The future of mobile phones

By Lindsay,
With more and more smartphones being sold, and third party applications being developed for all platforms, the future of mobile telephones is becoming increasingly clear.

I have mentioned that only 3 platforms will make it into the future.  These being, Android powered, iPhones, and Windows Mobile.  With the preliferation of applications being developed for all these platforms, then we are likely to see the following:

The cellphone becomes a data terminal.  Cellphones do two things.  These are make calls over the cellular network, and use data over the cellular network.  Third party applications such as Viber/Skype allow for voice and video calls using data over cellular.  The iPhone Facetime application allows video calls as long a both devices are connected via WiFi to the internet.  This type of calling is bypassing the telecommunications company.  What to look for in a smartphone plan is a data component that is in the Gbytes per month area.

Pushback against the technology. Smartphones, whilst simple to use, can be also complicated to use for a certain demographic.  Expect people to want to buy a basic cellphone that only makes calls.  These types of phones will be small, light, and low cost.

In New Zealand with our telecommunication company's being a bit tight on capital spending, expect to see a degradation of service as more smartphones come on line.  3G data performance is quite good as long as there is very little traffic.

Location services will be pushed, many applications will come on line to assist you in finding places, people etc that are nearby to you.  There will also be 'official' demand for permanent location tracking for public safety reasons.  Expect to have your movements tracked 24 hours of the day.  I would expect to see sales of low powered GPS jammers to increase for the paranoid.  However if concerned, the cheapest method is to take the battery out (if you can, can't do that with an iPhone), or wrap it in tin foil.

Why So Grumpy?

By Lindsay,
I was on a call when a customer asked "are you feeling grumpy?"  Hmm I wonder what my tone of voice was for him to ask that question.  Here's my best answer to that:

First I was concentrating hard on a problem, so my mind wasn't on the conversation.

Second I was on my cellphone - and I try to keep my cellphone conversations to the bare minimum because of the danger of cellphone radiation.