What's Happened In Mobile Over the Past 10 Years 149
Posted
by
timothy
from the oh-nothing-much dept.
from the oh-nothing-much dept.
andylim writes "recombu.com has an article examining what's happened in mobile over the past ten years, including BlackBerry launching its first smart phone in 2002, Motorola launching the Razr in 2004 and Apple launching the iPhone in 2007. As a commenter points out, the first camera phone (Sharp J-SH04), which was released in 2000, featured a 110,000-pixel (0.11MP) CMOS image sensor, and a 256-colour (8 bit) display."
Hmm (Score:5, Informative)
Wow. Or:
Awesome. Just awesome. If you think there's more depth than this, there's not. That is the sum total of the analysis of those two years.
Re:Smartphones and Flip Format (Score:2, Informative)
Agree with you 100% on the battery life issue, though.
Notable hardware (Score:5, Informative)
3G (UMTS) turned out to be a bit of a disappointment with the required cell density there are only a few 3G-only networks in densely populated places like South Korea, 2G GSM is likely to stay around well into the LTE era.
Satellite phone networks have also come a long way since the initial bankruptcies and unreliable services. There are now at least 4 Geosynchronous orbit satellite phone networks with handheld phones and the two LEO networks that went bankrupt both recovered and are planning to launch new satellites. The phones themselves also not half the size they used to be.
Re:In other news... (Score:4, Informative)
Well, the nice thing about mobile technologies is that they've got a relatively low infrastructure cost compared to wired technologies. The spiderweb of cable needed is significantly less dense, and it can piggy-back on existing data telcom lines.
Cellular tech also benefited in much of the world because they didn't have the initial 'heavy' cellular infrastructure to contend with - the legacy analog cellular crap. They also had fiber optics at their disposal, making the line cost significantly lower if anything did need to be laid.
And most countries, particularly much of the European ones, have the advantage of having higher population density and smaller area. Even in countries like Albania (which I doubt has much for any connectivity) getting the whole country covered with modern data cellular would be much easier.
Even still, it's possible to get a cellular connection of one sort or another pretty much anywhere in the US. I'm in one of the least sparsely covered parts of the US (from all carriers), which also happens to be one of the least populated. I can be tens of miles from the nearest person (forgive the hyperbole, but 1+ miles) or 30+ miles from the nearest town over 500 people and still get an SMS (or maybe a phone call) out. That's impressive.
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Informative)
Well, what can you expect with a camera with a single fixed aperture and speed? Almost every cell phone camera out there is f/2.8, although if you are (un)lucky, you might get one with f/5.6. Whatever the aperture is, however, is what you are stuck with, for the most part (unless you are a super-wiz hardware hacker and can replace most of the camera...).
The second factor in determining image quality is shutter speed, but since in this day and age, there is no physical shutter, "shutter speed" refers to how long the image sensor senses for image data; 1/400 shutter speed on a cell phone means that, actually, the sensor is only "looking" at the world for 1/400 of a second. While this is quite similar to a real camera, the fact that the sensor is "always exposed" means that it is always at odds with the world, in terms of lighting (being left camera-side up on a sunny day is not good for the phone's camera at all)
So yes, megapixels don't mean shit. A decent camera with an adjustable aperture and shutter speed (possibly even a real shutter) makes for a better picture.
Re:In other news... (Score:3, Informative)
There's a bit more choice these days as well, with a few companies (at least SonyEricsson...) offering phones with better optics, making the device thicker but resulting in picture quality that comes pretty close to that of compact happysnap cameras... good for people who like to always have a decent camera on them.
Re:In other news... (Score:4, Informative)
Well, what can you expect with a camera with a single fixed aperture and speed? Almost every cell phone camera out there is f/2.8, although if you are (un)lucky, you might get one with f/5.6.
But whatever their so called aperture, the physical aperture is still a pinhole lens that is a couple millimetre across. My proper f./2.8 lens have a diameter of 77mm (and can close to f./22). Which actually lets some light in.
There's probably a physical limit under which you cannot go and still have a reasonably decent lens (not super studio high-end flawless quality, just decent). At a guess from the various compacts I've seen, I'd say it's around 1.5cm. Maybe a wee bit less.
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Informative)
And most countries, particularly much of the European ones, have the advantage of having higher population density and smaller area. Even in countries like Albania (which I doubt has much for any connectivity) getting the whole country covered with modern data cellular would be much easier.
Worth mentioning is that the countries in Europe furthest ahead in cellular technology, the Scandinavian countries, have very low population density even when compared to the US. And still they have coverage in pretty much all of the country. (Including many remote mountainous regions)
Re:In other news... (Score:4, Informative)
Not quite true: I leave in France, where, when Al Gore invented the Internets, we where in a rather worse situation, telecoms-wise: single, nationally-owned carrier, high prices, quite good service, though.
