Cellphones have become a necessity these days, and being without one is almost unthinkable.
This year marks another decade of technological development. Ten years in which most of the things cellphones allow us to do today, and which users find invaluable, were made possible. The mobile phone had its humble beginnings in the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X, which was developed and accepted as the first commercially available cellular phone in 1983. This phone bears little resemblance to anything available on the shelves today.
As the years ticked by, cellphone companies started adding more than just the ability to talk without being tethered to a landline. First it was just voice calls, then SMS ability was added and today we have a plethora of functions and services we never thought possible. Furthermore, devices started to shrink in size as processors became ever smaller and faster.
The last ten years of development have really turned the cellphone into a full-on communications device, making it as important as a wallet and a set of keys, without which you wouldn’t leave the house. And soon, even the wallet might become obsolete thanks to more recent mobile advances, which introduced mobile banking and payments, and the electronic wallet.
Honey, I shrunk the phone
As processors became smaller and faster, handsets shrank in size, but became more powerful in capability. Consumers demanded more and more from their cellphones, and companies took note, gradually implementing the various functionalities available today. I recall that during my education in the mid 90′s, when I got my first cellphone, I wish I could access e-mail – which was new to me and my classmates – from my phone. Nowadays, it’s commonplace to do just that.
Touch me, feel me
In the beginning, we only had the LCD-type screens with no color. Today, we have screens on phones that sport high definition resolutions capable of millions of colors, and showing movies exactly as seen on a TV.
Touchscreen also only made an appearance on cellphones in the last few years, despite the technology being around as far back as the 1960s, and these screens are still evolving. First, it was simple, single-touch technology to activate onscreen buttons, then came sliding and copying abilities, and now there are multi-touch and gesture controls, made famous by Apple’s iPhone. Although Apple might have the best touchscreen yet, other manufacturers are upping the ante by introducing ever more responsive screens, like the new HTC Desire and Legend phones. The most common touchscreens used resistive technology, but now we have capacitive screens too, these are the ones where you can use your finger to navigate through menus and interact with the many applications available for smartphones.
The Blackberry Storm smartphone only saw the light of day as late as October 2008. It sported the world’s first clickable touchscreen.
Nokia introduced its first touchscreen phone in 2005, the 7710, and then another in 2008, while Motorola only recently released a touchphone in South Africa, the Milestone. Samsung has been making full touch-phones for the last four years, and the company is currently the number-one market leader in this segment.
Go on, take my picture!
The past decade also saw the introduction of camera phones. And so the humble SMS evolved into MMS, letting users take and send photos to one another across the cellular network. The camera phone has also grown from the small 0.3-megapixel cams to the 12-megapixel marvels we see nowadays. The latter is featured in Samsung’s Pixon, for instance, and can also capture video at 30 frames per second. The time has come where anyone with a camera phone can play paparazzi and post pictures on websites or e-mail them to friends straight from their handsets.
Flip, Fold and Slide
It’s hard to imagine that the only shape available in the beginning was the “candybar”, with little or no moving, flipping, folding or sliding parts, except maybe for the pull-out antenna. The phones were ugly, bulky and big. Since then we’ve seen phones that rival paper notepads in thickness, and most modern cellphones are far from ugly. They are super-slim and sexy and can actually fit into an evening bag or pocket without hassle.
From 1, 2, 3, A, B, C to Q, W, E, R, T, Y
The past ten years also brought us the QWERTY keyboard to make typing easier. At first it was just for our text messages, but now they’re used for typing e-mail, browsing the web and posting Twitter messages, among others, from anywhere in the world. These keypads evolved into what is known as a full QWERTY keyboard, mimicking the PC keyboard. The keyboard can either slide out, flip open or can simply be called up on the touchscreen phone’s display.
It does … everything!
The smartphone is also a child of the last decade, although some might argue that 1996′s Nokia Communicator was the first smartphone. It’s safe to say that it was the forerunner of modern smartphones. Although feature phones, those sporting cameras and music players only, are still available today, the smartphone is quickly becoming a firm favorite for all who can afford it.
Brett Loubser, technical product manager at Samsung, believes the most significant technology to be integrated into mobile phones in the past ten years is GPRS, essentially giving mobile phones access to the internet. “This has revolutionized what a cellular telephone can become, changing the device from a wireless telephone, to a window into the world”.
