Convergence Ramblings
Gizmodo has a few references to phones (from British Telecom, Ericson and Verizon, and Motorola and NEC) that are being developed by various companies that are to have Wifi capability and even designed to do voice over IP. For those who don’t know what this is, it’s just a way to transmit your voice that is not exactly new. Such programs as Microsoft NetMeeting have had this capability for a long time (along with video). I’ve used this technology and was never very impressed with the quality, although perhaps they have made strides with it in the last couple of years. I just wonder if it will be more or less reliable than your average GSM (or CDMA) voice connection. GSM and CDMA do something very similar in that they convert your voice into zeros and ones transmit them through the air to a cell tower which converts them to analog and then sends them along a landline to the other end. Or at least that’s what I think happens. The main difference I see with VoIP is that it does it faster because Wifi is generally on at least a 300kbps line, sometimes a lot higher. Whereas most cell phones still haven’t gotten much past 64kbps. So theoretically voice quality would be better, but then I’m not sure how efficient VoIP is with compressing voice so that it doesn’t take up as much bandwidth as it might uncompressed.
Anyway, these phones aren’t ONLY VoIP, but a combinations of VoIP and GSM or CDMA. Since Wifi networks are still not as ubiquitous (or have the range) of cellular networks, having a VoIP-only phone wouldn’t be very practical! When traveling you’d have to find the nearest Starbucks just to make a call! I’m not even that excited about VoIP. Maybe in a few years it will be the dominant means of making calls when there are Wifi access points on every corner of every block, or sooner if they can increase the range of current (or future) Wifi protocols from the current 300-ft max.
What does interest me much more, though, is just the fact that these phones will have both Wifi and cellular capability. So you will be able to access your email, the web, instant messaging, etc. at pretty high speeds whenever you are near an access point, but you will be able to do the same things, albeit at lower speeds, even when you’re far from any. At least that’s the theory. Whether the devices being built will be able to do this in an elegant way, that’s a whole other issue. I suppose if they are built from the ground up, or have an OS that is modified to account for these two different modes of communications (such as a PocketPC Phone Edition or PalmOS5 or Symbian with the proper hooks), we may have some hope.
It does look like there is a concerted effort in the direction of creating Cell/Wifi phones though, which is great. Of course now that this may be a reality relatively quickly, I can’t help but think of yet other capabilities I would want to throw onto such a device. First there’s GPS. We have just seen the first PDA-Phone with a built-in GPS receiver from Motorola. It’s not actually out yet, and according to the info it’s unclear whether the SD slot is just SD or SDIO (SDIO being necessary for hooking up an SD Wifi card). If it is SDIO, then this might be the most all-inclusive device for a while! The other item on the wish list is a hard drive. Yes, this will subtract battery power and so maybe having a ton of solid-state memory would be a compromise, but solid-state memory is extremely pricey! Lexar’s new 4GB compact flash card is $1,500! Compare that to 200GB hard drives that you can get now for only $100 or so with rebates. Of course notebook-sized and/or external hard drives are more expensive, but not nearly as much as solid state! Why do I want such storage? Well, to go along with the potential multimedia capabilities of the phone – to be able to play video transferred from a TIVO or just display the hundreds or thousands of pictures I’ve taken/scanned. Also, what about my entire MP3 collection? Now we’re really talking convergence. While we’re at it, throw in some TV reception (although I won’t ask for satellite TV just yet, or HDTV), which apparently is a feature that Samsung is creating for the South Korean market. Finally, there’s satellite reception – not for TV but for the phone itself. We have already seen this dual cell/satellite phone capability via the infamous Thuraya sattelite phones that were banned in the War on Iraq.
When will all these technologies merge into one unit? Probably not anytime very soon. But the fact that so many of them are already under development, albeit not in one complete package but rather partial ones, bodes well. My prediction (don’t quote me!), is that we’ll have something with most if not all of the technologies I’ve listed above in a single device within five years. Maybe as little as two. Then again, in two years (let alone five) I’m sure there will be all these new capabilities (mini-hd-dvd's, wifi/satellite-video-on-demand, holographic projection, and electrode stimulation?) popping up that we don’t even have today which I will then be crying for inclusion into the convergence device. Guess I'll never be satisfied...