What will Happen with Mobile Phone Technology?
- You've got your trusted mobile phone in your pocket. At any moment, you suddenly take it out, place it comfortably in your hand, and begin to furiously browse the Internet, play a game, read email - or even (gasp!) make a phone call! What's next for these neat handheld devices?
Bill Giovino gives you his 30 second analysis.
Are you busy? So am I. So, I'll make this quick.
As I've always said, the inevitable conclusion of any popular embedded device is standardization . Most mobile phones are standardized on ARM cores, with a few innovative dissenters breaking rank and putting less popular cores inside in the name of differentiation and innovation.
What's left is the user interface. Right now, the user interface on your mobile phone's LCD is drawn by custom firmware that draws the icons you see. Each phone is different. Just like the way Windows user interfaces for industrial automation applications were coded - before the browser was invented and created a standardization for industrial control interfaces.
I think that it's only a matter of time before we begin to see a similar consolidation of interfaces - in the name of Userfriendliness ( I just invented that word ) as well as fast time to market.
What are the options for the standardization of mobile phone user interfaces? Here is my opinion:
- Adobe Flash - this provides you (the user) the richest user experience with flash animation and ActionScript scripting. The LCD interface would be a Flash animation/image, with user actions being tied to ActionScript calls which accesses the phone's APIs.
- HTML with JavaScript - this is not as visually rich or exciting as Adobe Flash, but nonetheless provides an easy learning curve and an easy way for any high school student to personalize their mobile phone.
This is where I think the mobile phone interface is headed. There's also a chance of a pure JavaScript interface, but I think that's less likely. Mobile phone manufacturers will need to put security in place in the phone's operating system (OS) to make sure that illegal API calls aren't made. Of course, there is always the chance that during the process of customizing their phone, the user might brick their phone. Because of this possibility, these phones need to have an easy way to reset the phone to the default interface.
Does this make sense to you? Send me an email and tell me what you think!
Bill Giovino
Created:24-Feb-2009, Updated:30-Apr-2010
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