Future trends for Cell phones, PDAs and Mobile Internet Devices

These days, our cell phones can take and send pictures/video. We can text message, download ringtones, watch streaming music video and even download and play mobile games. Not only that we can watch DMB and surf internet as well. The services available now couldn't even be imagined by most of us 10 years ago. The rapid advancements in information and communication technology have made it possible to do all these things. Before lunching 2G in Finland for the first time in 1991, today’s revolutionary 3G/4G communication were out of imagination. 

PDA is a handheld computer having many uses: calculation, use as a clock and calendar, accessing the Internet, sending and receiving E-mails, word processing, use as an address book, making and writing on spreadsheets, playing computer games and Global Positioning System (GPS). PDAs can access the Internet, intranets or extranets via Wi-Fi, or Wireless Wide-Area Networks (WWANs). Many PDAs employ touch screen technology. 

Mobile Internet Device (MID) gives an internet experience in our pocket. MID represent a portable and mobile devices category that gives wireless connectivity and long battery life. Samsung Q1, is an example of Mobile Internet Device, comes with a 7" (18 cm) LCD and exists in several different versions.

However, people are beginning to appreciate the value of connecting to the internet from their portable mobile devices. Carrying multiple devices is not convenient, so they prefer single device having versatile capabilities. New generation cell phones (smart phones) are capable of performing PDA’s tasks. Today most smart phones sold worldwide incorporate at least one advanced feature. Competition among phone manufacturers is primarily based upon a race to add additional features within accepted price ranges. The smart phones (with 4G+ or future technological standard) in the near future will bring the complete solution for the user by providing all in one solution.

The iPhone is a one example of the media based mobile device. Mobile companies they are selling iPhones are generating revenue not only by selling a phone plan, but also charging on bandwidth for audio and video downloads. Also, they are making money through mobile marketing.

Technically, in my opinion, in the future cell phones will dominate the future internet. Because IEEE 802.11 is not channelized, so control packets, such as RTS, CTS, and ACK, use the same channel as data packets. This leads to complex arbitration schemes and potentially unfair bandwidth allocation due to hidden and exposed terminals. Cell phones use channelized media, which intrinsically share the wireless medium better and are immune to a variety of hidden terminal problems. Moreover, unlike a WiFi-based PDA, a cell phone cannot be blocked from accessing the channel because the data channel is hogged by another cell phone. For these reasons, it appears that a channelized cell phone may better use wireless spectrum than a WiFi-based laptop or PDA. Incidentally, cell phone spectrum is licensed, so it is also immune to interference from cordless phones and microwave ovens that occupy the unlicensed ISM bands.

Generally, these handheld devices will become powerful computing devices, comparable to desktop systems. But there will be no market for standalone, handheld devices like only PDA, MID or Cell phones. Growing popularity shows all portable devices including cell phones, PDA and Mobile Internet Devices will come in one device.

2G and 3G cell phones and Internet

2G cell Phones: 2G stands for Second Generation Wireless Telephone Technology. 2G networks were analog but its predecessor 1G networks were analog. 2G technology came with text messaging (SMS) capabilities.

3G cell Phones: 3G is the third generation of mobile phone technology provides a wider range of more advanced services while achieving greater network capacity through improved spectral efficiency. This technology also offers wide-area wireless voice telephony, video calls, and broadband wireless data, all in a mobile environment. Also includes HSPA data transmission capabilities able to deliver speeds up to 14.4Mbit/s on the downlink and 5.8Mbit/s on the uplink.

Internet: Internet is a "network of networks" that consists of millions networks, which together carry various information and services, such as electronic mail, online chat, file transfer, and the interlinked web pages and other resources of the World Wide Web. Internet can be accessed in both wired and wireless environment. IEEE 802.11 is a standard for WLAN. The term 802.11b and Wi-Fi are often used interchangeably. IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi or WLAN) networks are short range, high-bandwidth networks primarily developed for data communication.

In the following prospective 2G, 3G and Internet are same:

• All are wireless technologies
• Both offer broadband data service

In the following prospective 2G and 3G, and Internet are different:

• From the users prospective 2G is for voice communication with some messaging service, 3G is mostly voice and then data service and Internet is mostly for data communication service with voice capability.
• 2G/3G and Internet’s network structure is different.
• Current business models/deployments are different. 3G services provided by Mobile operators where as WiFi provided by data communications industry or we can say it’s a byproduct of the internet industry.
• Spectrum policy and management: (2G and 3G use licensed spectrum but Internet uses unlicensed shared spectrum. This has important implications for (1) cost of service; (2) quality of service (QoS) and congestion management; and (3) industry structure.)
• 3G offers better support for secure/private communications than others.
• 3G has a relatively small family of internationally sanctioned standards, collectively referred to as IMT-
• 2000.36. In contrast, Wireless Internet is one of the families of continuously evolving 802.11x wireless Ethernet standards, which is itself one of many WLAN technologies that are under development.
• Getting license for 3G is difficult than 2G.
• 3G is more developed than WiFi as a business and service model.

All of them have some advantages and disadvantages. 2G requires lower powered radio signals and consumes less battery power, so phones last much longer. 2G (without GPRS) is not much capable for data service. 3G is very reliable in voice communication with a wide range of more advanced services with improved spectral efficiency. But data communication with 3G phones is expensive comparing to general internet service. It consumes more power than 2G cell phones and it is not fully IP-based integrated system. Internet is basically for data communication with some voice communication capabilities. Of course, it is less expensive than the general telephony but still internet is not preferred for the voice communication.