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RSS FeedMarch 27th, 2012
What will cell phones look like in 2020 – Part III
Yet another notion of what cell phones (and some of the technology accompaniments) may look like in year 2020.
December 19th, 2011
PageRank, Android and iPhone – How to use naturally occurring capabilities to your advantage
The implementation of PageRank was a watershed moment in technology that showed us one thing – how naturally occurring data could be used to create an amazingly good score, and thus Crowdsourcing
This idea of using naturally occurring data (or capabilities, if abstracted at one level) is not limited to cellphone market only. Examples abound in many other vertices. For examples, one of the reasons that NX CCS is so successful in integrating logistics data is that it simply uses the data that already exists – bills of lading, shipping notices, tracking information etc. Similarly, the success of TripIt is largely attributable to the fact that they simply use the reservation confirmations that already existed before their product came about. This idea itself can be considered an important ingredient in product stickiness – how much of what the product needs to work already exists? If the answer to that is, not so much, then clearly the idea or the product will have a shorter adoption cycle.
September 20th, 2011
Continuing Android Frustration
About two months after my move from BlackBerry to Android, I am reaching the following question: “Why are you using Android – are you a developer?” Let me explain – essentially, Android is Google’s selling platform as much as iPhone is Apple’s and BlackBerry is RIM’s. Google really wants you to use its online services, and they cannot really be reconfigured without rooting it (hence the reference to being a developer). You cannot get rid of pre-installed apps (such as Qik video chat) without rooting the phone either. Synchronization with Outlook is painful, and makes me really miss BlackBerry Desktop Manager. (I know that in the cell phones of 2020, I hypothesize that the synchronization problems will be non-issues in year 2020, but year 2020 is not when I am writing this review.)
There are a few other problematic things with Androids: 1) There is no way to control the data usage when roaming. So, you just need to keep switching the network on/off. If you leave it on, you could end up paying hundreds of dollars over 3/4 days, of course, depending upon what apps you have on. 2) YouTube app suddenly stops showing some videos whenever it likes. Restarting the phone plays the same videos without any problem. 3) Email coolly stops working whenever it wants – restarting the phone fixes the issue.
So, essentially, my Android is a fancy camera, a mobile router, a note talking app, and occasional video watching device (when phone is cooperating).
When again is the new BlackBerry touch coming out?
July 31st, 2011
The move from BlackBerry to Android (or iPhone)
Moving from BlackBerry to Android (or iPhone)? There’s an app for that! But first, let us begin with Dilbert. You can also read this starter on uncommunication devices by Scott Adams.
First, the handoff issue. When you make a call using WiFi, and then you move away where you have no WiFi, your call doesn’t handoff to the 3G/4G network. It simply drops. That doesn’t happen sometimes. That happens every time, by design. Your phone even warns you that the call might drop, and you look at the phone with squinty eyes and ask in your worst possible Shawshank Redemption voice – “How can you be so obtuse?” This problem of soft handoff has been studied for a very long time – take this 1997 paper as example. The BlackBerry has an excellent handoff mechanism, you can start in WiFi, go to 3G, come back to WiFi, repeat and rinse, and keep talking. The workaround in Android is simply to disable WiFi calling until “they” figure it out.
Secondly, aah the synchronization issues. At other times I have written that in 2020, the cellphones will have no synchronization to do, since the cellphone will be the only device that will synchronize with the cloud. One thing that you learn only after you buy an Android phone is that Google really wants you to use GMail. At the least, all the synchronization options are built around Google contacts and Google calendar. Perhaps Google will eventually get it, that I just don’t want to move to GMail (email systems are like soft drinks – everyone has their own preference), but for now, I am serving Google’s fantasy. My earlier Outlook + Blackberry + BB Desktop Manager has now led to: Outlook, Google Calendar Synch, Google Synch on my android device, and the Outlook contacts are not really synchronized, they are just imported and exported. I am sure there are tons of apps that do tons of things, but that whole line of reasoning is sounding to start silly.
Thirdly, the battery life. Both iPhones and Androids have atrocious battery life. Best workaround is to keep your cellphone mobile phone wired at all times.
A few things that work very well in Android are the swype typing, the mobile access point and the camera. I have stopped carrying a camera, and the pictures come out just fine. Consider this picture from the Benjamin Franklin room at the State Department.
All said and done, Android is better than the Blackberry at thousands of things – BlackBerry is better than the Android if you actually make or receive calls. This situation is summarized in the following Russian couplet:
купил айфон а чо с ним делатьгде кнопки чтобы нажимать и
как мне позвонить сереге
а вот и он звонит и чо
That roughly translates to:
I bought an iPhone – what to do with it?
Where the buttons to press?
How do I call Sergyi?
Oh, here, he is calling and now what?
January 10th, 2011
What will cell phones look like in 2020?
(Let the fantasies begin – Armchair futurists unite!)
What will cell phones look like in year 2020? Here are a few predictions – set in stone, so you can check in a few years time how close or how far these were from the reality. To start off things, the cell phones in 2020 will be called something different, to reflect that making calls is just one function they do. “Handy” might just do it.
- Dimensions: 4in x 2in x 0.5 in (Very similar to today, but read notes about screen size/usage below).
- Screen Size: 4in x 2in that unfolds to 4 in x 8 in
- Hard Drive: ~ 10 TB of hard drive space
- CPU: ~ 120 GHz Processor
- RAM: ~ 32-128 GB of RAM
- Battery Life: 2 days of working on full load, > 7 days on “light” mode
- Communication: 4-7 Gbps, using a variety of technologies, that works around the world, all flat fee based.
- Usage: (This is where it gets interesting) Every cell phone will be the complete computing/storage requirements for a person – RAM, hard disk, CPU. When you go from home to work, car, hotel room, cab, cafe, club, etc, you will be able to plugin your cellphone to a “multimedia outlet”, which has larger screens, speakers, video camera, olfactory output, all inbuilt into the screen. So, you won’t have an office “computer”, you will just have an office media outlet that serves as magnifying your handy in a multimedia sense. The multimedia outlets will come in a variety of shapes and sizes (and with varying costs), but they will all feature a “smart cradle”, which will connect to different types of handy sets with no setting changes – (USB 6.0?). The different kinds of outlets will be an extension of current HD TVs and 3D TVs, and will be a major growth industry in this decade. These outlets will represent growth of brands such as Samsung, which have both phones and multimedia outputs already in place in 2010. Hotels and hotel rooms will also distinguish themselves from each other by the kinds of media outlets they have.
Banal changes in behavior:- You will be able to shop with your phone – in store, and online (one-click-buy sites will become super common). This idea has been around – see the CNN video from March 2010 – over next few years, it will get implemented.
- Similarly, you will be able to use phone as your identification – drivers license, passport, etc (an aspect in which cell phones will compete against biometric devices), but this aspect will experience adoption at different rates due to bureaucratic hurdles.
- What will go away? There will be no “synchronization” devices/software for your computer and phone, since your phone will have everything it needs. There will be a “backup” feature that will continuously backup your handy with your carrier.
- What happens if you lose your phone? You can just call your carrier and have a new phone delivered the next day. The new phone will have everything replicated already, and other than some activation requirement, it will be good to go. The old phone will not compromise your data/credit, with some combination of remote locking and passwords.
Are you sure these are predictions for 2020, not 2012?
Some of these predictions may be true for some phones today, but the prediction/fantasy is that these specs will be ubiquitous by 2020.
[I will keep refining this post for at least a few more days as I think of more things, but it will be set in stone sometime before June 2011.]