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Using MEMS to Miniaturize Mobile Phones
securitas writes: "The NY Times has a feature on using microelectro-mechanical systems (MEMS) in cell phones to replace bulky passive components like the filters, resonators and duplexers that make up most of the size of today's phones. In theory, they say, you could have a cell phone in a ring on your finger. Besides making everyone seem like James Bond, a ring-phone would give new meaning to the phrase 'Talk to the hand.'"
Even with electronics that use a fraction of what today's phones use, to reduce the size of the phone will reduce the size of the battery you can carry with it. A ring phone can't feasibly hold more than a watch battery.
-Restil
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The problem I have...erm...had with small phones is that they're terribly fragile. It's as if they're expected to be carried in a padded purse or something. Makes your wonder why they even made it so small if you need carry those little phones in bulky thick plastic belt clips etc.
Once they make a small phone like that out of something nice and hard, whatever it is, I'll be happy.
For example, the Motorola i1000plus is quite durable, although big. Now compar it to a StarTec, smaller phone, but put the belt clip on and it's just as big. Don't even try to wear it without the clip. It's ultra fragile. On the other hand I've had the i1000 in my pocket, no clip no protector nothing for quite some time and no problems at all.
What good is a cell phone 'ring' if it's broken?
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MEMS will have so many different uses inside of your body from doing things such as an insulin pump (imagine never having to take insulin shots) to fixing congenital heart defects without such invasive surgery. This seems like an interesting but rather fluffy use of it at this time. Plus if you think about it, cell phones are so annoying now, imagine it if they were all built into your body... Shaking someone's hand whose phone is set to vibrate mode and they get an incoming call?
I imagine someday that, when you buy a phone card, the card itself will double as the phone.
Smaller parts mean smaller battery, for the most part - except when you have to moving parts like MEMS does.
I doubt that a slower, more expensive and more highly breakable technology is going to be replacing the current one. A general rule of thumb is that no moving parts can be faster/safer/lower power/smaller than moving parts. MEMS has previously been used to replace larger mechanical systems. Its especially good for increasing the resolution of mechanical scans. There was a presentation at my school on the subject - a guy came in with a credit card sized thing and showed that all you do is connect it to a solution and siphon the solution through the card. A MEMS system could then recognize certain chemical agents in the solution (something that is only possible by having a higher resolution scan of the materials).
But for wireless? At least, it becomes extremely difficult to transmit a signal without a large antennae, and I think mems would require more power than passive systems.
This is all the truth of the technology as I have read about it in the past. Has anyone seen anything that contradicts my assertions?
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Even if the implementation takes 3-5 years, further reducing the size of cell phones may only be beneficial in a few markets. Most certainly, the US market will not need super small cell phones in the comming years. The Asian and EU markets already sell phones that on average are significantly smaller than those sold in most of the US market. Yes, those are GSM phones, but if the American consumers wanted smaller phones, the manufacturers would quickly swap out the GSM circuits in put CDMA in place. Unfortunatly (for some of us) the average American still tends to like their products to be larger (at least acording to many market research companies.)
Where this technology might be more appropriate is in the imbedded markets. For the Auto-makers, the size of On-Star style equipment could be greatly reduced and in-dash cell phones could have a much nicer and simpler integration.
Though its quite cool to see electornics reaching the miniature level, at some point (which we may have already reached) it will be impracticle to reduce the package size of many consumer electronics. Do you really want a 1 cubic inch sized cell phone that you loose once a week and spend $200 to replace?
As for MEMS, the medical applications are much more interesting.
Motorola already has a cellphone watch. It's worthless as it's battery life is about 30 seconds. outside of digital land (which makes up 75% of the continental US and 90% of Canada.)
They can make it the size of an eraser head, If they cant get me a battery for it that lasts as long as a full day of use then it's worthless technology.
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There's a reason why phones overseas (in Japan and Korea, for example) are so much smaller than they are here. Besides the technology being a small jump ahead over there, Americans seem to have issues with small cell phones-- we think that because they're small, they aren't picking up our voices or that they're toys that somehow don't work as well. And we do this with larger cellphones too (albeit to a lesser degree), probably because we grew up thinking that cellphones were really staticky. Consequently, Americans tend to yell unnecessarily into cell phones, especially small ones. We seem to be uncomfortable accepting the fact that if the microphone part of the handset isn't right next to our mouth, it can still pick up our voice.
For this reason, phone manufacturers actually increase the size of cell phones for sale in America, or otherwise simply choose not to sell the smaller models here. I predict these types of "ring phones" and what-not will probably have a very hard time gaining a mainstream foothold in North America.
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