In my earlier blog I wrote about the recent hot trends that make a smart phone even smarter. There are enough things out there that still make your smartest phone a dumbo. Here is my take on things that still need major attention from the Apples and Samsungs of the world. Hope somebody is listening.

1. Battery Life

If there is one thing that anybody who has ever used a smart phone would want to improve in a smart phone is its battery life. There are hardly any smart phones that can last more than a fair usage of a business day. Add wifi or 3G/4G, GPS, Bluetooth, multimedia and a fully charged phone can dry up within hrs. It isn’t that the muscle power in the battery has not improved. The mAh specification of the battery (an indication of how much fuel a Li-ion battery carries) has steadily increased over a period of time. Take Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S series for example. The mAh rating has increased from 1650 for S2, to 2100 for S3 and finally 2600 mAh for S4. Ideally S4 should long 1.6 times long. However, the phones themselves have become mightier and so has their consumption. The quad-core or even eight core processors, Large HD displays and all those frills like NFC come at a cost of battery life. Every now and then I do experience the frustration of my cell phone breathing its last right in the mid of an important phone call. That’s when I miss my good old Nokia brick so much.

2. Interoperability

I wish there was more standardization. I wish there was more inter-operability. I wish all accessories of one phone would work with others. I wish the Bose Docking station for the iPhone would work with the Android Phone. I wish there was just one universal charger pin for all cell phones. Unfortunately that’s not really the case. Off course there are business reasons the manufacturers for doing so. Accessories is a big revenue stream. A more proprietary accessory is likely to lock down customers. All those Docking Stations, Chargers, car accessories made for iPhone are a major exit barrier for anybody who has invested in those accessories and looking to buy an Android phone. Apple is known for its “Closed Ecosystem”. It goes beyond chargers, docking stations and accessories. Need to print from your phone? Make sure the Printer is AirPrint compatible. Want to stream music? Get an AirPlay compatible player (aka Apple TV). Things work beautifully so long as all your devices are from the Apple eco system. “Land and Expand” strategy at its best. Android is relatively better when it comes to openness. It supports open standards like DLNA, UPnP for Media Streaming, NFC for device-to-device communication, Qi for wireless charging and so on. Apple leaves far more things to be desired when it comes to interoperability. And you know what? It’s by choice.

3. Call Quality

It has been a major debate whether a smart phone has any role to play with the call quality. The manufacturers usually blame it on the service providers for the poor call quality. While in most of the cases it might be true, the reality is that the phone itself has a lot to influence call quality. J D Power published a study a while back to measure the Cellular Call Quality measured as Problems Per 100 (PP100) calls. The study discovered that the call quality has declined over last one decade and also that the PP100 score was higher for Smart Phones than for the normal phones. A very simple and logical reason for this difference in performance is that Smart Phones pack just so much into a little slim and sleek device that there is no room to “optimize” the phone for better call quality. I can’t agree more.

4. Fragility

Remember the first Nokia Ad - “Made for India”?


The Ad beautifully emphasized the ruggedness of the Nokia phones. I don’t intend to hang the phone outside the truck. But I do want the phone to survive occasional drops, occasional exposure to water, scratches and a bit rough use. My phone already has a cracked back cover. It looks so ugly. Smart phones are known for their fragility. They cant beat those old Nokia phones for sure. However, this is an area where a lot of improvement is expected to happen. Sony already claims its Xperia Z is water proof. The screens made out of Sapphire were demoed in Consumer Electronics Show this yr. The material is expected to make the mobile screens Concrete proof. See for yourself

5. Far Away from True Office Productivity

No matter how smart the phones become, they are still far away from replacing your bulky old school laptop. You may buy highly rated, fancy Office Apps from app stores. But nothing can replace the Office Suite on a laptop. Its not only about Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Even writing an important longish email is bit cumbersome on a phone. I still prefer a laptop for such a use case.  But I would love to use just one device that does it all. I am not sure if it is even possible ever. May be I am asking too much.

I can live without the last one. But the phones of the future better address these fundamental rights of a cell phone users. NFCs, Wire Less Chargins and Finger Hovers can wait.

Posted by Amol Mategaonkar
22nd April 2013
Originally Posted at http://digitalden.tumblr.com/