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Phone As Your Next Computer?
Posted by
michael
on Fri Jun 04, 2004 11:00 AM
from the ubiquity dept.
from the ubiquity dept.
Octagon Most writes "Newsweek magazine ponders if a mobile phone will be 'Your Next Computer' and enlists Frog Design to mock-up an 'Integrated Fusion Device'. With mobile phones selling at a rate of 650 million per year and climbing, there are already three times as many phones in use as personal computers. PalmOne's Jeff Hawkins predicts that devices like the Treo will become the new centers of our digital lives as millions of people own phones but not computers."
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I am shocked (Score:5, Funny)
IBM chairman quotes, 1949 (Score:4, Funny)
I have five cell phones.
Parent
/. effect (Score:3, Funny)
Re:/. effect (Score:3, Funny)
Imagine a
my next pc? are you crazy? (Score:3, Interesting)
"One hundred nineteen hours, 41 minutes and 16 seconds. That's the amount of time Adam Rappoport, a high-school senior in Philadelphia, has spent talking into his silver Verizon LG phone since he got it as a gift last Chanukah. That's not even the full extent of his habit. He also spends countless additional hours using his phone's Internet connection to check sports scores, download new ringtones (at a buck apiece) and send short messages to his friends' phones, even in the middle of class. "I know the touch-tone pad on the phone better than I know a keyboard," he says. "I'm a phone guy."
So this kid spends an average of 1025 minutes a MONTH on his cell phone? That rivals most business people.. And I would hate to be the parent who pays that bill including the ungodly amount of ringtones that he probably also already has.
Re:my next pc? are you crazy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is that so weird? Think about it. You're being overwhelmed by a large number. First, divide 1025 by 60 to see that its 19 hours. There. Already that doesn't sound so bad. 19 hours a month. Divide by four. Round up. That's five hours a week.
NEWSFLASH! High school student talks on phone for five hours a week! Parents and community amazed! Film at 11!
C'mon. Most, if not all, of those minutes were probably used in the evenings, or on weekends, when they're unmetered anyway. Since when was this excessive phone usage for an eighteen year old? Just because its a celphone, not a regular cordless phone?
I mean, really.
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Re:my next pc? are you crazy? (Score:4, Insightful)
While I sincerely doubt that phones will be the next PC, I do think that you'll see some merging between the various carry on devices. Imagine for a moment, something about the size of a standard Palm Pilot or PocketPC device. It's fully connected to the Internet via wireless, has a built in harddrive, and a pencil thin pull out "handset" that talks to the main unit via Bluetooth.
This device would let you check your email, store extra files (which can be synced via bluetooth), keeps track of your calendar and alerts, and would allow an exchange of business cards via wireless connections (IR or Bluetooth). When a phone call comes in, it will buzz until you remove the handset (fitted similar to a the stylus of a typical Palm) and press the accept button. Notes can be entered via handwriting recognition, or a virtual keyboard [ananova.com] projected onto a surface.
Now you may not find this device tremendously useful. But it would be a God-send for people who carry a Cell Phone, PDA, BlackBerry, and Laptop.
Parent
Convergence devices are crap. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd rather see a standard for wireless personal data network access and portable storage -- and let individual devices miniaturize and specialize.
E.g.
I don't want a camera phone with a bad camera interface, crappy resolution, limited features, tiny memory and nonexistant output choices.
Instead I'd like to be able to buy a wireless data storage device: HD, Flash, Removable media, whatever - it doesn't matter. Just an independent device that stores data and can wirelessly transmit it to devices that need it over a common protocol (bluetooth would be fine).
Then I can buy a phone that grabs my contact list, ringtones and games from there. No more having content locked to a service provider or a device. Then I can buy a PDA which uses the portable storage for apps, data, contact list, etc. Then I can buy an MP3 player, a digital camera, etc, etc.
I don't need my screen and battery life being sucked out of my phone when I'm just listening to MP3s. I don't need PDA processing burning through my battery when I just want to use the phone. I don't need a device which tries to wrap one bad interface around a half dozen sepcialized functions.
Furthermore, I want to be able to take my mp3 player or my phone into the gym, or the corporate offices of my clients, while leaving the camera functionality in the car so I don't violate the camera bans.
Not to mention the benefit of finally being free of the nonportability of data. No more duplicating contact lists to new devices. No more shuffling CF cards between the MP3 player, the camera, and the PDA. No more waiting for the right device to show up with the right storage solution.
Of course, I'm not holding my breath.
