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selinz
Back to Rick's original question about what device I smoke, I'm one of two or ...
Nic_Mokhoff
Mark: I agree on the the freedom aspects of having a remote wireless connection ...
Camping with my Crackberry
Rick Merritt
8/3/2010 3:09 PM EDT
SAN JOSE, Calif. – Just before going on vacation, I got an upgrade from my old corporate flip phone to a Blackberry Curve. I am now among the mobile elite happily bearing a smartphone and wondering where this all leads.
I soon found the addictive power of mobile email on the Crackberry.
I woke up at 5:30am on Monday writing in my head what seemed like a very timely response to an email thread I read before heading out for a week at Yosemite National Park. This sort of thing is not uncommon for me. But what was unusual is that I could stick a hand out of my sleeping bag, grab the Curve and from camping site G-10 at Tuolumne Meadows actually send the darn thing. Amazing!
The flood of a week's emails was so much easier to navigate on my notebook after I had read and highlighted the key messages from my Blackberry. And I felt a tingle of delight creating the first mobile posts to my Facebook page from Tioga Lake.
The handset's Web experience, however, leaves a lot to be desired. Part of the fault for a bad Web experience lies with slow loading pages over my AT&T service. Another part rests with the small screen of the Curve that adds extra delays trying to zoom in and out of pieces of 640x480 Web pages.
Still, this is likely to be the first handset I actually use to access parts of the genuine Net beyond those horrible carrier walled gardens were I used to wander, lost and angry. The point is, this stuff is getting real fast.
Indeed, a new report by ABI Research projects in 2015 more than 60 percent of the installed base of mobile handsets worldwide will contain mobile web browsers. That's about 3.8 billion handsets, twice the number that are Web-ready today.
ABI even breaks it down by phones will full browsers that usually require 64 Mbytes memory and those like the Opera Mini that cache data on a network server and need as little as flour Mbytes. As memory and processor prices fall, the full browser category will expand, becoming dominant in 2012, ABI forecasts.
Jeff Hawkins, the head product dude at Palm long before its acquisition by HP, told me once that all phones someday will be smartphones. "If you understand the dynamics of Moore's Law, you can see this will happen," he said just after the debut of the original iPhone.
My gut tells me this is coming fast. When I get a new techno-toy it's a sure sign we are well on our way to mainstream adoption, and what then?
Maybe this is just another step in the trend toward the old Bill Gates vision of "information at your fingertips," but it feels like something more. Driving back from Yosemite I heard on "All Things Considered" an interview with Mike McCue, chief executive of startup Flipboard which is designing a social networking magazine, initially as an app for the iPad.
McCue said if you combine the iPad and iPhone with Facebook and Twitter you get "a primordial mix that will drive economy to the next level."
I think he's right. Keep stirring.
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Rick Merritt
8/3/2010 3:34 PM EDT
What mobile device are you smoking these days, and what does it make you think about the future?
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junko.yoshida
8/3/2010 5:58 PM EDT
Smartphones are coming fast, indeed.
What shocked me, though, is when I was recently back in Japan, Nikkei newspaper carried its own survey results showing only a fraction of Japanese mobile phone users are using smartphones.
Wait. Wasn't Japan the nation of hardcore mobile phone users --- ahead of everyone else on earth?
Apparently not any more.
It turns out that many of the phones they use are apps that are based on the walled garden stuff.
A friend of mine in Japan, who is a lawyer, in fact carries two phones. One is a regular mobile phone to talk and another an iPhone to check her e-mails.
Damn. No wonder Japan is in trouble these days...
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yalanand
8/4/2010 1:18 PM EDT
Junko,
Here in India Smart phones are selling like hotcakes. Thanks to the IT boom in India, standard of living has increased and it has become easy for the people to afford smartphones. Prices of 3G has reduced drastically. I see Samsung is eating away good share of profits from Nokia.
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junko.yoshida
8/4/2010 1:37 PM EDT
Thanks, Yalanand.
Roughly, how much does a smart phone cost in India (in cojunction with the 3G network fee in US $) today? I am curious.
Is the cost no longer an issue?
Actually, in the case of Japan, the cost is a non-issue for Japanese consumers (they can afford it). The real problem is the service providers' unwillingness to embrace a truly open application world.
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Himanshu_Gupta
8/4/2010 2:10 PM EDT
Junko, the problem in India is not the cost of the smartphone but the cost and connectivity to 3G networks. i read a nice article about the speed and cost of mobile internet here http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2010/08/04/india-journal-why-iseethe-at-iphone/
I remember that my parents bought a nice mobile (not smartphone), which can accept two sim at once. They bought it for Rs 3000 (about 50 Euros). I can not find such a phone in Europe at such a price! I think you can get a smartphone (compatible to 2G/3G) within 150 Euros in India.
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yalanand
8/4/2010 10:39 PM EDT
Junko,
As Himanshu said smart phone will cost you around 150Euros. To be frank 3G services were launched recently that too in major cities by telecom majors like BSNL and AIRTEL (per minute usage of 3G will cost you (1/50th of dollor).
