We need to talk about Cellphones

So unless you have been hiding in a mousehole due to inclement weather (totally possible), you’ve probably been hearing lots of stories in the recent few weeks about cellphones, and a variety of issues that relate to them.

And I mean a variety of issues.  There have been stories of AT&T and Google sniping at each other over Google Voice and Google Voice blocking calls (which is being called a test of net neutrality).  Apple is now Unblocking Google Voice and Skype.  A new HTC phone is being introduced on Verizon, and I think this week the news of the moment is that all the data that belongs to the T-Mobile SideKick crowd has gone missing, permently alongside a merger of Cisco with a little known company called Starent, who makes the routing equipment for 3G and 4G phones.  On top of that, the first video standard for phones has been announced (whew).

It’s been an interesting few weeks in cell phone land, in other words.  When you have all of this news, it seems like the perfect time to sit down and talk about cell phones in some sort of serious manner.

Some sketches:  Are newer cell phones, especially the PDA/smartphone types really cellphones in the traditional sense?  Or are they starting to morph into something else?  What should our phones look like in the future?

My first instinct, based on all the discussions about the growth of SMS on ordinary cellphones alone, and even the sheer fact that a basic cellphone will have a calendar and an alarm, (and perhaps a camera) is that we are entering a period where cellphones, as much as we want to think of them as devices that we talk on, are not really devices that we talk on exclusively.  They tend to do many more functions, especially if you compare them to the first brick-phones (the only cool function those had were a redial key).  In fact, in the case of many smart phones, one could argue that the main function isn’t even to make a call.  Many people spend far more time on their smartphones doing far more other activities than calling people.  I would hedge a guess that they probably are not using their smartphone primarily for calling people at all.  Then what is the device that all these people are holding in their hands?

One of the big elements of this question is actually being fought about now.  The question is the follows: What is the actual purpose of the cellular provider when you sign a contract with them?

With the introdcution of Google Voice, it might be that what we now think of as cellular phone providers are more similar to ISPs, and that the cellphones are actually endpoints to the network.  However, because the devices still  have phone-like qualities, it is unclear what the service provided by the Cellular Phone companies. You can call people from them, and it is considered the primary service, and that service is the mot developed service technology wise by Cellular Providers.  They’ve gotten fairly good at transmitting your voice, in comparison in transmitting Other kids of Data.

However, the actual setup of a cellular service, with its towers and phones, is much more similar to the idea of nodes on the Internet.  There isn’t really much that differentiates a node to a tower as you pass by when it comes to your voice going to the tower, especially as they become more ubiquitious to carry over the vast amount of mobile calls in the United States.  (The market is nearly staurated at a decent price- a lot of my Young Friends actually have given up on the Idea of a land line in any form including VOIP, to the chagrin of the over 30 crowd I know).  At the end of the day, there may not be much of a difference between calling your mother in Kalamazoo and looking up the nearest Korean food place that delivers to your office after hours, except right now the tower-node system is very underpowered to deliver your “real time data” compared to your voice.

Depending on the kinds of arguments given, the development of mobile phones in the US could really shift radically.  This is especially important because in the US, one usually slowly buys one’s phone through a subsidy or over time from ones’ carrier.  Depending on all the rulings, how the phones are classified will affect the way we think and design the phone in the short term.  While it will be really clear over time that Cellular carriers are delivering data, and are therefore offering a commodity item, right now this story is not in full bloom.  We’re still coming into the early spring, and there may be an early frost before spring comes fully into bloom.  If there is a decision that cell phone providers are not in the data giving field, but in the calling field, and in some ways Google Voice’s services are a replication of such services, that has a totally different implication of design than saying that these services are in fact data services.  It would mean that despite the fact that the market is changing and changing rapidly, data would still be considered a premium excess service rather than a standard offering, and the phones offered to the market through the carrier would be reflective of that.  If the reverse was true, then the phones would be designed around the idea that data is the primary usage, and calling people happens to be an ability these phones do.  Bear in mind this when looking at what to implement for the mobile market over the next say three years, at the max five.

So what can a mobile phone do?  What should a next generation mobile phone do?

