Mobile Computing

Hardware Devices - Mobile Phones

[Digital GSM Phones] [Combined PDAs and Phones] [WAP Enabled Phones] [UMTS Phones]

This information has been obtained from published material. It is  given to illustrate the different ways the providers
segment their markets and should not be used to make a purchase decision. Cost are as at late 1999.

Digital GSM Phones Within Europe the old analogue system is in decline and the GSM digital has become the standard. Digital phones are smaller than analogue ones and reception is clearer but they do have a greater tendency to drop calls. Digital phones in the UK are subsidised by the operators giving consumers low entry cost. Phones range in cost from zero to £300 for the latest full feature sophisticated models and are subject to a minimum rental period or in the case of pay as you go phones, subject to a minimum purchase of call vouchers at set frequencies. Many operators also have a initial connection charge. There are 3 variations of the GSM system: in Europe, US and Asia. Dual and tri-band phones now available. Operators may charge an additional rental fee for international roaming. Besides the in-built electronic telephone directory, some mobiles have personal organisers with diary and contact note systems. Nokia has introduced on its phones a third "NaviRoller" button to scroll through such data. It also has a built-in dictionary to predict what you are writing and thus save keying the text - which is otherwise slow using the letter annotated 0-9 keys. Phones with the short message service (SMS) can receive text messages of up to 220 characters in the same way as pagers. Alternatively, infra-red links to PDAs and PCs allow those devices to access e-mails, download files and surf the web. Many users see their mobile as a fashion accessory and as making a lifestyle statement about themselves. Small sleek stainless steel mobiles with a flip up cover are popular. Nokia makes mobile phones with interchangeable coloured covers. In Finland, many youngsters have more than one mobile and even small children have their own phone. Manufacturers include Nokia, Ericsson, Siemens, Alcatel, and Motorola. This is one area where surprisingly the Japanese have not taken the lion's share of the market. For the future, mobiles will become so small they can fit into a headband or into the wallet. Other mobiles will incorporate still or video cameras (and cameras will incorporate phones!), as well as screens to see video pictures and surf the Internet.- see below.

Ericsson T28 with flip cover and in silver. It weighs just 90g and is one of the smallest phones currently available.

Combined PDAs and Phones

The Nokia Communicator 9110 is a combined keyboard PDA and mobile phone which overcomes any compatibility worries of connecting separately purchased items. It has an infra-red port allowing it to receive pictures from digital cameras which it can then e-mail (as demonstrated in the TV advert). It has a contact manager, notepad, email, fax, PC data synchronisation and internet browser. It uses the GEOS operating system. Third parties also write applications for it. Casio has linked with Siemens to also develop a combined phone and Windows CE-based wireless PDA. The main criticism of these combo devices has been their size, but like all these PDA devices the purchaser has to weigh up numerous factors and often make a compromise. The alternative would be a compatible small phone and PDA.

Nokia Communicator 9110

WAP Enabled Phones Wireless Applications Protocol (WAP) phones allow users to send e-mail and access the world wide web though some mobile operators are likely to restrict access to special WAP web sites or their own portals. WAP mobile phones have a small screen to display the e-mail text and WAP pages. For example, Alcatel's One Touch Pocket phone has five lines of 15 characters. Nokia sold over 100,000 WAP phones in the first 7 weeks of their launch in the UK in October 1999. Over the next year we can expect a plethora of WAP enabled value added services aimed at those on the move. They will range from accessing railway timetables to finding the nearest Indian take-away complete with on-screen menu and a map how to locate the restaurant. Vodaphone is to launch a personal service called P3, Personal Preference Page, whereby users can personalise the information they wish to regularly receive, such as stock prices. Operators are likely to offer personal information services such as diary, address books, to-do lists. These will be held on their servers so that the information can be accessed from office and home PCs as well as mobile phones. Speech recognition and text to speech facilities will become common. Nokia Prototype WAP phone (mock up from newspaper picture) Click for sharper picture WAP uses a special version of HTML, the internet language for writing web pages, call WML (WAP Markup Language). Mobile don't use normal browsers like Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer but rather microbrowsers that only read WML. Thus pages for WAP phones must either be written in WML or standard HTML pages converted to WML. WAP phones, with their advanced applications, are more like PDAs and PCs than phones and therefore require an operating system. The two main rivals are Microsoft's Windows CE and the Symbian Consortium's EPOC. Symbian is likely to win as it is backed by all the major mobile phone manufacturers and the licence costs just $5 per phone. Orange will launch a video phone in 2000. WAP phones, especially the video phone, will work best when the GSM network has been upgraded to higher speeds. This is planned from 2000. Ultimately, true high speed web surfing and smooth video must await the next generation of UMTS phones.

UMTS Phones Universal Mobile Telephone Service (UMTS) is due for launch in 2002. It is a world-wide single standard high speed network ideally suited for web surfing and advance e-business applications. In the UK, 13 potential operators have submitted an application to bid for one of 5 licences. Major mobile phone manufacturers have already demonstrated prototypes.

Up is Hardware Devices; Next is Pagers

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