As more and more telecom palyers are entering the Telecom space prices are driven lower day by day. You might be knowing the case of Virgin mobile
"They will pay you if you receive call on their network" :)
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Brian Fuller2
8/3/2010 6:24 PM EDT
Rick, if I may pee on the campfire: The very last refuge of Thoreau's natural life hinges on being completely connected to the analog and disconnected from the digital.
Yes, I can choose not to carry my device along the Merced River but that doesn't prevent others from taking theirs. Tuolumne Meadows filled with people yakking to Aunt Clara in Kansas about the stunning beauty around them just ain't right.
The growth of the human population has pushed animals away from urban/suburban areas and prompted us to create nature preserves.
We need to think seriously about building new walled gardens but these would be digital-less wilderness.
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Nic_Mokhoff
8/4/2010 2:29 AM EDT
The fact that you woke up with the single thought of writing an email says tons about the human psyche, its propensity to please, to connect, to be one with others. We can't go back to Thoreau's dream world and we should be careful of going one up on our neighbors. "Smart" phones need to be subservient to intelligent users less they become our masters and not our helpers.
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KB3001
8/4/2010 8:38 AM EDT
I still have an ordinary phone which I use just for calls. I feel a bit left out :-) Seriously though, I have not bought into this smartphone craze yet because I think the market is not mature yet and so prices are inflated. For the time being, I'll carry on using my wee laptop for all of my computing/multimedia needs. Am I alone to think this way??
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Rick Merritt
8/4/2010 1:48 PM EDT
Dear KB3001: Laptops are the new desktops and desktops are the new mainframes. Eventually you will consider somnething that fits in your pocket your primary computer and communicator--but we need to solve this little problem of small mobile displays and "keyboards."
Meanwhile, iPads are a fun diversion.
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Himanshu_Gupta
8/4/2010 1:59 PM EDT
@KB3001 You are not alone to think this way. I have a samsung smartphone which i bought two year ago. I liked the power of being connected to others all the time but i started to loose my privacy. I am going back to the old mobile phones which i need just to call.
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chanj
8/4/2010 6:58 PM EDT
New display technology and new keyboard are going to come out to be part of the next revolutionized smartphone. How are they going to be? We will need to wait for the technology to come and the market to tell.
Nonetheless as the communication technology evolves, I realize.
"Advanced communication connects people who are distant from each other and disconnects people who are next to each other." What an irony!
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ylshih
8/4/2010 10:30 PM EDT
Mobile content on a smartphone has been a great boon for me. But, smartphones can be a blessing or a curse and it depends on the owner and the expectations they set. Between voice, email, texting, twitter, et al, there is no excuse for being disconnected; so you have to be willing to turn off your phone or ignore it if you want any breaks or privacy and the senders have to accept that. If you don't and they don't, you've just put a ten thousand mile leash on yourself!
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Mark Wehrmeister
8/4/2010 11:38 PM EDT
I couldn't imagine not having a smartphone these days. Once you have an iPhone or Blackberry you can be more free than you ever were before if you use it appropriately. I use my iPhone many times a day to get information on what I want to do, where I want to go, and how to get there. I use it for keeping track of everything so information about my schedule, passwords, to-do lists, business expenses, etc. are at my fingertips wherever I am. I use it for email too, but usually only as a way to screen for important messages, most other messages can wait until I have access to a full size keyboard. Yes, it tethers me to everyone I know, but this tether also provides freedom to go where I want when I want.
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Nic_Mokhoff
8/6/2010 10:47 AM EDT
Mark: I agree on the the freedom aspects of having a remote wireless connection to the world you want to leave behind but can't because it would create a vacuum between what you should know and do, and what you would like to know and need to know and act on. It sounds from your description that you are very organized person. It IS a matter of choice and prioritizing your work schedule. No smartphone can teach you those 'smarts'.
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selinz
8/9/2010 8:17 PM EDT
Back to Rick's original question about what device I smoke, I'm one of two or three people on the planet still using Windows mobile... And I believe that my user experience is second to none. People around me at work have iphones, blackberrys, androids, etc. But none of them can sketch, input text via handwriting, tell me what song I'm listening to (or singing)in the coffeeshop, tell me the Amazon price by reading the barcode, give two outstanding web browsers, one of which runs flash, accept voice commands, photo-read-translate business cards directly into Outlook, download audiobooks for free from my library, read pdf's, watch live television, and has fully functioned GPS, mapping, and health related apps. Finally, it has more games than a person could ever want to play. I tend to play chess, backgammon, solitaire, and poker when in "undisposed" places. My phone is nearly 2 years old and there is no phone that I can switch to that wouldn't result in a loss of functionality. It had twice the pixels of an iphone until the iphone4 came out. Other phones "almost" have it.. It'll be interesting to see if I have a reason to change by November.
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