Not long ago, phone calls came and went from a contraption on the wall in the kitchen. Today, corporations and consumers alike have the ability to keep themselves connected in an increasingly seamless manner. First came the 10-pound cellular phone and its now-humorous cousin, the car phone. These devices shrank in size and grew in power at an amazing rate over the last 15 years. Today, we see devices that fit neatly in our pocket and connect us to the world in ways we once only dreamed of.
Today's "mobile Internet devices" offer an Internet browser, e-mail client, messaging client and cellular phone rolled into a highly portable device that can comfortably fit into a pocket.
Photo Credit: Timothy LamToday’s “mobile Internet devices” offer an Internet browser, e-mail client, messaging client and cellular phone rolled into a highly portable device that can comfortably fit into a pocket. Many more sport digital cameras, portable music players, remote access clients and voice recorders. Imagine every portable device on your desk duct taped together and compressed to the size of a deck of cards.
These devices, often called smartphones, allow businesses to communicate much faster and more efficiently. Scott Converse, director of technology programs for the executive education department of the UW-Madison School of Business, feels that the main reason businesses invest in outfitting employees with smartphones is that it allows functional communication regardless of location.
“One of the constraints organizations have had is that they always needed to have their workers in one location. These devices allow you to be outside the four walls of your building,” Converse says.
With all this power in such a small package, manufacturers are having issues giving users a trouble-free interface, both on the hardware and software fronts. Converse believes the problem comes from the multitude of ways users need to interact with devices coupled with the fact that devices need to remain small enough to be portable.
“I have a Motorola Q. It’s got an input device and a display. Both of them are too small for most people,” Converse says.
Photo Credit: Timothy Lam
Few manufacturers have addressed this issue. The Samsung i760 (as well as many other Samsung smartphones) has a keyboard that slides out from beneath the phone, allowing the device to have a larger screen without compromising portability. Apple took the high-tech route, integrating the keyboard with the display on its iPhone; the touch screen keyboard is only consuming device real estate when it’s in use. Unfortunately, many smartphones use a very small, confusing keyboard and display.
Converse believes that manufacturers and service providers have not taken enough steps to bring this technology out of the realm of “obscure proprietary” and into mainstream acceptance. Smartphones use a variety of operating systems which plug into a heap of wireless technologies. No two providers offer the same service set, and no two phones implement these services in the same manner. This creates a headache for application developers who, in turn, need to account for the innumerable combinations of interfaces to implement their application with.
Oddly enough, this lack of a standard interface and implementation plan has temporarily solved an often overlooked aspect of these communication devices: security. With so many platforms to code against, hackers have been largely unsuccessful in developing anything malicious, though there have been instances of Bluetooth-distributed viruses directed at a specific operating system. As handheld operating system technology progresses, the need for actual security will increase.
Once smartphones play along, are proven secure and give customers a user-friendly experience, Converse believes their popularity with the average consumer will take off. Consumer-grade smartphones will (hopefully) seamlessly integrate the basic functions of our desktop computer into our pocket. E-mail, documents, instant messages and music from a home computer could, with little to no user interaction, synchronize with a future smartphone.
As with any flashy, buzzword-laden technology, smartphones are still slightly out of the price range of the average personal-use consumer. An entry level smartphone will set you back at least $100 and you can expect to pay up to $600 for something with serious power. This price barrier isn’t likely to stop smartphones from hitting the pocket of the average consumer for much longer. The costs of cellular data and portable technology as a whole are constantly decreasing, so cellular providers could be literally giving smartphones away within 15 years.