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Re:Convergence devices are crap. (Score:4, Interesting)
The real difficulty in convergence devices is that they're hard to do right. e.g. I think that Camera Phones are a really dumb idea. The core concept (catching impromptu moments) is sound, but the execution sucks. Similarly, I don't want to buy an extra headphone gizmo to listen to MP3s on my Sony Clie. By the time I've bought the headphones, a large memory stick, and fought through their proprietary software, I'll find that it would have been cheaper and easier just to get an MP3 player in the first place!
It's for this reason that I left MP3 and Camera features off my list. Do these features really make sense? Well, I didn't plan for headphones, so MP3s would require more hardware. (I only planned for a pullout handset for talking on the phone. You *could* listen to music that way, but holding a pencil-like object near your ear would get pretty tedious.) I also didn't add a camera, so I need more hardware still. How am I going to fit this in a device that's already packed?
Let's look at it from another angle, however. Let's take the convergence device I suggested. First and foremost, it's a bluetooth enabled hard drive. On top of that, it's an internet connected, bluetooth hard drive. Plus it can make and receive cell phone calls (using VOIP perhaps?). Add a decent screen and handwriting recognition and you've got a PDA on steroids. The projected keyboard would be "cool", but not absolutely required for a first gen device.
Now, let's say that someone comes out with a "multimedia convergence add-on". This is a device that looks like today's memory card MP3 player. But instead of an internal memory, it connects to your supercharged, bluetooth enabled, hard drive. It gets MP3s from there, and can even stream radio stations over the Internet. Now how long will it take someone to add the camera to this MP3 device? Now you can listen to music AND take pictures, but store the results (plus email, upload, etc.) on your PDA device.
How's that for a good design?
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Re:Convergence devices are crap. (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm talking more about devices that try to take functionality that is dissimilar at its core: say talking on the phone, and taking pictures.
A single-purpose DVD player interface looks and functions much like a single-purpose CD player interface. The hardware requirements for both are quite similar. laser, decoders
Re:my next pc? are you crazy? (Score:3, Interesting)
So this kid spends an average of 1025 minutes a MONTH on his cell phone? That rivals most business people
If he uses 1,025 minutes in one month that is equivalent to 12,300 minutes per year. (1,025 x 12 months)
Which is 33.676283938921307392522844820568 minutes a day. (12,300 / 365.242199 [google.co.uk] days)
I think if you added up all the little phonecalls through the working day a lot of business people would beat this kid. Sorry for the big numbers but I wanted to
Fuck that (Score:5, Insightful)
Phones will not replace computers as they currently stand unless our technology begins to approach near Star Trekian levels (which I'm not entirely ruling out, but won't be for a little while at least). Sure, *some* people might use phones instead of computers, but that's because if they used computers they wouldn't be using computers to their full capacity. They just need an addressbook and a few stupid games anyway, so let them have their PDA-phone. Me, I'll keep my computer.
Re:Fuck that (Score:3, Interesting)
The Internet cafes wouldn't even need computers any more because everyone would carry one with them. All they would need are monitors, keyboards, mice, and a little (cheap) dock thingamajig.
Re:Fuck that (Score:3, Interesting)
Different uses (Score:5, Interesting)
The fact of interest is that CPU power is no longer a restriction - a cellphone has enough oomph to run most applciations that mist users run. Where it lacks, as you point out, is input devices, output devices, and to some extent storage.
Input on most cellphones is frankly awful for anything other than dialling numbers or very simple menu driven systems. Output on that tiny screen is poor, but not that bad. In fact, if the possibility of it beaing read on a cellphone screen stops people sending HTML email, I'll count that a win. Likewise, storage is enough for most peoples text needs, but will be rapidly drained by images, even still.
So the "killer feature" to make these work is better input. Of course, one day one day true voice recognition will arrive, delivered by a flight of pigs. Until that porcine dawn, people will keep trying to find other input mechanisms that work. Until they do, I think the proposal by the OP is, so some extent, wishful thinking.
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Re:Fuck that (Score:4, Interesting)
And so will I, and so will nearly all Slashdotters. The point is, the market will expand dramtically because many, many people who will never own a PC will own one of these phones; and the phone will be the biggest percentage in this much bigger market.
Phones supplanting the PC is like the PC supplanting the mainframe. The mainframes didn't go away, there are probably more companies using more mainframes today than there ever were during The Age of The Mainframe. It's just that vast hordes of ordinary people bought PCs, so that's currently the major part of the market. The same will soon be true of phones, they will knock PCs into second place. Nothing really bad will happen to those that own PCs (or mainframes).
