The Wireless Edge: Ditching the Laptop

Symbian executives at the Symbian Smartphone Show in London last month spoke about the increasing role of smartphones, even suggesting that with the advances in smartphones, people may wonder soon why they need PCs at all. They pointed out that in developing countries where wireless penetration is far outpacing wireline penetration, a phone is a more logical connectivity appliance than a PC. The execs noted that in India the PC market is growing at 5 million units a year, while mobile phones are growing at that rate each month.

I think there is indeed a computing-paradigm shift happening, though I think we are at the earliest stages. With advances in computing power and storage, as well as high-speed wireless networks, it should be possible by the end of this decade to have a small handheld device that can run most of the applications you need, that can store much of the entertainment you care about--not just songs but full-length movies--and that has constant broadband connectivity. The only thing missing, and it's a big thing, is the user interface. Maybe by then we'll have retinal imaging and reliable voice input, though I'm skeptical. More likely we'll be able to easily dock our phones, perhaps using UWB, to conventional keyboards and displays in our homes, offices and maybe even hotels.

Certainly, we have hints of all these possibilities with current devices, applications and other innovations. Here are some of the developments that make it possible for many people, including me, to travel more often without a laptop on shorter trips. And as somebody who has taken a laptop everywhere for the last 15 years, this is a welcome change.

First is general ease of use. RIM recently introduced the BlackBerry Pearl, one of the easiest BlackBerries to use ever, especially with the new trackball. After using the device for some time, I have to admit that the trackball is the fastest and most effective navigation tool I've ever used on a phone. Traditional controls such as touchscreens and five-way navigation pads are also effective. The industry is still trying to innovate its way to efficient keyboards for small devices, but is doing reasonably well given the extremely limited real estate. However, let's face it, typing speeds on a phone are always going to be much slower than on a full-size keyboard. For data retrieval and e-mail monitoring with occasional short replies, though, I find either the fully micro-QWERTY or the RIM SureType keyboards just fine.

Another huge area of innovation is in applications. There is no shortage of effective wireless e-mail solutions. But not as well recognized necessarily is the improving ability to deal with documents. I've spent some time working with the just-released version 9 of Documents to Go from Dataviz, which allows users to work with Microsoft Office documents on Palm OS or Symbian devices. I have found the product flawless in my fairly limited use, allowing me to both view and edit documents. It can also view PDF documents. RIM's file viewers provide similar functionality; although they do not allow editing, they more than making up for it by allowing selective viewing of what might otherwise be files too large to download over a wireless connection. And of course, Windows Mobile has long touted its Office integration. Other types of applications are also making their way to mobile devices. Google, for example, just completed an excellent adaptation of Google Maps.Then there is mobile-formatted content. I've been pleased by how many publications now offer mobile-formatted content, including Time Magazine, Yahoo, The New York Times, Google, The Washington Post, BBC, The Wall Street Journal and others. Now I have something to keep me occupied no matter how long the line at the post office or the bank. Google's auto-mobile formatted content in response to searches is also very handy.

Storage is another big enabler. Last month I bought a 2-gigabyte Secure Digital card for just $40. Now I can have dozens of music albums with me, not to mention all the documents I would ever need. 4-GB cards are available, with no limits on eventual size that I'm aware of.

Finally, all work and no play makes a phone a dull toy. There are increasing music options for downloading over the air or transferring from a PC. With thousands of radio stations streaming around the world on the Web, it's quite easy to capture shows and transfer them to your phone for the ultimate radio place-shifting time-shifting experience. The inevitable direction here is for our phone to become fully capable digital video recorders, either capturing mobile TV content or receiving content from our home DVRs.

It doesn't take much effort to extrapolate from some of the examples I've given of what's already available today to realize the huge effect that the mobile phone is going to have on the entire computer industry. And, ultimately, it just may be as disruptive as the PC was to mainframes.

Peter Rysavy is the president of Rysavy Research (http://www.rysavy.com/), a consulting firm that specializes in wireless technology assessment and integration.0