Mobile hardware outpaces Software and User Capabilities

By Lucas Mearian


Mobile hardware is outpacing software capabilities and the mobile user experience, according to a panel of technologists at Technology Review's Emerging Technologies Conference held at MIT in Cambridge, Mass, recently. Among those speaking was Rich Miner, group manager of mobile platforms at Google, who said open operating systems - like the one launched on Google's long-awaited G1 Android phone - will drive future innovation, but much of it may be lost on the user in the short term.

"The easiest way to see this is ... about 80% of mobile phones have cameras in them today, yet if you were to ask how many people actually use those cameras (know how to get photos off of the phone), it's probably literally 10% to 15%," Miner said.

Miner spoke only a day after the debut of the G1 Android phone, a combination of technology from T-Mobile USA, Google and HTC Corp. Much like Apple's iPhone, with a touch-pad screen and GPS, the G1 Android adds a physical keyboard.

"[These phones] have the capabilities in terms of hardware and processing power and network connectivity that desktop computers had a few years ago. These devices clearly have desktop mobile computing capabilities but yet we're not using them this way," Miner said.

Elizabeth Altman, vice president of strategy and business development at Motorola Mobile Devices, said having more open operating systems on phones and lower prices for those phones will make it more interesting for developers to create more Android-style capabilities for midtier cellular phones. However, she added, "for good chunks of the world, in three to five years, Android probably won't be the operating system of choice because it just doesn't make sense economically."

Among the issues dissuading users from employing all the capabilities of their mobile devices is the complexity involved in operating them. Another obstacle is the traditional programming environments for mobile phones, which have been controlled by resellers and mobile phone carriers, and "neither of those groups is known for building brilliant software," Miner said.

Associated Link: Full article: Mobile hardware outpaces software, user capabilities

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