That’s actually a two part question.  If we take it to mean that a next generation mobile phone, especially a mobile smart phone, is more phone than computer, then it should be built a programmed around such a concept.  Blackebrries and Nokia Smartphones tend to partially take this tact.  Most of them have a keyboard which by switching off different pre-programmed keys, is alphanumeric.  It’s primary task seems to be organizing your contacts, email, calling, and calendar, although you can surf the web and use applications.  It is developed around the idea that they are phones that can do other things.  This is actually not a bad design choice, it is just a choice that is reflective that it seems to be a very text entry heavy device which should otherwise be used for calling, even if in fact the phones can be more powerful.

The other tact is to assume that the phone’s main purpose is to process data, and it is only secondary that you can write a lot of email and call a lot of people.  This seems to be the current strategy of the IPhone.  Although it can manage your contacts and call your friends, most people buy applications for it that do a whole host of other activities that have no relevance to the fact that it is a phone whatsoever.  Or even that it is a mobile phone.   If anything, very futuristic applications are driven on the fact that it is a computer that is really always on demand and really can be anywhere.    The relevance is that now you can have a super mobile small computer that does many of the tasks that people do on computers.  However, the tradeoff is in a much less standard text input, which was and is a huge driver for computer usage to this day.  That is not to say that in theory the IPhone and Iphone like models could refer back to other input models, such as writing.  It just that we have discovered that typing is a lot faster for most kinds of input.

Mobile phones of the relatively immediate future have to balance these two impulses.  Unless one can figure out how to film onself for a live chat over one’s cellphone, it is inevitble that one will make a call on the phone.  Yet as a primary usage, calls are not going to rank in first place.  Other uses will prevail, either as items that make information available to individuals faster, or as items that make individuals more highly connected in newer and different ways.

Then you have to deal with the other kinds of input: Wireless data,  voice, and bio-signaling/bio-metrics.

Voice data:  I really don’t know much about the subject.  it seemed to have an unward curve of being so popular, and then troughed, and now is slowl;y becoming useful again.

Bio-metrics:  This is something cool and futuristic.  It’s effectively irrellevant right now on something as small as we are talking about until the technology can catch up.  It will, but that day is not today.  There just isn’t the space to use it efficiently, unless perhaps you are talking about augmented writing.

Wireless data.  There are many sorts of wireless data.  That’s not this discussion.  The discussion at hand is can that wireless data be delivered effectively and efficiently across a wide variety of locations at very high speeds despite large numbers accessing a network?  In theory this should be the case, in practice right now we are hitting some major walls.  It’s problematic because these small devices often don’t and probably shouldn’t carry all the data they need to function.  Further, because of their size, they offer the ability to do augumented reality, wherethey are activated by the space they are in.  However, if toomany people are in a spcce, that ability is also cramped.

Output:

As in most computing devices, output is some sort of screen.  However, the screen is tiny. A smartphone screen size usually averages an area that is about three or four fingers squeezed together of my somewhat tiny hands.  The IPhone and Blackberry Storm, along with other touchscreen phones, tend to have screens that are the size of my hand.  That’s a function of the fact that the screen is also the imput area.  In other words, usually the maximum size you have for a phone/modem-computer-thing-on-the-go is the saize of the palms and fingers held long but tight together.  And that’s it.  That will cramp any ability a person has to make something function extremely well with such a small screen.  Larger screens tend to make sight better, especially when one has to process lots of text based data or very complex images.  Don’t bother otherwise, unless technology is available internally in the phone to augment that experience.

Short answer about anything involving input  or output: Without resolving the issue of how to manage data,as seen above, these devices are really crippled.  Seeing phones, especially smartphones as an endpoint to a network means admitting that you do not have the ability to get input into the phone easily, not display the input once you get it easily easier.  This will change over the time.  It’s starting to.  But it hasn’t happened yet.

OS: Among the most irrelevant discussions I’ve heard about.  One of the smartest thoughts I’ve ever heard about software is that it has to make the machine beautiful, aka make it run well.  The problem is, we haven’t figured out how to make the machine beautiful yet.  The OSs on the market all have elements that tackle problems that need to be tackled if you’ve decided to move away from the fact that these are not really very phone like machines any more.  It is currently a race to the finishline, and although some companies are slightly more ahead than others, I can’t say someone is out of play.

Ok, part two when I wake up and have a chance to edit that.