h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I was having a conversation with an acquaintance this week about mobile phones, e-book readers and tablets.

This started by mention of how good the Kindle is to read from in bright daylight. I don't own a Kindle, but I have seen one and can confirm this. It's very good. But I don't own a Kindle, I have my phone. It's a HTC Sensation XL and has a rather large screen. I've got several books on it and read from that, although I do find the screen a little too bright when reading at night, and a little too dim when reading outdoors during the day. This is generally okay though, because there is a manual override that allows me to adjust it. I can also adjust the font size too to suit my needs. However this week I've been reading paper books and was reminded of how pleasant it is to read from them.

I'm constantly reading text and code on monitor screens or my phone during the day, and often in the evenings too. And whilst there's the convenience of being able to read from my phone, there's not the same level of pleasure.

The other thing I was able to do this last week, was have a quick shifty at a Galaxy Note. For those that don't know, these are, technically, phones. But they're large. They're not quite huge, but they're obviously just that bigger than a big phone. You couldn't make it any bigger and still try to call it a phone. My thoughts, I liked it. It's not quite a tablet, but you could use it as one. It's not quite a phone, but again you could use it as one. It's the current version of the netbook. Small enough to be handy, large enough to be useful.

Which brings me back to the original conversation I was having, what are our phones going to be like in ten years time? The iPhone, which a lot of people believe was the first smart phone (hah!) is now five years old. Only five years ago the mobile device market was very, very different.

I've already touched on the thought of how I think computers will change, of how there will be one main computer in an office, or a home, or even in a car. And of how we as users will have smart terminals. Well, I think our phones will become smart terminals, used as phone, tablets, laptops, however we want to interact with the computer.

The size of a lot of devices is down to a few things. Power, processing, interface and screen. We'd need to overcome or accommodate all these for a truly smart terminal to work properly.

Power: Devices use a lot of it.
Wrong. They use hardly any, the problem is, to make the batteries small they have to not be able to hold hardly any to start with. But they still have to be charged up regularly. The way around this though could easily be wireless transmission of electricity. It's possible, it's been proven. It was invented by Tesla years ago. So here's a thought, you wander around the city centre and the wireless electricity is constantly powering your phone and charging the battery inside it. You phone monitors the amount of juice it absorbs and sends a report off to the electricity company at regular intervals, and they then bill you. And, like wi-fi etc, you can turn the wireless charging on and off to suit your needs.

Processing: Not an issue, just needs though.When you surf up to a webpage, the server does a lot of processing, and then sends down the page to your device. There's a few tricks you can do to choose whether some of that processing is done on the server or your device, balancing the load and sharing the work. Well, why can't this be done with most other things? If we do have our main computers and our smart terminals, why can't the main computers do most of the processing? To be honest, we're already moving this
way. Ever wonder what they Cloud's about? It's about this. So with moving a lot of the processing up to a main computer, all we need the device to do is handle graphics and interaction. And they can handle that quite nicely already.

Interface and Screen: Want a big keyboard and monitor?
This is where size matters, and really matters. Occasionally I use my phone to dial home and control my desktop, and I really notice the difference between sitting at a desk with a keyboard, and sitting in the pub hunched over my touch screen phone. But this is sticking with the idea that we use a keyboard. We've moved on from that and are now happily using touchscreens. Anyone who's used an iPad will tell you that, yes, it's a bit weird at first, but you get used to typing on it. The problem though is that to type on that, you're coving half the screen with keyboard. And there's still the screen size issue. If you want a big screen, you're carrying around a big screen. Well, there is such a thing as a folding screen (http://www.fastcompany.com/1753032/foldable-oled-screens-really-work-could-change-mobile-devices) and has been for at least a year. As you can see from the linked article, you can roll these screens up nice and small. So, you could, in theory, have a tube that with no screen could work like a phone. Speaker at one end, microphone at the other, other technical gubbins in the middle. When you wanted to use the screen to read a book or do things that don't need much screen space, you roll it out a little. You've then got your phone sized screen. And when you then needed more screen, because you needed to type or watch a film on a larger screen, you just rolled out even more. With just two sizes of these, you could have a small screen that turned into a tablet, or a tablet that turned fully in to a laptop.

This is of course, only one idea. But I think that it's a very feasible one. We're quickly moving away from the idea of what a computer is, and of how we use it. A lot of the old computer companies are starting to struggle, and a fair few of the newer mobile companies aren't looking too healthy either.

So, I'm not totally sure what'll happen in the next ten years, but it could be fun finding out.

I'm afraid I gave up 2/3 the way through that Pastey, having just been the gym and feeling rather out of it but I'd say this:

Kindles are notably better any backlit device, because regardless of ease to read, kindles don't cause any strain to your eyes - since I can read for four, five hours at a stretch (if my day feels like being empty) this is why i like my kindle

Given the urging to make phones incessantly smaller I wonder how far it will go - Inch wide and tall, and one micron wide?

I would rather have something bigger than my iphone that i can get my hand round, and use the extra space to hold power (as a stop gap)

I agree with thw wireless power, but even assuming the infrastructure would be quickly built (and i do, in fact, think it would be) - figuring out how to prevent the transmission of power affecting every other em field around it could be problematic (something Tesla didn't really concern himself with)

Frequency and shielding should do it.

In theory.

