The Last Smartphone

[slitchfield]

Do yourself a favour and set aside 20 minutes today to read Krisse's new editorial, comparing smartphones (among other things) to in-flight airline meals, haute couture fashion and tinned food. Puzzled? Go read. Krisse argues that there's no such thing as a real smartphone revolution - at least not today and not until smartphones are as disposable as light bulbs or umbrellas.

Read on in the full article.

[elp]

An unusual, refreshing and well argumented view on the way technology really affects people. Thanks. It's true that we geeks (or "technology enthousiasts" as you say) tend to live in a different world. But my mother is always there to remind me of what world "normal" people are living in and i'm gradually taking this in...

[tomsky]

I think the article makes some excellent points, and certainly provides an interesting perspective on the developing technology of today.

However, the really insightful stuff comes at the end, with the discussion of recent technological developments such as the wind-up radio and the Wii. Disruptive technologies indeed!

[Webbunny]

An excellent Article, when I started reading it I had no idea it would be so informative (and therefore so long!), Krisse, go and have a lie down

I dont think including the OLPC machine is at all controversial. I have been following this project with interest from when it was first announced, and its a perfect example of a technology revolution.

Sure, the project team have had to innovate in some situations (mainly to do with power generation and usage, as well as a screen that can use bright sunlight to its advantage instead of it being a hindrance). But mostly its tried and tested tech that 'just works' and is cheap.

The revolution is about who will get to use these machines, and what they will be able to learn, create and just do with them, activities that without this project they'd never get the opportunity to do.

And that would be because our 'developed' world, bleeding edge, bell and whistles tech is just not practical, not feasible, and lets face it, not relevant to most of the people in the world, exactly Krisse' point.

[Hardeep1singh]

A round of applause for krisse for a very well written article. some very good points written in there and i think i have an answer for the 1 question left unanswered. The 50$ smartphone. If you've heard of the Mobile phone operator named 'Reliance', this is the company that truly revolutionized the Indian Mobile phone market by literally putting a mobile phone in every hand. (well, most of hands). by providing a cellphone on an initial payment of Rs. 501/- and a 3 year contract. An Dollar is equalvalent to 45 Indian Rupees, so it means a cellphone for $11.11.

No fancy cellphones, just Black n' White Samsung n620 and a similar LG phone.
a simple CDMA network but it did spark a revolution in cellphone industry, making it what it is today.

[luarvique]

The real smartphone revolution everybody expects to happen but nobody talks about is not the iPhone itself. It is the wave of cheap iPhone clones that will rise up once the iPhone is released. Just as iPod has caused radical changes in portable media player design, iPhone will raise the UI standard for everybody, including Sony Ericsson and Nokia. I can't say anything about Sony, but it is probably not a secret that the current Nokia S60's design and performance are horrible. It takes up to 10 seconds just to open a folder!

[natanlevine]

Another superb article, well done Krisse. You are definately an incredible addition to AAS. This article has raised many great points as well as giving me a new and profound view of the way technological progress works.
However I was a bit confused as to who your statements were focused at and what your final message was. I mean I totally agree that the N95 isn't revolutionary as you stated yet I would still like to buy one if I can afford it and I'm glad Nokia is working hard to add "innovations" like gps and 5mp camera's for technophiles like me. After all isn't it cutting edge markets like the Nseries which make eventuall revolutions possible. Obviously they're way too expensive now to cause a real global change, but as you said so was the tin can once upon a time. So I don't think we can accuse manufacturers of making overly expensive smartphones If all they're doing is supplying to our demand. And I don't think we're in the wrong for wanting high profile devices If we can afford them. We all look forward to the time when your "last smartphone" appears but surely this will happen naturally in the unforseen future. I can't actually see this happening quicker any other way.
So maybe I just didn't understand the article but were you calling for any kind of change, or simply for those damn Apple fans to shut up about revolutions?

[slitchfield]

>>it is probably not a secret that the current Nokia S60's design and performance are horrible. It takes up to 10 seconds just to open a folder!

Er.... eh? If a folder takes 10s to open in a S60 device then something's horribly wrong with your device - please contact me separately or (better) ask in the forums. App folders take less than a second to open the first time I try on my N93 and are instantaneous thereafter.

As I said in my own editorial, the iPhone's interface will hopefully bring about a wave of sanity and simplicity to the Symbian licensees, but come on, S60 isn't *that* broken.