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Vice Versa (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Vice Versa (Score:3, Funny)
Already is (Score:3, Interesting)
Voice mail on the mobile is actully higher-priority than my e-mail (and spam free for the moment). I think people's overall relationship with their mobiles may even be deeper than with their computers--especially in the world out there beyond slashdot.
World? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Already is (Score:3, Insightful)
Plus, talking to someone on messenger while you are in the park with beer and nice weather while they are in work is a lot of fun! Especially when you attach a photo to the jibeing.
My phone is more powerful than my desktop PC.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:My phone is more powerful than my desktop PC... (Score:4, Insightful)
My last job was managing a wireless retail store - and although I happen to drool over specs, most people think benefits, not features.
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Re:My phone is more powerful than my desktop PC... (Score:3, Interesting)
The Dell Axim was my latest PDA attempt and I got a bluetooth card for it and connected to the net via my Sony t610. Pocket Outlook still just sucks for use with a regular ole imap server (I'm sure it's great with
This till be HUGE!!! (Score:3, Funny)
My cellphone offers the absolute slowest access to e-mail imagineable. I've never tried to pull up a website on it, it can only hold a few lines of text. I have seen some Clie` models that could possibly replace a person's need for a laptop but a PC in the home, I think not.
Re:This till be HUGE!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
No work will ever get done. Everyone will spend all day surfing for porn at work. How can they block it?
Just one more piece of undeniable proof that the internet is built on porn
Check out the "Mini" (Score:3, Interesting)
Oddly, he created this work of "art" in the medium of "lenticular," those tilt-the-page things to see a different image.
Still, I wouldn't mind such a device.
Finally! (Score:3, Interesting)
Thank you!
This is something (Score:2, Insightful)
What is what? (Score:5, Interesting)
In any case, until hands shrink or eyes focus more tightly or web sites start publishing for 100x100 displays, there are going to be big monitors and keyboards that will likely be connected to big boxes of some kind for the forseeable future.
Already true outside of the US (Score:5, Informative)
This extends to other products as well: PDAs and portable game consoles are also much less common than cell phones and phones are taking over those niches too. Nokia is a much bigger threat to Windows than Linux internationally
So, the article is not really news, it's just US being behind the curve on this one.
Fusion Device? (Score:5, Funny)
PDA as center of life (Score:4, Interesting)
My finances are already basically all tied up in my PDA; just about any personal application development or service rollout I consider has to take into account access from a PDA, too. It's not as powerful nor can it handle complex tasks as well as my computer, but it's an extremely valuable data entry device and it can handle basic computing tasks quite handily. In the past, people ran an entire small business on a computer with less power.
Grid technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, you have obvious constraints like screen size, but if you coupled voice technology with the phone (audio being sent to server and processed there, over 3G or 4G link) then you could end up with something not too unlike a Star Trek computer!
USER: Hello Mr. Phone! Can you tell me what the weather is like in Las Vegas, please?
MR. PHONE: Yes! It will be 87 degrees and a little windy! By the way, you're running low on credit - want to top up?
Re:Grid technology (Score:5, Funny)
MR. PHONE: Yes! It will be 87 degrees and a little windy! By the way, not satisfied with your lover's size? Ask me how we can increase it by up to 3 inches! All herbal!
Parent
All I want is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe if there were docks everywhere... (Score:5, Informative)
If you had a phone/PDA combo that could plug into commonly-available docks, like a laptop dock, you might be on to something. Add in wired networking (which will always be faster than wireless, by the nature of signals) and extra, long-term storage, some good speakers for gravy.
For now, I have a PDA (Handera 330, sweet little machine), and I love and use it... but I'm typing this in on a desktop, 'cause I code for a living, and coding on a PDA, while possible, is painful, even with a plug-in keyboard.
Re:Maybe if there were docks everywhere... (Score:4, Insightful)
I can certainly see the phone becoming an uber device, eventually. The various PalmOS phones already are nearly there. A friend who is in anthropology was trying to figure out a data-entry solution for a few months while he was in Chiapas state. We discussed a few options (such as buying a cheap ThinkPad in the 133mhz Pentium range like the 760e), but what we eventually figured would be his best option was his Palm IIIxe with one of those collapsible keyboards.
The IIIxe is a complete computer in itself. It can do almost everything a bigger computer can do, functionally. It's only real limitations are speed and storage--you can do a whole lot of useful work with just a B/W text interface. Where the device might fall down (such as with photo editing), it can be enhanced by external server-based services.