What they did, as in much of the EU I think, is force deregulation by
- selling 3 nationwide GSM licenses, so there was competition right from the start
- forcing standardization and interoperability by enforcing the GSM standard for all carriers, which helped with coverage and provider switching
- Carriers also had to commit to cover an increasing percentage of the population, which is admittedly easier to do than in the US (France is a bit smaller than Texas, but has more than twice the population).
- later, forcing number portability (you can switch provider and keep the same number)
- above all, agreeing that the caller pays for calls, with mobile numbers set apart by a different prefix (06 = mobile, 01 = Paris, 04 = south east...). You used to be able to figure out which carrier someone was using by looking at the second couple of digits, but with number portability that is no longer 100% true.
The one remaining issue, apart from Texts pricing, is pricing legibility: telcos are free to set up there tariffs as they wish, so it's very hard to come up with an apples-to-apples comparison.
Re:In other news... (Score:3, Informative)
For example, Finland. Just over 5 million people in that very large country, but 25% of them live in Helsinki urban area. Or Sweden, with 9.2 million people in that massive land area, but 30% of them in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmo urban areas.
Looking at just strict density over the entire country isn't very applicable; you need to look at the percentage of population that lives in the large cities. You'll find that in Europe the effective density is much higher than in the US; a large percentage of the total population of most European countries live in a relatively small area and in the cases of the Scandinavian nations large areas of their country are essentially uninhabited.
Re:Nokia N9000. (Score:2, Informative)
But a cheaper monthly rate than many, so if you plan to keep it 2 years, ultimately cheaper than the iphone.
Re:In other news... (Score:3, Informative)
Read liked your posts and that was a bad car analogy, but all this is off topic...more on topic per your quote:
We didn't spend bajillions of dollars through the 1900s to set up a nation wide telco infrastructure just so we could avoid setting up a 12G cell network in the early 2000s.
That's not entirely accurate...
We, you, your parents, their parents, all of us have give American telcos more than $200 Billion in tax money (out right cash + additional taxes and additional fees; all of which was approved by our elected leaders) since 1990; for their promise to Americans to provide Fiber To The Home FTTH; over the last mile, not just to our neighborhood, but to our house/apartment.
Not only is it economical and feasible, but instead of honoring their promises, they lobby our elected officials at the rate of $1.8 Million per week to not give us fiber, to not give us net neutrality, to not give us high speed broadband.
I pay over $50 per month for 16,000 Kbps down and 2,000 Kbps up stream bandwidth. They do not even give me that. I see it and sometimes during the Speed Test, but as soon as the Speed Test finishes, my cable (100% of Cable users experience this) broadband is throttled back to lower than the FCC definition of broadband. The FCC definition is 768Kbps, however I do not see above 400Kbps down or above 120 Kbps up stream bandwidth.
The US is not slightly behind the rest of the world, we are way behind the rest of the industrialized world. Thanks to putting in Fiber infrastructure (and density is relative as it costs more then anyone admits to dig up infrastructure in a large city where in rural areas they can lay miles of fiber in short periods of time) In 2007, we were 13th in the world.
In 2000, Japan had 100Mbps / 100Mbps bi-directional synchronous fiber broadband service for less than $55 per month. In 2006, thanks to Fiber, all the Japanese had to do was switch out the customer's modem and they could give them 1 Gbps / 1 Gbps bandwidth for less than $53 per month. Yes competition drove the price down. Their market is working, the US market has not worked for well over two decades.
I read about a Fiber / laser router that could multiplex a single strand of fiber from 1X to 1024X back in 2004. That is a 1024 bandwidth increase over a single strand of fiber...still think bandwidth scarcity is anything but a myth.
Why? simple, follow the money. The telcos want you to believe bandwidth is scarce. The bandwidth scarcity myth is well a myth. (Proof is in their statements to stock analysts, especially in the light of current economic realities) A lie to keep their failed tiered pricing strategy. Their goal to drive all customers up to $150 per month. However it is back firing on them and for the very reasons that I mentioned above. Once you realize you are throttled and they are not delivering you a fraction of the bandwidth you are paying for; you will quickly discover that a DSL line providing you 1,500Kbps down and 384Kbps up stream is well over 3X faster than Cable Modem Internet access. And DSL service costs you between $20 - $30 per month. In fact for the price of one Cable Internet access you could have 2 DSL providers (redundancy and increased bandwidth). And remember 1 DSL line is 3X faster than a single throttled coaxial cable access. Ignore what they say you will get as they will never give you or me 12Mbps down or 2Mbps up. Just will never happen.
I do not mean to get on your case, I like your posts, but whenever I see another American acting as a Shill for the industry while getting screwed in the process, well some learning is in order.
Consider this: In 2006, a Telco executive said in the future the average household will consume at least 300GB of bandwidth per month. I would suggest to you that by 2010, you will need much more than 300 GB per household, just auto updating for most people will ap