What if the gee-whiz concept car or "house of the future" you saw only a couple of years ago were available for purchase today? Would you buy it?
You had a chance to find out in Barcelona this week, where the GSMA Mobile World Congress (MWC), the largest mobile communications exhibition in the world, displayed cellular phone technologies that were just concepts a few years ago.
These "future" technologies -- better displays, video, mobile commerce, and other features -- in 2009 will dramatically improve the wireless Internet experience.
Viewing videos will become much more pleasurable. When Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) launched the iPhone with its 3.5-inch screen, it set a trend in motion. At the MWC, which ended yesterday, handset vendors introduced models with screens of 3.7 inches to 4.1 inches (e.g., Toshiba's TG01), and resolutions of VGA and higher (e.g., the Acer F900 and M900 with WVGA).
Also, instead of typical LCDs, we're seeing the introduction of different types of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). These screens typically produce richer, more vibrant colors. Courtesy of Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK), I have the N85, which was the company's first OLED phone. The colors are indeed superior.
If a large OLED isn't enough to convince you to watch long videos or mobile television, this year you'll be able to display them with a microprojector built into the handset, thanks to at least one well known handset manufacturer.
Chipmaker Texas Instruments Inc. (NYSE: TXN) says microprojectors could be more popular than still cameras in phones. It certainly could be at least as popular, but it won't happen until the quality, cost, and battery life are improved.
These improvements will be great for viewing camera phone videos -- shot in high definition. This year at least one phone will record at a resolution of 720 pixels. Several companies displayed this technology, and you should see phones with 720p based on chipsets from TI and Nvidia. The Samsung Omnia HD features a 3.7-inch AMOLED (active matrix organic light emitting diode) display and 720p video recording.
In 2010, you might be able to buy a handset with 1080p resolution.
This year, the new high-end standard for camera phones will be 8 megapixels. Several vendors exhibited 8-megapixel handsets, including Nokia's new N86, which also has an OLED. But as with 720p video recorders, 8-megapixel camera phones will soon be so 2009.Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications this year will likely offer a 12-megapixel handset, and TI is developing a 20-megapixel chipset.
You certainly won't have to stick with made-for-cellphone content, because phones will be able to display much of what's on the Internet. Beginning next year, handset vendors will offer much more complete versions of Adobe Flash, rather than today's watered-down Flash Lite. Adobe announced this at the MWC, and several operating systems, including Palm’s WebOS, Nokia's Symbian, Google's Android, and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile, will accommodate Flash. As for the Apple iPhone, there was no announcement about whether this “iDiot Savant” of cellphones will incorporate Flash.
Thankfully, iTunes will be only one of many online stores for cellphone software. At the MWC, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) announced its Windows Marketplace for Mobile, which will be available this year.
Online app stores also will be available this year from Palm Inc. for WebOS; from Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM) (Nasdaq: RIMM; Toronto: RIM); from Google for Android (free and paid apps); and from Nokia.
Nokia's new Ovi Store is intriguing because it will feature recommendations based on location as well as friends. If you're attending the MWC, for example, Ovi could recommend the cellphone editions of guidebooks to Spain. Location-based sales will, I'm convinced, become a major and necessary part of mobile commerce.
Still, while all these developments are encouraging, some are still in beta.
What's more, a 12-megapixel camera phone won't necessarily take better photos than a 5-megapixel phone, depending on the quality of the components and the noise produced by the sensor. And online software stores will be compared to Apple's excellent App Store.
In Canada, cellular operators have three-year contracts!
Luckily, there are a variety of VoIP services, for cellular and "landline" phones -- such as Skype, Fring, Truphone and others -- offering phone rates that are only a few pennies per minute or completely free. Many peer-to-peer services, such as Skype, are free.
As for Al Gore speaking at the CTIA Wireless 2009 conference, the CTIA often has very famous people -- who aren't in the wireless industry -- to keynote the event, as well as top executives who are part of the industry.
For example, Ted Turner was a keynote speaker. And, I think former Presidents Clinton and Bush (the first) were speakers.
I'm sure Gore's speech will be very well attended.
I think people like u s are bearing the brunt of the U.S. two year contract phone plans. We are almost apying double to make or receive international calls. We have to buy prepaid calling cards to keep in touch of events back home and at the same time that goes to to eat up our allocated monthgly minutes to the point that i have avoided tking some international calls during the day time.
As you mentioned we use prepaid services back home and it cost me nothing to receive calls!!
On a lighter note, what is connection between AlGore and the wireless mobile phone industry? I was surprised to learn that he has been slated to deliver the key not address at the upcoming CTIA convention!!Is he there to encourage the production of more "green" wireless gadgets or it's just another publicity stunct by you guys???
I think it's great that homeless people can use cellular phones for work and personal use. The cost of phones have decreased so much that many people can afford a prepaid phone and an allocation of minutes. It used to be extremely expensive to manufacture cellular phones, but now phones are pretty much "commodities" for manufacturing.
Because of the awful economy, I've read articles about how many people are switching to prepaid plans to avoid the expense of two-year contracts. In many countries, prepaid is the way most people get cellular service.
Personally, I don't like prepaid phones because in the U.S. the cost of minutes is much higher and the cost of data is often ridiculously expensive. However, in addition to a contract, I have a prepaid AT&T SIM card to test different phones.
Cellular is the primary way many people around the world keep in touch. So it's great that the homeless are able to use it. I wish prepaid data charges weren't so high because it certainly could be useful to check the Web for jobs, shelters, food banks, weather reports, even social networking to let people know where they are.
