blackberrys / Treos and many other smart phones have tons of small icons which are very difficult to switch between and don’t increase in size as you pass over them.

2. Browsing: Absolutely terrible on most devices, they can’t display rich text, pages are awkwardly formatted, etc

3. Syncing Apps: Maps / Address book / Fb / Pinger / Google talk etc (the apps I use on my phone) can’t share info so if I am Google Talking with a friend I can’t press talk and call them, I have to look up their phone number in my address book (the same is true if I’m writing on their fb profile).

4. Carrier Dependence: Who doesn’t dislike their phone carrier? Not only are the product/service offerings designed to make you pay for more than you need (for ex I can pay $5/month for 100 text messages or $15 for 2,000 text messages but nothing in-between) the high expense of new hardware drives continual renewal of contracts which limits mobility between carriers and essentially reduces competition between them as well. Tying particular devices to certain carriers is also frustrating from a consumer standpoint (I have to switch to AT&T in order to get an iphone? Bummer).

Basically, as you can tell from the tone of this post, I can’t wait for the mobile space to explode (which I think it will in the next 18 months) as more phones begin supporting 3rd party apps and more developers dedicate themselves to creating apps. And with Google bidding on the spectrum I can’t help but wonder if they could provide free mobile service and monetize (how they always do) with (mobile) ads.

We’ll wait and see…