As smartphones become an ever-increasingly important segment of the overall mobile phone market, more attention is being focused on the software that runs on these devices – namely, the operating system, the applications and the services. In a very short period of time, 3rd party applications have become all the rage, and the heavy hitters in the smartphone OS space are vying for the attention of these application developers.
Posts Tagged ‘smartphone’
May 15, 2010 | Blog | by : Tony Newpower
Good Enough?
“Close enough for government work!” This is the battle cry of the bureaucrat; a phrase uttered in jest (and seriously)… countless times a day… in sprawling cube farms bathed in the comforting glow of fluorescent light. It’s an allusion to the belief that government standards are lower than in the private sector and that job security is higher, so why go the extra mile?
A similar question could be put forward in the world of smartphone software engineering. Why go the extra mile to deliver higher quality software? If you’re anything like me, your PC suffers blue screens, it hangs, etc. and you probably grudgingly accept it, reboot and move on with your day, right? How about your smartphone? I can honestly say that my phone is far more reliable than my laptop. In fact, I almost wonder if it’s too reliable. Don’t get me wrong, I love the fact that it can run seemingly forever without a reboot, but I wonder at what cost? MORE
April 2, 2010 | Blog | by : Tony Newpower
Power to the people!
What’s the next big thing for smartphones? If I truly knew the answer to that question, I’d probably already be on a nice tropical island somewhere, laughing at those poor folks charged with making that next big thing a reality. Truth is, I don’t know, nor does anyone but the consumer. I do know one thing, though — power optimization, already very important, is going to become even more important in the coming years. There are a number of reasons why this is the case, but some of the big ones include:
Multimedia
The feature curve for multimedia in smartphones is flattening out as we start approaching consumer electronics equivalency in terms of audio and video playback, for example. And in the not so distant future, a typical smartphone will capture and playback 1080p video. You will be able to watch videos from your phone at 1080p resolution via an HDMI connection to your TV. Once this becomes standard fare, most of the big-ticket feature evolution is complete. I know there will still be new features — no doubt about that — but the rate of new feature addition will slow down, with a shift from feature addition to feature optimization. And these MM features use lots of power, so power optimization for multimedia will start consuming a greater proportion of total multimedia R&D effort in the coming years.
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