by admin | Nov 27, 2015 | smartphone
I recently read an article that suggested that within a year, a phone might be your only computer.
At first I scoffed. Come off it. Nothing is replacing my laptop. Then I read the article. It started to make sense.
For me the first issue is the keyboard. I really don’t like the keyboards of touch screens for anything more than short text entry.
In the tablet space we have seen this as a common problem and seen the solution emerge. The Microsoft surface tablet comes with detachable keyboard. Problem solved.
The same thing can obviously be done for a phone too. A quick scout of Google reveals 5 folding keyboards for your smartphone.
Next one is the monitor. Yes. This too is already happening.
So now, we have a situation where effectively we have a computer situation with just a keyboard and a monitor. You also will need a mouse as well by the way, but that is also doable of course. All you need for all of this is simply a usb hub to connect everything,
So basically you are using the phone as the brain of this setup – the processor. But what about processing power? Well this article explains how the processing power of mobile phones is about to grow to the level where they will be able to handle 3D gaming by the end of next year.
Finally there is storage. What? I can’t do without my hard drive. Why? Everything is online these days. What are you storing on your laptop now that is so important? Documents? Store them in the cloud. Movies? Now they take a lot of space don’t they? Well this is the funny thing. What has slowed down piracy is not the threat of legal action from big companies, but the emergence of low cost streaming providers. Why keep a bunch of movies and TV series on hard drive when you can have them on demand any time you want for $10 to 15 dollars a month? And if you’re not comfortable with a commitment like that, there is so much content on Youtube for free that you could never get through it.
Music? Same thing. I’m not downloading MP3s any more. It’s Spotify or Pandora.
Photos? Well photos are usually very important to people because they contain memories. Photos are kept on phones. But of course there’s also Instagram and Flickr for photos which serves as an important backup. I have written in the past about the cloud and how it’s transforming how we do things. This is the shape of things to come.
I know right now it all seems a little fiddly, and only a geek would contemplate it, but that’s what happens with technology. At first only the techies do it. Then after a while it’s commonplace. So while I say now that I won’t be replacing my laptop any time soon, there may come a day when it just is the natural thing to do.
by admin | Nov 12, 2014 | Android, smartphone
Today I would like to muse on the most amazing consumer product I consider to have been invented in my lifetime – The smartphone.
What a device! A pocket computer fully connected to be able to access the entire sum of human knowledge.
I have just recently changed phones and phone providers.
No big deal. People do that a lot these days.
I changed my phone from a low end smartphone to a high end one. What was I thinking even getting a low end one? Me, a committed techno geek.
OK, well I learnt from my mistake, that’s all I can say. I found that my internet usage was very low on my other phone, simply because it didn’t work very well.
As soon as I got a phone that was half decent, my data requirements immediately went up.
My old phone company was giving me 500MB (per month). It just didn’t cut it any more. Time to get more. So now I’m on a 2.5GB plan. Much more in keeping with my desire to get the most functionality from my phone.
So anyway, this got me thinking. What are the things I use most and like best on my phone?
Well the first thing I really like is the ability to tether my laptop to the phone now and make the phone a personal wireless hotspot.
I wrote last week about free WIFI on the city of Adelaide. I noted that free WIFI is becoming more and more common wherever you go. However there are times when you want an internet fix and there is no WIFI close by. The phone fills that gap.
So tethering is number one on my list.
Next the apps on the phone. I really like Google maps (I’m sure there are competitors to this product out there I just don’t know them). This is fantastic. Never lost again, no matter where in the world you are.
Then, still on the GPS path (maps uses GPS to determine your location) , apps like Nike running that you can turn on when you go for a run/walk/bike ride and they will tell you how far you have gone are fantastic. If you want to get fit it’s good to be able to keeps tabs on how far you are going each time you are active and what progress you are making.
Next instant messaging apps that allow you to call friends and family no matter where in the world they are. We have skype, facebook messenger and viber to name a few. For Apple users there is facetime. Each of these apps let you talk to someone, via the internet, often with video.
Finally, there is of course the camera. The mobile phone has made the recording of life events so much more accessible. For me this is fantastic. I am a late convert to recording every event via photo . I wish I wasn’t. Just looking at photos brings special memories back to life instantly.
Of course there are other things, surfing the web whenever and wherever you want is great. Accessing and editing my important documents from anywhere is good too.. there is so much to choose from. But I said 5 things, so I’ll stuck with my top 5.
Anyway that’s just a bit of fun and my favourite smartphone uses. What are yours?
