OPENCOMMUNICATION
THE LATEST IN NETWORKING AND WIRELESS TECHNOLOGIES
■ BY LOUIS E. FRENZEL W5LEF
3G, 4G, SMARTPHONES,
AND TABLETS: UPDATE ON
THE MOBILE WIRELESS
PRODUCTS WE ALL CRAVE
Mobile products are all the rage. Today, everyone has a cell phone and many
of you have already updated to a hot smartphone. Laptops are the best
selling PCs and netbooks have expanded the mobile marketplace. Those of
you on the cutting edge already have a tablet PC. That is good news for the
cellular business. But do you know the technical details behind all those
devices? Interesting stuff. If you are not up to date on the current and coming
technology and the trends, here is an update.
SMARTPHONES FOR EVERYONE
Cell phones typically come in three categories: basic
phones, feature phones, and smartphones. Basic phones are
just what the name implies. They make phone calls and do
texting, and that is about it. Feature phones are a bit more
interesting as they make calls and do texting but also usually
have a built-in camera and a Bluetooth headset, play games,
and have an MP3 player or FM radio built in. Smartphones
have all of the above plus have high speed data capability that
gives them Internet access and email. They also feature music
players, video play-back and record,
and have extensive game capability.
Most also have Wi-Fi 802.11 wireless
LAN capability as a standard feature.
The majority of smartphones have
a GPS receiver with full navigation
features. These phones are the
Swiss army knife of the industry.
You already know who the
main smartphone players are.
BlackBerry is number one in this
space as far as volume of phones
■ FIGURE 1. The Apple iPhone 4 —
the smartphone of choice by
consumers. With front and rear
video cameras, it can make picture
phone calls.
68
December 2010
is concerned (over 40% market share) but it’s the Apple
iPhone that gets all the attention. Their iPhone 4 in Figure
1 is the top consumer smartphone with about 22% market
share. Others with smartphones are Nokia, Samsung,
Motorola (Droid), HTC (Evo), LG, and a few others. Palm,
Garmin, and Google also tried their hand at smartphones
but did not fare so well so have abandoned the market.
The basic trends are that most new phones are
smartphones so the feature phone category is fading. Pretty
soon there will probably be only two classes of cell phones:
basic (including the feature phones) and smartphones. As
smartphones come down in price and do a better job of
accessing the Internet and playing video, they will no doubt
come to dominate the market. People just love the fact that
their phone is also a mobile Internet device with all that implies.
With regard to smartphone features, the trends are to
have larger, higher resolution screens, faster data connections,
and more video capability. Touch screens are now the
predominant input technology although conventional
keyboards are still a part of some of the higher volume phones
(BlackBerry). Internet access and email are a given. TV is not
far behind. It’s actually available now in the form of FLO TV
which is offered by AT&T and Verizon (but that is going
away). Soon to come is standard digital TV in the US. The
mobile/handset version of the American Standard Television
Committee (ATSC) HD digital TV standard is now approved,
and soon tuners will be available so that US broadcast TV
can be received by cell phones and other mobile devices.
