08-07-2003, 07:53 PM
|
|
Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
|
|
Somewhere Along the Way, Mobile Phones Became Real Computers...
And when that happened, they started acting like computers: they crashed. 8O Walk with me down this path...Until the year 2000 (give or take a year), mobile phones were just that: phones. Sure, they might have had a game or two, and a few tried to include calendar functionality, but the vast majority of people used them as phones, nothing more. I've had various cell phones for over a decade now, and I don't remember any of my early cell phones crashing or locking up. They just worked, but they only did one thing: phone calls.Sometime around the Sony-Ericsson T68 generation, phones became more than just voice terminals: Bluetooth, GPRS, ringtones, screen graphics, semi-real PIM functionality. The T68i was the first phone I owned that crashed on me - sometimes Bluetooth just wouldn't work. When I beamed a contact from my Pocket PC to the phone, it would lock up the phone, forcing me to remove the battery. It's just like a real computer! :lol:When I was down at the Handango Partner Summit in late July, they had a demo table with all of the latest mobile devices from the Windows, Symbian, and Palm platforms. All the new Nokia phones, new Sony Ericsson phones, etc. Microsoft had an Tanager Smartphone and a Pocket PC Phone Edition on display as well. I was trying to figure out the keyboard on a Nokia phone, when the person near me was playing a game on the new Nokia N*GAGE. Then a funny thing happened - the phone crashed, and it actually blue screened. I kid you not! 8O The phone crashed and rebooted, and the person using it walked away in disgust.What's the moral of this story? As phones become increasingly advanced, they're prone to the same issues that affect our desktop computers and PDAs. Nokia and the others in the Symbian camp might have a lot of marketing muscle, but they're also new at the operating system game. Microsoft, on the other hand, has a lot to learn about the consumer mobile device market - but they excel in building operating systems. It's an interesting battle being fought in the market, and ultimately I believe it will breed strong competition and a desire from all parties to improve rapidly.
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Hybrid Mode
Similar Threads