Steve

[jah]

Let the market decide what is revolutionary. When analogue mobile technology and GSM started they were expensive, and 15 years later they are still not cheap but most people in the Western world have mobile phones. Phones plus line rental is not cheap. Like a drug, some technologies will never get cheaper

[Hardeep1singh]

Originally Posted by luarvique

it is probably not a secret that the current Nokia S60's design and performance are horrible. It takes up to 10 seconds just to open a folder!

you know, i get similar complaints from people who use an s60 for the very first time, i always suggest them to read through s60 forums so they could LEARN how to use a series 60 phone. Even in your case, i think you must've installed a lot of memory resident programs (like 2 antiviruses, maybe, lol) which is causing ur phone to be slow.
SMARTphones are only for SMART people i guess. Nokia's been taking steps to make s60 phones more noob friendly (like red button closes the app now instead of minimizing it) may be they should also work on a detailed user manual which covers common s60 tweaks and tools to make the s60 experience a little more noob friendly.

[akboom]

Steve, Hardeep;

About the delay in opening folders; obviously you haven't used an N91. It takes anywhere between 2 to 5 seconds to open a folder.

On the N73, 6681, N80; it is not instantaneous as you say but not as bad as 10 seconds too.

To open the images/videos gallery on an N91 takes between 1 to 3 minutes with only around 60 items in there.

I've been using S60s since the 7650 so I am kind of a power user?

Boom

[akboom]

Originally Posted by Hardeep1singh

A round of applause for krisse for a very well written article. some very good points written in there and i think i have an answer for the 1 question left unanswered. The 50$ smartphone. If you've heard of the Mobile phone operator named 'Reliance', this is the company that truly revolutionized the Indian Mobile phone market by literally putting a mobile phone in every hand. (well, most of hands). by providing a cellphone on an initial payment of Rs. 501/- and a 3 year contract. An Dollar is equalvalent to 45 Indian Rupees, so it means a cellphone for $11.11.

No fancy cellphones, just Black n' White Samsung n620 and a similar LG phone.
a simple CDMA network but it did spark a revolution in cellphone industry, making it what it is today.

How are the black n white Samsungs and LGs smartphones?

Reliance started with Rs 25,000/- which included a fixed 3 year contract. When it seemed like it wasn't doing as great as expected they dropped the entry price to Rs 501.

It's the matter of another article how Reliance fudged the rules and bought off high ranking officials to become a full fledged cellular operator from a WLL operator.

Boom

[luarvique]

Originally Posted by slitchfield

Er.... eh? If a folder takes 10s to open in a S60 device then something's horribly wrong with your device - please contact me separately or (better) ask in the forums. App folders take less than a second to open the first time I try on my N93 and are instantaneous thereafter.

Nothing is wrong with my device. There are no resident programs. There is >12 icons in the folder though, and it takes an *awful* lot of time to render those from .SVG files on such a slow device. S60 does cache icons (it takes less time to open the same folder for the second time), but the cache size appears to be very small.

If you have any concrete ideas on what can be tweaked to make things faster, I would appreciate them. So far, things do not appear to be fixable though.

[slitchfield]

luarvique, akboom: Hmm.... I'm guessing that the N91 is different because of the large mechanical hard disk, and that it's this slowing things down. I've used numerous S60 3rd Edition devices now and I've never noticed folder display speed to be a problem.

Steve

[Bassey]

Great article Krisse! A thoroughly enjoyable and thought provoking read. The only point I thought I might raise is this;

One of the main reasons the CD player, DVD Player and tin can have become so completely ubiquitous is that they are each designed to perform one function and one function only. And that function they perform quite brilliantly (actually, DVD players can perform lots of functions but 99.99% of people ignore this and the remote's are really only designed with playing DVD Films in mind so I think my argument holds).

I'd also argue that it's the reason the iPod has been so succesful. It's primary function (playing music on the go) is performed brilliantly and the whole device is engineered around this one task. Granted, Apple have decided to add functionality in order to drive sales, but the whole device is still designed around that one primary function and most users will ignore the extra stuff because it doesn't get in the way.

PC's, Smartphones and media devices, on the other hand, are designed to carry out, literally, an infinite number of tasks. By providing open systems the only limit is our imaginations. This adds infinite levels of complexity, huge potential for hard/software failure and, unfortunately, the inevitable format wars which seem to cripple so much of modern technology.

Because the only limit to the potential for these devices is our imagination, I don't agree 100% with your idea of a "last smartphone", any more than I think there will be a "last PC" or a "Last automobile".

But I still think this was an outstanding article and I thank you very much for it.