Deon Liebenberg, regional director for Sub-Saharan Africa for Research in Motion (RIM), developers of the BlackBerry phones, believes that the biggest development in the mobile phone arena over the past decade was the arrival of the smartphone. “This is now allowing people around the world to manage their personal and professional time on one mobile device wherever they are”, he says.
According to Liebenberg, one in every six phones shipped worldwide in the past quarter was a smartphone, indicating that people are looking to take control of their business and personal lives with converged devices. “Not only are smartphones packing in more features and functionality all the time, but we’re also seeing them becoming easier to use and increasingly affordable”, he says. He also believes that push e-mail kick-started the smartphone revolution and notes that the BlackBerry smartphone was launched in 1999 after Mike Lazaridis (co-CEO at RIM) and his team enabled e-mail to be “pushed” to people wherever they were, without the need to log on to retrieve it.
Tanie Steenkamp, communications manager, Nokia South Africa, says that the ever-increasing consumer demand for an integrated device that can balance work and home life is driving the smartphone revolution.
The World of Apps
As handsets evolved and functionality increased, as a result of new hardware being introduced, it heralded the arrival of mobile apps. These applications give users access to services from anywhere in the world, enabling them to lead a fully connected life. They can either check specific weather information or updates on the latest game scores, or even pay bills straight from their handsets, all because of some mobile software application some company developed. Many believe that this is still virgin territory, despite the fact that there are already hundreds of thousands of mobile applications available. Some are very useful, while others are nothing more than frivolous nonsense.
Nokia says the smartphone is now a functional business device and all-in-one communications tool, and thanks to mobile internet, more people have access to various applications that have transformed the mobile phone into a multi-functional device, without which our lives would be much more complicated. The introduction of mobile applications has allowed users to tailor their devices to fit their individual needs.
Nokia, according to Steenkamp, started to develop embedded applications as far back as 2005, if not earlier, but in the last 18 months, this has snowballed into a stand-alone service platform, accessible by third parties to develop applications and also generate income. Nokia’s Ovi Store was established in 2008 and has some good examples of applications from which consumers really can benefit.
BlackBerry’s global launch of BlackBerry App World only happened in 2009, offering apps like games, entertainment, instant messaging and social networking, news, and weather. Liebenberg, however, says that research shows that 99% of downloaded applications are discarded or ignored after just four weeks. “As such, the focus needs to be on SuperApps, those applications that, once you start using them, you will wonder how you every lived without them”, he adds.
With the introduction of hardware like GPS, FM radio and cameras, the game is on in terms of how these technologies, with the help of mobile applications, can enhance consumers’ lives. Social networking and sharing details of your life, be it through text, photos or music, is changing the way people are interacting with each other. Not only has this decade brought us e-mail, navigation and other location-based services, it has also enabled us to use our cellphones as a banking tool, allowing users to pay for services and products while at the beach or on safari in the African bush.
Mobile applications are what make the world turn these days, allowing users to continue doing anything they traditionally could not do without a computer, all from a little device that goes wherever they go.
What’s next?
According to Sonja Shear, market unit head at Sony Ericcson South Africa, mobile devices will be the “screens” for all our content and service delivery. “It will be industry standard for mobile phones to be a convergence device that will be able to do almost anything. Features will no longer be the focus point to stand out among competitors in a mobile handset industry, but will become more about the unique offerings that the manufacturer brings consumers”, she says.
BlackBerry’s Liebenberg says mobile applications are changing the way we work and play. “As the number of smartphones in circulation grows, we can expect to see a larger variety of increasingly sophisticated applications reaching the market. Soon, the device will become the remote control of our lives, giving us access to every business and home entertainment tool from wherever we are”, he adds.
“We believe that the future will hinge on the success of harnessing third party ecosystems and relationships to bring solutions to consumers which will delight them and keep them constantly connected to what matters most”, adds Nokia’s Steenkamp. Cellphones will become the center of our media lives, storing, forwarding and delivering ultra-high-quality content through multiple interfaces, says Samsung’s Loubser.
“They will become the remote control for our lives!”
