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Where do we go from here? What’s next in Mobile Tech?

Posted by Chris Leckness on April 7, 2008 – 8:43 am  Share
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future Something I have been throwing around in my mind for a couple months is the future of Converged Devices and PDAs. We already know that most of the world considers the stand alone PDA dead, but what about Mobile Phones? We need a phone. We like having tools on our phones to manage our lives, yet there has been no real progress on the hardware side.

Let’s look 1st at the standalone PDA. The Dell Axim X51v was released well over 2 years ago right? The HP iPAQ 4700 series was released just before it. They are both quite similar too. Since their release, what has there been that really exceeds the specs? Nothing really. I was just talking on the phone this weekend with someone that returned an HP iPAQ 100 series Pocket PC. It wasn’t really an upgrade to a 2 year old Dell Axim X51v. Although the HP iPAQ 200 series on paper is an upgrade, it’s not head and shoulders better. That leaves us with the question, “What has to be done to upgrade the PDA and Converged device experience?” Memory, Processor, battery life? What hardware changes need to be made?

What hardware upgrades do we need 1st?

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It really seems to me that we have peaked on hardware in the Mobile Phone business too. Sure, we are seeing new models pop up every day, but how limited are they by what is available for them to build on? When are we going to see 1ghz or better processors with plenty of ram and no real battery life loss? Is that the hold up? Battery technology to allow for the same or better battery life with faster processors? Are we going to just move on past a standard phone form factor and go for the big MID or UMPC route and just use Bluetooth to get our calls taken care of?

I am not an engineer, so I don’t have the answers to many of these questions. I can say that the hardware has been quite stagnant for some time now. It’s time to see some better specs coming out.

I do see a day where we won’t pull out our Tilt or iPhone to tap out a text message or answer a call. I do think that the future is something in the MID/UMPC form factor. Throw it in your brief case, purse, or bookbag and pop a Bluetooth headset in your ear. Speech to Text for messaging so you never have to really pull the device out.

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Chris Leckness (3547 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

Chris Leckness is the Owner/Administrator of Mobilitysite. He is a Microsoft MVP, Mobile Devices and a member of the exclusive focus group, Mobius. Chris runs a Mobilitysite, GotZune, and a few other smaller sites and blogs. His personal blog is chris.leckness.com.


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  • SvenS
    @JakeRich You are absolutely right. The converged devices have all the same problem, they can do everything but nothing really good. That's an build in feature of this kind of devices. A phone should be small and lightweight, a device for internet access or navigation should have a big screen with high resolution, a music player should have easy handling and a lot of storage, a push mail device should have a full an not too small qwerty keyboard and a camera should have a high resolution, good optical system. And for all this functions one needs a big battery capacity.

    So it's obvious that some recommendations (eg. small/light vs. big Screen/long battery runtime) need either special new hardware (rolled flexible screens, new battery technology, ) or multiple devices.
  • JakeRich
    I know I'm out of step, but I don't want a converged device. I want a really good set of devices that work well together, with some standard communications that I don't have to set up with complex steps. I want to be able to hold my PDA in my hand, BT headset on my head, phone in briefcase or pocket and have them all communicate. If I get in my car, I want them to all connect to the car system as I have it set up so that audio comes through the car system, or the input is the mic in the car, etc. The problem with converged devices is that they inevitably are compromises--give up this for that, that for this. I can handle multiple devices, as long as each is as capable as possible to support my needs and likes, interfaced seamlessly.
  • doogald
    I eventually see a move to more powerful processors - probably low power multi-core processors - with speech to text rather than keyboards (though I expect any sort of data entry will be permitted), with wireless connections to headsets, but I think that the small and thin form factor will remain. Because of speech commands the units can have full displays, with any controls touchscreen objects rather than hard buttons. Perhaps they will be very thin with flexible displays and electronic boards, so you can stuff 'em in a pocket if you wish. Syncing, printing, etc., will all be wireless.

    I expect that all of this is years away.
  • Doug Smith
    I think that from a hardware side of of things, moblility has gotten really good. All except for HTC getting cheap on us Tilt TyTN II users and not licensing the proper drivers from Qualcomm. Other than that and video out, which will now be on the xperia, all is good. For me, it is windows mobile. I am a windows mobile fan, but they really need a better user interface, and more stable ROM's. I don't think they are anywhere close at the moment keeping pace with the hardware advances.

    On a side note, I would like a better camera. I would say faster, but until I see the 3.2 mp work with a better driver, I can't really say it is hardware related.
  • i think the hardware side of the equation in the advencement of mobile devices will be driven by the software side. that is, until more people feel limited by the hardware because they can't run smoothly enough (or at all) cool services or capabilities, then we don't have enough 'pull' in the market for faster hardware.

    yes, there is a chicken and egg quality to this argument. but the iPhone shows that it's not the hardware specs that have held back wider adoption of smartphones; it's the experience and ease of use. if my current device (a blackjack1 running winmo6) had twice the horsepower in every regard, it would still only be running the same applications and services, albeit a little better i would hope. but if there were brand new capabilities added that required more horsepower and (here's the important part) that i felt were indicepensible, then i would feel like i needed an upgrade.

    maybe the real gating issue turns out to be network speed? right now i'm not seeing cpu intensive applications like two-way visual calls or tele-presence being offered by anyone. maybe when the networks speed up, we'll see new applications that require more powerful devices.
  • Christopher Gavula
    According to PDADB.,net, the hx4700 series was released more than a year before the x51v. The 4700 has been around for nearly 4 years!
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