A Truly Smarter Phone

By: Cathal O'Riordan

In 10 years people will visit museums and marvel at the sheer size and weight of the early generation mobile handsets. Hardly worthy of the term 'mobile' by today's standards, these colossal brutes had limited battery power and user features. For example, the Nokia Mobira Senator, circa 1982, weighed 9.8 Kg. Thankfully, as advancements were made in microelectronics the size of mobile handsets continued to diminish to become the small and sometimes unobtrusive devices we use in our everyday lives.

Traditionally mobile phones have been voice-centric, used mainly for making and receiving calls. Achievable data transmission rates over Global System for Mobile (GSM) networks have made it impractical to offer services like e-mail (with attachments), Internet or video/music streaming but the recent introduction of the General Packet Radio System (GPRS) and forthcoming 3rd Generation (3G) networks make these types of services a reality to customers. Manufacturers of both hardware and software are now facing new challenges, as they endeavour to provide the content-rich environments mobile users have come to expect of their desktop systems.

We are now seeing the latest evolution of mobile handsets with the introduction of the Smart Phone to the mobile market. A Smart Phone is a combination of both phone and Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) in a single device. It offers the capabilities of a traditional mobile phone but in addition allows a user to perform many of the tasks currently available on more familiar systems. Heralded as the Swiss-army knife of portable electronics, these devices boast colour-rich displays, Personal Information Management tools (calendar, e-mail, appointments etc.), Internet Browsing, Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), document/spreadsheet editing software, personalisation (ring tones, colour schemes, images etc.), streaming media, games and digital image capture all packaged in a small convenient unit. This level of functionality comes at a price though. Smart Phones are expected to be marketed as premium priced handsets fetching anywhere between EUR200 and EUR800.

The Smart Phone market is becoming very competitive with leading companies like Microsoft, Palm, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, and Nokia all entering the arena. Each company is shaping the industry with the expertise it brings from its indigenous marketplace. Software manufacturers such as Microsoft and Palm produce the platforms or operating systems, which are then licensed for distribution with phones from equipment manufacturers. For example, Microsoft, in association with UK based mobile manufacturer Sendo (http://www.sendo.com) is set to launch its first mobile phone operating system called Smartphone 2002 (the actual phone will be called the Sendo Z100). Code-named "Stinger", it is similar in appearance to the accomplished Windows PC platform and will thrust Microsoft into yet another popular consumer market. However, Smartphone 2002 has been fraught with delays and is not expected for release until early 2003. Other leading competitors such as Symbian and Palm OS have already launched their Smart Phone platforms and have been adopted by both mobile manufacturers and consumers alike. Symbian has been a popular choice amongst the latest phones from Nokia and Sony Ericsson. The Nokia 7650, 3650 and Sony Ericsson P800 all exploit the rich feature-set of the Symbian platform.

Nobody is certain who will be the emerging victor in the Smart Phone market. Each mobile manufacturer is backing the platform they think is a clear winner, but in this new and unpredictable environment no one is a safe bet. Industry sceptics fear that users will be unable to use the features of a Smart Phone in the way they were intended because of the relative immaturity of high-speed mobile networks. Although the underlying principle of a Smart Phone is to operate both with and without the presence of a connection to the Internet or network, for most features this is a necessity. What is apparent though is the benefit of the Smart Phone to the consumer. Users will now be able to proclaim true mobility where the applications and services they once associated with their PC or laptop will soon be available from a mobile phone.