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Mobile Phone as Home Computer?
theodp writes "Citing millions of Japanese consumers as proof it can work, MIT's Philip Greenspun hasissued a call for comments on his hypothesis that the mobile phone can function as a home computer for a substantial number of consumers if it's paired up with an appliance that drives the phone from a full-size keyboard and display."
This is already happening, as functions of the pc are co opted by smaller dedicated devices, mp3 players, pdas for contact storage and other devices. Its long been known that J6P doesn't need 512mb of video ram or a terabyte of disk storage and as the capabilities of "phones" increases this will become a viable option. Unfortunately this is probably what the content providers really want, a movement away from general purpose computers that give users too much control over the content that they buy. Os and device managers will be able to lock in proprietary file types and of course the OS themselves. No not the end of the personal computer just the end of the general computer.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
So what he's saying is... the phone makes a good computer if you fundamentally change it's features? A full sized keyboard and monitor are not pocket sized. Pnoto.Net, Greenspun's own site would be a very different experience on a pocket sized device.
From the article:-
The PC is a scaled-down circa 1965 mainframe.
Actually, it's been argued that the microcomputer/personal-computer is actually a scaled up circa 1971 calculator; the first microprocessors were designed for calculator use, and the first microcomputers were exploitations of these by hackers who wanted their own computers. They weren't designed by someone trying to scale down a mainframe, they evolved from someone trying to build a computer from a crude microprocessor.
But that's perhaps disingenuous; I think what he is referring to is the OS; and it has to be said that as they grew in power, personal computers took their cue more and more from powerful mainframe/minicomputer operating systems like Unix.
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.. who thinks that this endless pushing of features onto our mobile phones are stupid?
Why turn our phones into games consoles, video cameras, mp3 players, computers and whatever else we can fit into it, if it doesn't do anything well? We've got digital cameras that can play mp3s badly, mp3 players that can take photos badly, phones that play mp3s and take photos badly. Most people I know who want to listen to mp3s will use an ipod or zen, since the quality is higher and they have more storage, and most people I know who actually take many photos carry round a digital camera. Most people I know who have a camera phone have used the camera only once or twice.
On my ideal phone it would have a phone book, ability to phone people, and the ability to function as a modem for my laptop. Just a plain old black and white screen would be fine though. Maybe there should be an ability to keep a small diary/timetable on it, since we carry it round and it could function as an alerting device.
A friend bought a new HipTop phone/PDA/camera device. It is amazing. The various functions are about 80% of what a laptop can do, but that 80% is done right and only the stuff you need. It could easily replace most of my phone, e-mail, web and photo needs plus it's always on and you can fit it in your pocket.
It doesn't matter how small our laptops get on the inside (save for cooling purposes), it's still going to have a keyboard and a full sized screen. WE aren't getting any smaller. A mobile phone with a keyboard and a full sized screen is... a laptop, except that it's auto-connected to a wireless phone network.
Perhaps I'm just being thick, but this seems like another variation on the "make the PC an appliance" theme. The idea certainly has some appeal, but past efforts toward this sort of goal (e.g., the MailStation, WebTV) have had only modest success, if that.
One other thing: I am slightly skeptical of the use of Japan as a demonstration that a Cell phone can catch on as a general-purpose computing device. The Japanese writing system is complicated: two different sets of ideograms plus a set of phonetic symbols. I think this may mean that the difference in input speed between a regular keyboard and the phone keypad is considerably less in Japanese than in a language that uses the [Western] alphabet. (If you have ever seen a Japanese word processor, I think you'll understand what I'm getting at.)
All my /. posts, including this one, are from my phone. Right now I'm at a RR crossing waiting.
I am the one in the car behind you. The train has gone & the gates have opened. You are
blocking traffic. I can't honk any louder.
1) Most people aren't at home most of the time (this is the worst generalization, but it works). So most people are not sat in front of their computer, most of the time.
2) Most people have long commutes.
3) Most people don't commute by car, so have time to play with the phone.
4) PDAs don't do well in Japan. Most phones have PDA-like features, which means there is no need for PDAs but actually this is wrong because most phones don't synch with computers in any meaningful manner (and I'm looking at you, Sharp. In fact, while I'm looking at you, Sharp, I'd like to ask how it's possible for you to engineer such ill-conceived user interfaces into your phones time after time after time. Maybe you need to think on this when Vodafone finally gets a clue and asks Toshiba to lead with new-generation phones. Not that Vodafone will be around in Japan much longer unless it stops the ex-pat/in-pat/Japanese in-fighting and gets to grips with the way its phone providers make better phones for the competition than for Vodafone. Hello NEC).
5) Cellphone charges are pretty low, in the great scheme of things, so people can use them as recreational devices.
6) For several of the above reasons, phones are used to coordinate meeting up after school/work, are used on trains where voice is banned, and use to access content to pass the time commuting. They combine elements of recreation and communication tools.
In terms of business models, i-mode is more business model than technology, and the i-mode approach works well where it has been introduced outside Japan. Compare that with Vodafone's idiot Live! service, which is painful in comparison.
Well, not enough infoi there to sway anybody, but I'm in the industry and cellphones can be personal computing devices, but only in some or the majority of cultures. I don't think the US is one of those cultures right now: phones are utility devices, rather than fashion statements and recreational devices. Nothing wrong with that. But I think in Japan, gadgets are likely to be in the pocket, whereas in the US they're more likely to be on the desk.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I have heard that it's actually faster to type japanese words on a cell than english words on a keyboard. Can someone confirm or refute this?
Not true. Typing is always faster on a keyboard. Anyway, typing Japanese on a cell phone is WAY faster than typing English (or other roman-alphabet language).
I'm Spanish, living in Japan, and I have a Spanish friend who's living here too. When we send email to each other from our phones we mostly use Japanese instead of Spanish (even though Spanish is our mother tongue) because it's so fast to type.
The reason is that when you type Japanese on a phone's keypad you type syllabes (or phonemes) instead of individual letters. And most words are composed by 2-3 phonemes, so typing a full sentence in Japanese often takes as few keystrokes as a single word in English.
However, when typing Japanese on a keyboard you actually type the letters that compose each individual phoneme. Or at least on the standard input method that most people use. In Windows and many X-Windows input methods it is possible to switch to a mode where each key is assigned a phoneme instead of a single letter. In theory you should be able to type VERY fast in that mode, but in practice you have to learn another keyboard layout, so nobody cares.
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1. Many high profile sites and publications (like Popular Science) gave step-by-step instructions on unlocking your hiptop/Sidekick and where to get third-party apps.
2. An application called Hiptones allowed you to add your own ringtones and circumvent T-Mobile's catalog cash cow. T-Mobile is (or was) the only provider to intentionally disable loading external ringtones via email, so the only other way to get them was to purchase them. The author of Hiptones began selling it, and this made Danger and T-Mobile very unhappy. The author and Danger quickly reached an "agreement" where Hiptones would no longer be sold or available at all, and shortly thereafter, Danger was no longer freely giving out developer keys.
I'm really tempted to blame T-Mobile and the other carriers here. From my experiences with the Danger crew, it seems like they'd really like the hiptop to be as open as possible, but the carriers are insisting that they lock it down to pad their precious pockets.