(By the way, I've often pressed a "send" icon before I was ready!)
My apologies for that snag!1 I was writing the head when i mistakenly hit the "post" section on the comment space. However, i have updated the comment and you should be able readmy full comments if you visit the previuos commnets again!!
Well the future of the mobilephone looks great as the homeless are finding new tech way to track opportunities. I came across this article and was really enthused!! Your thoughts:
I guess I took some "liberties." The main thing is technology visionaries -- who create life-changing products -- generally are science fiction fans. They read about things that could be, and get started thinking about what they might be able to do.
MBAs -- spending their time peering at spreadsheets and talking to lawyers -- might implement technology and turn it into practical products -- but they are much less likely to be visionaries.
I'm afraid I disagree. Cellular phones don't have to be used just when we'er moving. If they offered the capabilities/ergonomics of laptops, we would use them are laptops.
That means the cellular phone would have a good way to enter text, whether by an expanded keyboard, a virtual keyboard, voice recognition, etc. In other words, the reason we don't use phones as laptops is because they can't provide the appropriate laptop experience. That doesn't mean in 10 years, 20 years, whatever, the phone won't indeed take the place of a laptop for many people.
Technology companies are run by MBAs. But technology is advanced by science fiction lovers.
There's truth in that. But it wasn't "an MBA" that took on IBM, at the time the largest technology company in the world, to trick them out of an exclusivity deal and practically opening the door for a PC Clone industry to come about. That was two college dropouts with what would come to be called MS-DOS.
And it wasn't MBA's that made a search engine that actually found what you were looking for, *and* figured out how to make a profit at that.
Like I said, it's not one or the other. There is truth in your statement. It's just a moer complicated world, as I see it.
The perfect phone will not be a smaller laptop. Lots of suite differences. Laptops are used while stationary, cell phones are used while we are in motion. For laptops, keyboards are primary, fir a phone, keyboard are incidental. Laptops have not need for inertial sensors, and limited need for GPS' Phones, if the connect to anything, do it by wireless- bluetooth irda.
The ThinkerNet does not reflect the views of TechWeb. The ThinkerNet is an informal means of communication to members and visitors of the Internet Evolution site. Individual authors are chosen by Internet Evolution to blog. Neither Internet Evolution nor TechWeb assume responsibility for comments, claims, or opinions made by authors and ThinkerNet bloggers. They are no substitute for your own research and should not be relied upon for trading or any other purpose.
It is difficult to underestimate the value of wireless data in Haiti in aiding relief workers and residents in wake of the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that hit the country on January 12. Quite literally, wireless data has been a life-saving technology.
I'm cautiously optimistic that Apple's iPad will be successful because it's Apple-like and non-Apple-like. Those characteristics have major advantages and disadvantages that affect the value of the iPad. UPDATED 12:25 PM
May the gods be praised! Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) has finally unveiled what appears to be its online file storage capability -- a so-called Google Drive or GDrive -- for consumers and businesses.
Hysteria has reached fever pitch as techies around the world can hardly contain themselves until January 27, when Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) is rumored to be announcing its new tablet computer. Also, during the past several months, interesting tablets and concepts for tablets have been unveiled by other manufacturers. The New York Times has called 2010 "The Year of the Tablet."
In Charles Dickens's classic story A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge asks the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come about scenes he will be shown from his future: "Are these the shadows of the things that will be, or are they shadows of things that may be, only?"
Smarter Collaboration: How to Thrive in a Challenging Business Environment Market conditions are changing faster than ever, and organizations need to improve their agility and adaptability in order to provide better service and improve processes. The ability to work with customers, business partners, and employees as effectively as possible - while at the same time holding down costs - is a key to success. READ THIS eBOOK
your weekly update of news, analysis, and
opinion from Internet Evolution - FREE! REGISTER HERE
Wanted! Site Moderators Internet Evolution is looking for a handful of readers to help moderate the message boards on our site – as well as engaging in high-IQ conversation with the industry mavens on our thinkerNet blogosphere. The job comes with various perks, bags of kudos, and GIANT bragging rights. Interested?
To save this item to your list of favorite Internet Evolution content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
Techies are going crazy over the possibility that Google might design and sell its own Android phone. Some writers say it's a very big deal. Reiter questions whether it will happen and, if it does, whether it even matters.
Cellular operators, netbook manufacturers, and, of course, techies, have been eagerly awaiting a hands-on experience with Nokia's new netbook, the Booklet 3G. Reiter's got his hands on one, and tells you whether it's worth the wait.
Mobile TV is everywhere, and yet, nowhere. Nobody uses it – because the handsets aren't good, the pricing is too high, and the coverage is not good enough. But Qualcomm's FloTV Personal TV aims to change all of that.
Tom wants a Google 'unlocked handset' for the holidays because he thinks they could just break the telco monopoly on handset distribution and thus empower the Internet as the driver of mobile broadband now and forever.
With the number of mobile broadband users more than doubling in 2009, and soon to exceed fixed broadband, the Internet saw a historic transition this year – and the long-term effects are incalculable.
Comparing Internet services is tough because service providers price and market their services based on a best-case scenario connection that most consumers will never enjoy.
Research shows that the youth of today like Facebook – but not blogging or Twitter. Does that mean Facebook has won, or just that it's not yet out of favor? Will all the services we see today fade into Ovaltine-or-Wheaties status in just a few years?
What kinds of companies are doing the most innovation in the data center? Turns out it's midtier enterprises that are taking the "Just Right" approach.
Digg
Del.icio.us
Reddit
Email This
TWEET THIS