A few thoughts --

People doing any kind of digital art or page layout (print or web) are always going to want beeg screens. Having used a netbook these last few months, I've discovered that some developers design for all screen sizes (amazon, h2g2), while with others one has to scroll sideways to find out all the info. Is that an issue on smart phones?

And just as a trivial note, since I've been in this nursing facility, with its complement of patients, staff and visitors, I've noticed that when I hear a ringtone, often as not I know whose phone it is.

In the early years of motor driven stuff, a family would buy one motor and then buy appliances -- fans, washing machines, air compressors, drills -- that could be attached to the motor and used. Then, as motors became smaller and cheaper, manufacturers started incorporating them into the appliances themselves and there was no longer a need to have a stand-alone motor. The evolution of computers has been going the same way, or so I had thought. You're suggesting that we're looping back toward one all-purpose motor?

I think we are moving back that way 'Lil. My previous journal on smart terminals went in to it a bit more, but essentially yes.

Already a lot of what we think we're doing on our machine we're not. Web servers are handling the bulk of processing, and our devices are just handling the interaction.

With the arrival of the Cloud, and more and more home-networks cropping up now that people have wireless routers and wireless devices, it's only a matter of time. Apple have already released AirPlay, Microsoft have their SmartGlass, and now Google have released their Q thing. All these are really are glorified router/computer hybrids. And, it'll keep growing.

Touchscreens, and projector keyboards, aren't as nice to type on, because there is no haptic response. As fond as Holywood is of gesture interfaces, and as fond as designers are of "pictures under glass", some experts think the future will require physical keyboards.

Some links and videos: http://timothy.green.name/links/the-future-of-interaction-desgin/

TRiG.

The same experts though said that mobiles wouldn't take off.

I say ignore the experts, look at what people are doing.

the problem I find with typing... or doing anything really on an i device or any other touch device is fingerprints.
your once lovely shiny clean device is now smeared with finger oil and I would really rather it stay lovely and clean, and I know there are stylus pens and such you can get to work on some of them but then your not really using your fingers, and they are so small you can sometimes strain your hand by holding them for too long...

I fear apple have a bit of a battery problem in that they dont really take the heat generated by the device into account any more, sure they have to keep it under a legal limit so they don't burn anyone and get sued but the amount of heat such devices produce is really quite astounding, I presume this is a problem that would have to be tackled before we could get any smaller/lighter

and another problem is the weight. I was using an Ipad for the first time the other day, and it occurred to me that while they are light enough for a quick look at an email lets say, they are at the same time too heavy. honestly try holding one at around a 45* angle for a while (or some other non flat angle for use in say, a car or a train when you don't get a table or just don't want everyone seeing what your doing... like wasting time on a website when you should be working) and you will find that after a while it starts to become very heavy, I'm not sure there is a way around that at all...

and that seems like a long way to say not very much at all...

I amongst many reasons, still like having 'seperate' portible devices... Mainly it has to be said, for the battery reason; if my little mp3 player battery dies when I'm on teh train, fine, at least I've still got my mobile phone so I can go look up train times when the route is disrupted, or, even, actually call someone to say I'm running late etc... and, of course, I can always get the netbook out and stick headphones onto that, where I've got plenty music to listen too... err more thna the MP3 player really and I do have music on the phone too, should it be the battery situation there isn't too dangerously low... and, of course, if the netbook has pletny of juice in it, I can charge the phone from the netbook actually, come to think of it, I can charge the MP3 player from it too... s 'Netbooks, slightly more expensive than an extra universal battery/power supply, and with a few mor euses'
I'm a bit worried if everything goes too far down the touch screen route, it'll make computing virtually impossible for me... Actually in some ways, accesibility is getting a lot worse in recent years... soon Nokia are stopping using their symbian OS, which the screen reader I have on the phone needs to run on... Sure there is the speech thing on the IPhones, but they're roughtly ten million times more expensive than a Nokia which will do basically everything I could want to do
Having said which, I've not really checked out a lot of the stuff to do with accessibility on the android, IPhone, and other OS/makes of stuff... Its a bit beyond my means to buy one of each to try them out and soem of the people, users, who do so-called reviews... really ain't very good at writing sensible reviews; They tend to either be a 'total anti Product X', person, or a 'totally in love and can't live without product X' person... so hardly balanced
I do keep meaning to set up my own cloud, though, and get a decent server machine set up in my downstairs hallway under the staircase mainly... just d so I can say I have my own server

This came up on The Register today:

http://www.reghardware.com/2012/06/29/phones_no_longer_made_for_talking/

Apparently talking on them is now the fifth most popular use of mobile phones after web browsing, social networking, playing games and listening to music.

It is more popular than emailing, texting, watching videos, reading books and taking pictures, though.

Hoo has said before than these new bits of kit aren't phones any more. They are little mobile computers than you can, incidentally, make calls on. He's got a point.


Geggs

Coincidently, did you realise that today was the fifth anniversary of the launch of the iPhone?


Geggs

The heck with phones, I want me a pair of these:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9228612/Google_looks_to_make_science_fiction_real_with_Glasses

Oh! Me, too!

I was away this weekend, and pretty much everyone I was with was using their phones constantly.

It's was a Twissup. This is when several people who drink beers and review them on Twitter get together in real life and drink beer. And of course, review them on Twitter.

It was interesting to see that the iPhone 3Gs were the first to run out of battery, and then the older HTC phones. Then, it was a pretty close thing between the new iPhones and the new HTCs, but considering that the new HTCs have much bigger screens, I think they've got power handling better.