For example, assume you store photos in your phone/PDA/camera. A processor capable of doing real photo-manipulation would be more than such a small device is capable of. So, when you get home, you plug your phoneto a USB keyboard and mouse, and to a big monitor. The phone talks wirelessly to your home server (or to a server on the wider Internet), and you run a local X server on the phone with the photo manipulation software running on the beefier server.
When you're done, the photos are synced back to the phone, all nicely edited.
It's things like this where the Free software community could really be forging ahead with new ideas and new ways of thinking. The old, traditional X, often thought of as bloated and outdated, is actually a great solution for situations just like this. This is a business opportunity just waiting for somebody to pick up the ball and run with it. Imagine real estate agents--they can access everything they need from a convenient device that can interface with various I/O devices that meet a relatively simple standard. Plug the phone into a cradle in their cars, and the agent's client can browse through photos and whatnot while they're driving around.
The business traveller only needs to bring his uber-phone, since the hotel he's staying at will have one of the stripped-down terminals available on demand.
Never mind all that, though--I'd rather re-implement Microsoft's Exchange protocol so I can strike back against the Evil Empire by installing a Linux server. Take that, Bill!
Parent
Need 3G first (Score:3, Interesting)
As Sun says, the network is the computer. We're not going to have phones as computers until the phones are on the Net, and I don't mean 2400 baud GPRS.
Give me, in a Treo package (i.e. with thumbboard), a 320x480 screen (like a Tungsten, not a 160x160 like the Treo 600), high-speed Internet, and a video recorder with sound (because the failure of the mainstream media demands that the citizenry does its own reporting). Give me that now. Don't wait for the translation. Don't wait for 1X EV-DV.
most of the way there (Score:4, Insightful)
Just having a simple text editor with me at all times is huge. I've also got an ssh client running, so there's basically nothing I can't do in the area of remote admin.
It runs moria [sourceforge.net]!
I've found that I'm in front of the computer significantly less now. I still use it for development (eclipse won't run on the treo
Make it as pretty as you like ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Do that and I'll take it at any price under $400 US. Otherwise, don't bother me.
No Thanks... (Score:3, Insightful)
Just a damn phone, that's all i want.
Its 1982 all over again with the microcomputer (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is IT viewed as a commidty? Where is the innovation and importance? Innovation in IT is alive and kicking, just on a smaller scale.
Mainframe lovers trashed the microcomputer or PC and even RMS viewed them as toys and focused gnu on "real"systems.
Funny how people still do this today with computers. I mean pc computers obviously.
The microprocessor gave rise to micro's and the internet/networking gave rise to cells.
But like high end servers and mainframes are still around the same is true with desktops. They are not going away. Rather the market will shift to them and keep them around for background stuff. On your desk you will probably have them for years and use your cell however for IM and some email.
I think their may be some hope for sun after all and problems for Microsoft. Java is going to be HOTT real soon. All the software companies will target phones and use the micro-edition of java or perl embedded.
Perhaps MS may be the next IBM, The former monopolist giant.
Misses impact of PC gaming (Score:3, Insightful)
The CPU speed race between Intel and AMD in recent years has been fueled tremendously by gaming. Once processor speeds caught up finally with the code bloat of business apps like MS Office, most business users really didn't *need* more speed. But PC games constantly push the hardware envelope, and as AMD provided faster chips and the gamer market bought them, Intel was forced to keep up.
While phones are definitely adapting more features and becoming more powerful, more people are using PCs and game consoles as the center of their home entertainment. Even without digital music, digital video manipulation and playback, and other uses for PCs, the PC gaming market is huge [megagames.com]:
"Overall, 2003 U.S. sales of console games totaled USD 5.8 billion (186.4 million units) while computer games accounted for USD 1.2 billion (52.8 million units) in sales. Total game software sales in 2002 were USD 6.9 billion, with console games bringing in USD 5.5 billion in sales and computer games accounting for USD 1.4 billion. (Note: The numbers released by the ESA today do not include sales of game hardware or accessories.)"
The PC is continuing to evolve. I remember years ago when my dad told me he couldn't understand why he should buy a computer, aside from using it for accounting and occasional letter-writing. Now he uses it daily to run his business, communicate with other people, listen to music, find information, and so on.
A proliferation of other computing devices doesn't mean that the PC is going away any time soon.
Size Matters. (Score:4, Insightful)
And the problem with most of these crossover devices is that they are Huge.
I know a few people with these Nokias [sidetalkin.com] and these T-mobile-thingies [infosync.no], and they just look ridiculous.
Now look at Japan. [nttdocomo.com]
As soon as we have normal-sized phones that do all the e-communicating and surfing we normally use our computers for, without looking stupid, then we'll see them replace PDAs for most people.
A phone isn't a computer, it's a terminal. (Score:3, Insightful)
But after a while what happens is that the "stuff" is the important thing.
What you really want isn't "a phone that's a computer", it's "a phone that lets you get at all your stuff", whether that stuff is music, contacts, ebooks, news, webpages, or what have you. The phone is a user interface device optimised for realtime audio communications. The handheld is a user interface device optimised for browsing small chunks of data. The iPod is a user interface device optimised for playing music, and so on.
They all carry little chunks of your "stuff" around.
What you really want isn't a "phone that's a computer" or a handheld or a laptop, what you want is a way to keep your stuff organised, and a way to get at your stuff from whatever device you're carrying, and then you don't care whether it's a phone today or a handheld or a laptop, you've got your stuff.
So what do you do? You could keep your "stuff" online, then everything becomes a terminal, but now you're tied to cellphone coverage... which probably works in Europe, but it doesn't work in places like the USA or Australia. You could keep your "stuff" in the smallest device, or the one with most space, but then that's the one you always have to keep with you.
Alternatively, you can keep the stuff in all your devices in sync, and hope you've got the right stuff when you need it.
How about building a thing to carry your stuff? One of those USB keychain drives would be about the right size. Give it bluetooth or wifi and a USB charge/sync interface for high-speed updates, and keep all your stuff in that. Have web-based interfaces as well as file-like interfaces and syncML and everything else.
That's where your stuff is.
Plug it in to a computer, that's now YOUR computer. Bring it near a blank bluetooth phone, now that's YOUR phone, and so on...
Future of hardware (Score:3, Interesting)
The device is your basic PDA/Phone hybrid that most phones are today, with camera of course. It has little memory of its own, doesnt dock with a PC, doesnt have a removable memory card and once the (write once) PROM has been set, it will only work on one network. You can listen to music on it, watch films, tv, browse the net, whatever. Everything you do, from adding a number to your address book (which is automatically backed up by the network) to saving a photo (which is automatically backed up by the network) requires the network, theres a small amount of memory to buffer things if you happen to be outside network coverage (unlikely) but the phone is essentially a locked device. If your a good little consumer and pay the network you get a gadget to die for, leave them and you loose all your data (unless you pay the transfer fee). It does most of what you need, but for things that require a big computer with a big screen and printer, you'll still need a PC untill they trick you out of that. The future of hardware is services, money and DRM, the idea is to make the hardware as cheap as shit, controllable by the corporations and to extract as much money from you as they can. Forget a Beowulf cluster, this is a money making cluster, 24/7 baby!
Ergonomics make me uneasy (Score:3, Informative)
Still, expanding a cell phone and putting a display and a few more controls on it doesn't strike me as unworkable. I sometimes think existing cell phones are way too small, even if it makes them easier to carry around.
Computers are multifunction devices. A lot of people here are way too young to remember the dedicated word processing devices that used to be so common. People don't think anything of using their computers for a vast range of things. Now think about setting up a handheld computer that can do a vast range of things as well, including VoIP. Then it looks more reasonable.
I can easily see cell phones with a small display being used for making voice calls, surfing the web, playing video and music, and being used for playing games as well.
It will not replace the desktop computer, people still need to sit down with a full size keyboard and a gross display, but the amount of time that people have to spend at a full computer will drop and the amount of time they can spend away from the desk will increase.
Which role will Linux play in this game? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Danger Hiptop/Tmobile Sidekick (Score:5, Informative)
Check out the Treo600 from PalmOne (formerly Handspring). It has a keyboard too and runs Palm OS5. Combine this with Sprint's flat-rate (10 bucks a month) high speed data, and you enter a whole new world Beave.
I don't work for PalmOne, but I have had a Treo600 since last October, and I'm here to tell you, while it doesn't replace my computers, I can run VNC on it and CONTROL every computer I use. And telnet, and SMS, and IM, and e-mail, and play cool games. And take pictures and video. And slide in a 512MB SD card. And did I mention it plays MP3s, WAVs, OGGs, **AND** Shoutcast streams? Awesome sound quality. At least as good as an iPod. And it's a kickass phone AND it fits in my freaking pocket! It rocks. You have no idea.
And I'm a "professionial." White-collar type. Not some zit-faced hip-hop kid.
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